That it took James Joyce nearly a decade to write his sprawling, day-in-the-life-of-ordinary-men masterpiece, Ulysses, is nothing compared to the length of time it takes most of us to finish. Constructed from the architecture of a wild, weird mind and tied loosely to Homer’s Odyssey, it is eighteen installments of everything: from Dickensian parodies to riffs on Shakespeare, Elizabethan meanderings to stream of consciousness sing song. And if the tome is really an event, so is the date it marks.
On June 16, 1904, Leopold Bloom set out across Dublin in search of lemon soap for his wife and some more prurient solace for himself. He met Stephen Dedalus along the way, and 100 years later, we’re still talking about them both. Bloomsday 2004.
Guests:
Colm Toibin, author, most recently, of “The Master”
James Wood, senior editor at The New Republic and author, most recently, of “The Irresponsible Self: On Comedy and the Novel”
Laura Weldon, national coordinator for ReJoyce Dubin 2004