Bloomsday

{First, full disclosure. I should have read Ulysses 24 years ago. It was mandatory for an English class I took in college - 'Modern English Novel', I believe. Anyway, I read some of it, but not all of it. I was never a fast reader and Ulysses is not fast reading even for those who can read fast. So, I faked it. Listened in class, got a lot of tips from a friend - & English major! - who was in the class and accepted that my grade would not be would it could have been.}

Today is Bloomsday. People celebrate Bloomsday by dressing up in period costumes (June 16, 1904), walking parts of the route followed by Leopold Bloom and taking part in readings from the novel. Some people go to the same locations, eat food of the day, etc. It's become a pretty big deal over the last decade or so and definitely attracts a crowd - locals and visitors. All this celebration for a book I couldn't be bothered to read!

I just happened to stumble onto a small gathering of the celebrants in Glasthule, Co. Dublin today. Glasthule is near the James Joyce Museum in Sandycove, Co. Dublin, which of course is a place of pilgrimage for fans of Joyce, particularly today.


I only wish I'd have had my camera ready when they were walking around rather than when they were well into their lunch, etc. And, I don't know where the women went. Maybe they opted to dine indoors. Not sure.
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Comments:

nygalwaygirl wrote:
You probably needn't have had the low grade had you simply skipped the first three chapters, which are very dull, and focused on the funny bits, and read the last few chapters. That's what I did, and I still remember getting an A on the exam. ;-)
6/17/2009 6:29 AM EDT

TheYank wrote:
Nygalwaygirl,

Maybe you're right. I don't know and at this stage I'm not even lying to myself about going back and reading it again - in full.

Ulysses was half the course at the time and I read the other novels because (a) they were shorter and (b) they were easier. That's how the final grade wasn't the embarrassment it should have been. I'm more embarrassed by what I did than the grade. For some reason I'm less embarrassed about having done something similar in my freshman year when I only read every other chapter of Moby Dick.
6/17/2009 8:17 AM EDT