Bloom-shakalaka

Happy June 16, everyone. Happy Bloomsday. Bloomsday, if you don't want to click the link, the the worldwide celebration of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, a book that follows the life of a man named Leo Bloom as he travels around Dublin on - you guessed it, didn't you - 16 June, 1904. Last year was the Centennial Bloomsday, which was quite a big deal, but I know out there somewhere people are celebrating today, as well.

Now, be aware, by celebrating, I mean that probably some universities or other groups of readers are doing readinsg of the book - so maybe using the word "celebrating" was overstating the case a bit.

I read Ulysses in my senior year of college after twice starting it on my own and getting lost on, oh, about the second page. Maybe the second time I made it to the third page before throwing the thing across the room. The professor of that class is a man I loathe, who once even subtly accused me of plagiarism, who (IMHO folks) is pretty much the embodiment of what's wrong with most literary academics. And yet, he got me to read Ulysses, and for that - if nothing else, and really I mean for nothing else - I thank him.

I hope you don't think me conceited when I say that I am proud of having read this book. Reading isn't an interpersonal contest, it's an internal one. Ulysses was something I always wanted to do, and that I very often doubted I would. That I managed to, at the age of 21, not only read the whole thing but even understand a paragraph here and there is something I smile to think about. As such, today makes me happy.

If I think happily about having read Ulysses, it is not because I particularly enjoyed the experience. If the aforementioned (all for you, Tony!) professor is what's wrong with literary scholarship then Ulysses is the wrong thing that brought him about. My problem here is not with modernism or "difficult books" in principal but really with Ulysses in particular. Writers from Virginia Woolf to Ian McEwan have written books quite thematically and structurally similar to Ulysses - both both of those writers did it considerably more succintly and comprehensibly. I don't want to get into too much of an argument here on what I think literature should be, but surely we can all agree that a book no one can understand offers precious little literary value indeed. Ulysses spends far too many pages in this trap of uncomprehensibility. Still, it has moments of absolute brilliance. Moments that remind you that, yes, the same author who wrote one of the greatest stories in literature hadn't gone completely nuts by the time he wrote this novel. I mean, he at least seems to have had afew lucid days.

As such, I will leave you with this, perhaps my favorite of all literary passages, the closing words of Ulysses. May you all enjoy such an evening tonight.

"... and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."