It's BLOOMSDAY!
 

act accordingly

maybe a little Guinness and a certain novel?

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/c...os/ulysses.jpg

Have a good one, all you Irishmen.

I'll have a pint but I ain't reading nutting.

Great novel, but I read it once, and that's enough.

so glad someone understands:D

Leopold Bloom - lead charater of Joyce's epic novel Ulysses (a thematic parallel to Homer's epic poem The Oddyssey) spends June 16th strolling the town and worrying about his wife's infidelities (while engaging in some of his own)

June 16th is forever Bloomsday in honor of the most complex novel ever written... about a man's rather ordinary day, no less.

Literary geeks rejoice (or is it re-Joyce?)

I was in Dublin last week, it is a pretty big deal there today. I might head to the local for a couple of pints of Guinness goodness soon myself.

So let me get this straight, there is a holiday in honor of a character in a book?

yes

the lead character in the most important novel in the english language

Why is it so important?

Joyce intentionally created somthing to be puzzled over and studied for centuries. The form is everything.

The story is of a man lamenting the infidelities of his wife while engaging in a few of his own...all the while strolling the streets (and pubs and brothels) of Dublin.

The novel is structured to mirror Homer's The Odyssey, except the incidents in this novel aren't epic...the prose is.

One section is written as a play with stage directions. Another HUGE section is written with less than a handfull of punctuation marks. Yet another section about the birth of a child is written as a punny evolution of the english langauge, starting in Anglo-Saxon and Latin then leading to Middle-English then contemporary (for turn-of-the-century) Irish slang.

Points of view shift (and the theme of parallax is explored in depth), characters hallucinate, the church is mocked and anti-semitism is confronted... all with an odd comedic touch.

It is a novel that also revels in an accute awareness and acceptance of human sexuality - this coming from Ireland in the early 1900s - that was a precurser to Henry Miller's sexually charged prose.

it is far from my favorite novel, but as a point of study it is fascinating and as a landmark in modern writing it is unparalleled.

I can't believe I missed this! One of my favorite books ever. The Walpurgisnacht section was a big influence on horror and the concept of the night journey at large. Joyce has influenced my writing more than any other writer besides Burroughs and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I'll make sure to open my copy today. Thanks Joyce, Rod, Leopold, Stephen.

iwillmakeallmypoststomdaywithoutanypunctionuationi ncelebrationofagreatirishnovel

I want to read "The Dead," by Joyce. It's based entirely on Irish mythology. The Goddess features prominently, but only as Joyce understood Her, not as She is understood today.

Thanks for this thread, Rod. Sounds like a literary adventure that one will have to partake when school is over.

on eof my favorite authors ..

i collect his books, the older the better.

I have the origional 2nd,3rd,4th,5th tarzan books in hardcover. (1st editions)

not mint - none have dust covers, but still pretty cool to have

That's sounds rather interesting, Rod. I had heard of the book before, but didn't know anything about it. I'll have to check it out on my next library run.

William not Edgar Rice. But the Tarzan books are great golden age pulp.

i wondered how exactly ER would have been an influence ..

i have a signed william s burroughs 1st edition as well ...
probably my best find of all times

Wow. That's really cool. What book is it?

Cities of the Red Night ...


if it was NAked Lunch it would probably be worth a small fortune.


(not that i would ever sell it)

I liked that book - used to be a big fand of Burroughs (at least what i read).

But back to Joyce - some of his letters seem a but 'odd' lol:

"You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also."

sounds like quite the romantic.