June 2011

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather in which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressingown, ungridled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: —INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI.”
This is the opening of Ulysses, a novel that follows the protagonist, Leopold Bloom, through his hometown of Dublin, Ireland on June 16, 1904. The novel is adapted and follows the same structure as Homer’s Odyssey.
Critics who discovered this were able to draw correlations between the two works and aided to work against obscenity charges and lift a ten year ban placed on the book in the US and UK. The edition of Ulysses available at the library offers the forward by Hon. John Woolsey, the district judge who deemed the novel as not pornographic. While enjoying the claim held by many that Ulysses is the greatest novel of the twentieth century, it is by no means an easy read. Joyce, in quite an ingenious way, borrows and builds on much of the history of Western literature to produce this fascinating and complex work. A prime example of modern literature, it falls into the subcategory of stream of consciousness writing also seen in such famous authors as William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. But Joyce is unique in his own right, inventing language, ignoring grammar, inserting jokes and, particularly, for centering his character in Ireland. Bloomsday as an annual June celebration was conceived by Joyce himself. Rather it was a group of friend as Joyce lovers that set out to reenact the scenes of the book at various places in Dublin. Today the celebrations take place in many English speaking cities around the world, but in Hungary and Italy as well. Beginning in the morning hours, volunteers read aloud
chapters of the book, either in pubs, universities, or street corners, depending on the cities’ connection to the novel. As can be expected, Dublin holds the most lavish of celebrations with food, music, and dancing.
Pittsburgh too celebrated Bloomsday each June 16th. Pick up your copy of Ulysses, check out the events and wait “for what the sky would drop in the way of drink”.
Stop by our first floor display to find biographies and the works of James Joyce, as well as books on the Odyssey and the Greek world, mythology and storytelling, and modern art as literature.
~Display and blog post by Donna Guerin,
Reference Associate