June 16, Bloomsday, so-called because the action of James Joyce's Ulysses takes place in Dublin on June 16, 1904. One of the leading characters, Leopold Bloom, spends the day wandering the streets of his hometown in order to stay away from his house, where he knows his wife, Molly, has scheduled an assignation with Blazes Boylan, a concert manager. The novel seems better each time one reads it, which is fortunate, since on first perusal most mortals are lost, lost. Three Monkeys Online has collected the thoughts of fifty writers on Joyce, here. I will highlight the following, from Salman Rushdie on Ulysses:
You never hear people say that there is so much humor in the book, that the characters are so lively or that the theme--Stephen Daedalus in search of his lost father and Bloom looking for his lost child--is so moving. To me it was moving, in the first place.
It's possible to overlook, or to forget, though Rushdie seems not to have, that the Blooms lost a young son over ten years ago, and, while Leopold has never gotten over it, his sadness has elevated his character and in some substantial way made him more humane and tolerant. No cuckold in literature is more resigned or beloved. When he and Stephen finally meet up late in the evening at Bella Cohen's brothel, after which Bloom takes him to his house and makes him cocoa . . . Rushdie's right, it's very moving. It's also the first novel I ever read in which the protagonist sniffs his toe jam and takes a dump, which reminds me of the following notable passage in the novel I'm reading now (Roth's Sabbath's Theater):
In the morning, after a leisurely bath in Debby's tub, he took a wonderful crap in her toilet--satisfying stools easily urged forth, density, real dimension, so unlike the sickbed stuff that, on an ordinary day, streamed intermittently out of him because of the agitating action of Voltaren. He bequeathed onto the bathroom a big, trenchant barnyard bouquet that filled him with enthusiasm. The robust road again! I have a mistress! He felt as overcome and nonsensical as Emma Bovary out riding with Rodolphe. In the masterpieces they're always killing themselves when they commit adultery. He wanted to kill himself when he couldn't.
Joyce might have meant more to Roth than, say, Anna Karenina. Happy Bloomsday.
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