Feeling lazy, but I want to keep up the tradition of saying something about Joyce each year on June 16, Bloomsday, so-called because the action of his novel Ulysses, featuring Dubliner Leopold Bloom, occurred on June 16, 1904. Here are some earlier installments.
And, for this year's installment, here is a hand off to Jonathan deBurca Butler, author of the essay "James Joyce in Rome." Condensed version: he hated it! He wrote his brother, "Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travelers his grandmother's corpse." Butler thinks Rome made him almost fond of his hometown and that his poverty while living there—one Christmas, the Joyces, nearly homeless, dined only on pasta—may account for the "The Dead," which he conceived of in Rome, opening with a Dublin feast.
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