Bloomsday

Another June 16th, another Bloomsday.

The bulk of action in James Joyce's Ulyssess takes place on June 16, 1904. It's a mountain of a book, but I really felt like I accomplished something when I finished reading the damn thing. I even liked bits.

At my uni, they did public readings outside the student union from morning well into the night.

This year Bloomsday is cancelled in Dublin due to the funeral of the prime minister. My favorite qoute on the subject is "You can't cancel Bloosday. That's like saying you can cancel Monday or Tuesday."

I heard on the drive home on NPR that the grandson of Joyce was trying to stop public readings of Ulyssess because of copywrite issues. The Rosenback Museum in Philadelphia has the original manuscript of Ulyssess and is planning a public reading today, Bloomsday, regardless of the young Mr. Joyce. And apparently Stephen James Joyce is also being sued for copywrite abuse, trying to supress publications about his grandfather that he does not like, and possibly distroying correspondence of interest to scholars.

In this New Yorker article we learn that Stephen James Joyce once turned down the requet of an academic from Purdue because he considered the name of the sports team, the Boilermakers, vulgar.

Sounds like a class act.

Joyce's unpublished work enters public domain in 2012.

Happy Bloomsday.