Bloomsday In Chicago – A Do It Yourself Ulysses

A Little Background

“Bloomsday in Chicago,” an abbreviated reading of excerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses, started on June 16^th, 2004. This was the 100^th anniversary of the date the novel is set. It was also the 50th anniversary of the first attempted “Bloomsday” reading in Dublin, Ireland. However, they abandoned that effort due to the intoxication of its participants. None-the-less, it created a tradition. It became world-wide, celebrating the book, the lives of the characters within it, and the human condition as it was, is, and will be until what William Faulkner once termed “the last ding-dong of doom.”

The United States and many other countries, including Ireland, initially banned the novel. In 1998 The Modern library selected Ulysses as the best novel of the 20^th century. Based on The Odyssey of Homer and serving as a sequel to Joyce’s short story collection, The Dubliners, and his autobiographical novel, A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man. Ulysses consists of three sections (Stephen, Bloom, and Molly) divided into eighteen episodes. It totals around two hundred and sixty thousand words. Ulysses was written during The First World War and its immediate aftermath. It began to be published is serial form in 1917 by the American literary journal “The Little Review,” edited by Ezra Pound. However, the work was declared obscene, resulting in the trial and fine of its publishers, Margret Anderson and Jean Heap.

In 1922, Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach, the owner of Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris. It was often smuggled into the U.S. until the ban was lifted by the New York State Supreme Court in 1933.

Set on June 16^th, 1904, Ulysses commemorates the day on which James Joyce had his first date with Nora Barnacle. He married her some twenty-seven years later in order to “legitimize” their son when he became engaged. It nostalgically looks back to a lost era before World War One.

Beginning at eight o’clock in the morning on the top of an abandoned watch tower overlooking Dublin Bay, Ulysses is a cubist, multi-layered, perspective shifting, stream-of-consciousness piece of literary origami. Joyce claimed included enough “enigmas and puzzles” to “keep the professors busy for centuries.”

The purpose of “Bloomsday In Chicago” has been, and is, to sample the text and convey an outline of its story. It takes far less time than the approximately thirty-plus hours to read this amazing work of literature from cover to cover out loud.

 

Praise for Bloomsday in Chicago

Through the Cracked Lookingglass: The Many Sides of Bloomsday

At Puddin’head Press’ annual celebration of the single twenty-four-hour period during which Ulysses occurs, novelists, musicians, publishers and actors take their turns performing edited sections of the book. Latecomers search desperately for chairs before taking seats on the floor or leaning against walls. Members of the audience quote lines along with the performers. Laughter rings out through the second floor room after choice sections.

Yes, laughter. Despite celebrating a novel that consistently vies with “Infinite Jest” and “In Search of Lost Time” for the title of most daunting literary endeavor, Bloomsday In Chicago brings out the cheekiness at the heart of Ulysses, the reflexive part of Joyce that laughs at his own esoterica.

“So much embedded humor compels the story,” says Jeff Helgeson, playwright, novelist and returning emcee. “It’s a hyperbole of the specific. You take the huge epic of The Odyssey, and instead of ten years it takes one day.

The transformation of Ulysses from revered tome into living, breathing performance also helps explain the attraction of Bloomsday. “It’s much more dramatic and engaging when it’s being performed,” says Wallwm, a fan of Joyce who discovered the event by chance.

Mike Gillis – Lit Events – New City

 

The Fictional Dead of Dublin Come Alive

Local actors and writers take turns reading from the work, which attempts to recreate the Dublin, Ireland of June 16, 1904.

Readings of the 450-page book have become a tradition around the world and can take 36 hours, but this is an abridged version which aims to tell the story arc through narration and excerpts in a breezy 2 1/2 hours.

Robert McCoppin = Chicago Tribune

 

Contents

Index of Bloomsday Readings:

Opening chapter
Deasy
Stephen on the Strand
Introduction of Leopold Bloom
Martha Clifford :etter
All Hallows
Bantam Lyons
Paddy Dignam’s Funeral
Bloom in the Newspaper Office
Breen / Mr. Bloom / Host
Brton’s Restaurant
Davy Byrne’s Pub
Reverend Conmee’s Walk
Flower Shop
Shakespeare and Hamlet
Cyclops
Gerty Mac Dowell
Maternity Hospital
Nighttown
Bloom and Stephen in the Cab Man’s Shelter
Catechism
Molly’s Monologue

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