I suppose my first exposure to the writings of James Joyce was similar to that of most other people of my generation, through the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back To School.
In it, the hot English professor played by Annette Kellerman walks into the lecture theatre on the first day and starts reciting from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of Ulysses:
…and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
During it, Rodney Dangerfield starts to get rather excited, and repeats yes as he fantasises himself and the professor together.
Since then, I have actually read most of James Joyce’s writings, particularly Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake, Dubliners, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Remarkably perhaps, I completed this feat by my mid 20s.
All of the action in Ulysses takes place on 16 June 1904, and over the years, devotees of the writings of Joyce have taken to observing that day as Bloomsday, a secular Irish festival (as opposed to St Patrick’s Day, which is a religious Irish festival).
In any event, it being an Irish celebration, it is pretty much an excuse to drink, or so I have been led to believe.
Yesterday was Bloomsday, and this time, for the first time in my life, I actually remembered to celebrate it, something I have been intending to do for several years.
As I am a recently elected member of the Savage Club, I try to attend convivial lunches there. Yesterday, the literati of the Club, who normally discuss poetry or a particular novel together, held their annual Bloomsday lunch, something which they have been holding for over a decade.
And so, instead of showing up at some random Irish pub, I booked myself a seat at the lunch and settled in to enjoy myself.
And it was done in style. Over lunch, with generous refills of the wine glasses (I did start with a Guinness in honour of it being an Irish event), we listened to recitals of passages from Joyce, and to renditions of some of his favourite songs – including Cole Porter’s I Love Paris.
I did ask the chap seated next to me about whether Bloomsday is actually celebrated in Irish pubs the same way St Patrick’s Day is, and he said that they probably do, but that 99% of the people celebrating it would not have read any Joyce, whereas 99% of the people at our luncheon would have read a lot of his work.
I am not planning to discover whether Bloomsday is observed in Irish pubs next year. Instead, I will return to the Savage Club for their next celebration of James Joyce. Much more in keeping with both my interest in literature and with the literary origins of the Savage Club.
Lost For Words! 