Bloomsday: Ulysses in 3 Minutes

Today is Bloomsday, the day that Leopold Bloom (I almost typed Harold--!) wandered around Dublin, thus providing the plot, slender though it was and is, of James Joyce's and Irish, English-language and world literature's greatest novels, Ulysses. Most people probably don't get much further than "Stately plump Buck Mulligan..." the phrase that opens the novel, and it is quite a slog at points, though thrilling at others--it ends with Mollie Bloom's multipage orgasm--with enough colorful characters, obscure words, rhetorical play, recondite references, thematic shifts, and more, to keep the professors at work for years, which is not exactly how Joyce put it but close enough.

For those who want a bit of Joyce's Ulysses but  can't find the time just yet, here, from the Irish Times, are the Temple Bar Company's Anne Tyrrell, Paul Kennedy and Robert Gogan performing a three-minute version of Ulysses.

Here's a screenshot:

And though I can't get the video to play on Firefox, it does play fine on Safari and Chrome.



And here is a map of the various Ulysses sites in and around Dublin (with legend), should you happen to find yourself there today or anytime:

Bloomsday + Congrats to 2011 Grads!

It's Bloomsday!

I have in mind, as I begin this entry, the President's recent visit to his ancestral homeland (one of them), Eire, and Mrs. Obama's sipping of real Irish stout in Moneygall.  

SLÁINTE!

"Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightaway brought him a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of the deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.
    Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner born, that nectarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him that thirsted, the soul of chilvalry, in beauty akin to the immortals." --from James Joyce, Ulysses (corrected version), New York: Vintage, 1961, p. 299.

(As I wrote last year, you can find the entire, remarkable novel, Ulysses, one of the greatest ever written in the English or any other language, here.) You can hear Joyce himself reading from it here, at Bedeutung Blog.

The Irish Times on local Bloomsday events.

The Washington Post on local 2011 Bloomsday happenings.

The Huffington Post on global Bloomsday doings.

***

As I noted last week, the university's academic year was not yet over, but final grades are now in, and, though graduation doesn't occur until this weekend, but:

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THIS YEAR'S GRADUATES IN THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE CLASSES OF 2011!

Some of the graduating senior fiction undergraduates, after our bowling match

Senior Bowling!

Congratulations to everyone graduating this spring all over the country, and a special congratulations to Kortney Ziegler, who becomes the first doctoral graduate from the university's African American Studies Department PhD program!

Bloomsday + Congrats to the Grads + Buffett's Giveaway + Krugman/Cassandra

It's Bloomsday! "STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air..." and you know, or know of, the rest. (If not, you can find the entire, remarkable novel, Ulysses, one of the greatest ever written in the English or any other language, here.) You can hear Joyce himself reading from it here, at Bedeutung Blog.

To commemorate today there's the annual Lilac Bloomsday Run, as well as the Bloomsday Festival in Dublin and elsewhere. Apple, steadily gaining a reputation for prudery regarding its iPhone and iPad applications (and the anti-porn comments of its founder-guru), has decided to reinstate Throwaway House's Ulysses Seen app, created by which it had previously censored because of its depiction of partial nudity (an imagined goddess's breasts, Buck Mulligan's penis, egads!)

I haven't seen this app, but given how the entire novel ends, I wonder if that was bowdlerized too. To Apple's credit, they also reinstated a graphic novel version of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which features a strip of a male couple kissing, after having heavily censored it.  Something tells me neither Joyce nor Wilde would have been surprised.

^^^

The university's graduation doesn't officially occur until this weekend, but final grades are posted, so I think I can post without caution:

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THIS YEAR'S GRADUATES IN THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE CLASSES OF 2010!

Some of the seniors (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and lit scholars writers all) at the annual Bowling challenge (fiction won, creative nonfiction finished second, and I bowled with poetry this year). Congratulations to all the graduating senior major and minors, and to the other undergraduate students finishing up this week that I taught (including those in the Conceptual Art/Writing class--you were great!), advised or worked with over the last few years!

Congratulations also to one of my graduate fiction thesis advisees, Roya Khatiblou, whose magnificent manuscript received a 2009-10 Distinguished Thesis Award! It was exciting to work with Roya, and with the other graduating fiction students I advised this year, whom I'd also taught in the past, Jennifer Companik and Wendy Schoua Musto.

Lastly, to all the students in the novella class (The Theory and Practice of Fiction, Winter-Spring), congratulations on finishing your novellas! It was a huge, speeded up, often stressful undertaking, and you accomplished in 4 1/2 months what it takes many writers a year or more do but you've all completed your little books, and deserve praise for having done so!