Bloomsday!

The wonderful free online resource Open Culture, today offers a recording of James Joyce reading from Ulysses...

Image found at Mackenzie's Dragons Nest (used without permission)

Ulysses for Dummies - in 18 pictures

James Joyce - Modern Psychonaut

“I am convinced personally that Mr. Joyce is a genius all the world will have to recognize.”

– Aleister Crowley, The Genius of Mr. James Joyce

“Joyce’s prose prepared me to enter psychedelic space.”

– Timothy Leary, FLASHBACKS

“(Finnegans Wake is) about as close to LSD on the page as you can get…”

– Terence McKenna, Surfing on Finnegans Wake

“If you’ve never had a psychedelic, reading Joyce is the next best equivalent.”

– Robert Anton Wilson, RAW Explains Everything

“I have read Finnegans Wake aloud at a time when takers of LSD said, ‘that is JUST LIKE LSD.’ So I have begun to feel that LSD may just be the lazy man’s form of Finnegans Wake.” 

– Marshall McLuhan, Q & A

“Someday I’m going to get my article published; I’m going to prove that Finnegans Wake is an information pool based on computer memory systems that didn’t exist until centuries after James Joyce’s era; that Joyce was plugged into a cosmic consciousness from which he derived the inspiration for his entire corpus of work. I’ll be famous forever.”

– Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

“Joyce’s book is called Finnegans Wake. The missing apostrophe creates another pun,
which Joyce explained to friends as a warning to the ruling classes:
 the oppressed rise, eventually, in every historical cycle.”

– Robert Anton Wilson, Coincidance

“Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either
shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.”

– James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

I thought it would be fun on the occasion of Bloomsday 2015 to offer up a smattering of James Joyce’s hierarchitectitiptitoploftical influence on the psychonaut counter culture, and hopefully provide a novel context for his great works, which might help them extend beyond the trappings of highfalutin literary scholarship.

Please feel free to explore for yourself:
The collected works of James Joyce

Universal Bloomsday!

OK, OK - just maybe 'earthwide' Bloomsday (cf: "why do all the Mr Universe awards get won by earthlings?).

As a monolinguist (UK English), who struggles with many of the complexities of "Finnegans Wake",  I, the bogus one, (not the only individual who posts to this blog) somehow find it heartening to know that the Chinese have recognised something in the text that speaks to them.

I have no idea if Joyce planted gags in the text which only emerge when pronounced correctly in Chinese.  Perhaps he made a really worldwide text (even maybe 'universal', although we await alien translations of the puns and Ur-language).

Very few people have the language resources to tell - with a full overview. Bloomsday in China

Anyway - OM wishes you a delightful and inspiring Bloomsday, wherever you find yourself on 'Sunday 16th  June' (Gregorian calendar).

HAPPY BLOOMSDAY!

"When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And he answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel."
– JAMES JOYCE, ULYSSES

Joyce's Voices

For Bloomsday this year (16 June 2012) the BBC will be handing Radio 4 over to Ulysses. Throughout the day there will be readings of a special adaptation of the text, along with live broadcasts from Dublin (where fans re-enact moments from this complex book. Sadly, this may not prove accessible to all countries.

This will be an edited version, not the 'complete' text which was broadcast in 1982 (which took nearly 30 hours).

The details below are from the BBC Media Centre (without permission) which contains further information.

Here, at a glance, are the main Bloomsday broadcasts on Radio 4:

Part 1 09.00 – 10.30: Saturday Live From the Martello Tower to School
Sian and Richard present a special Bloomsday edition of the show, which will include the first three extracts from the drama as well as discussion and location reports, with input from Mark Lawson in Dublin.

Part 2 10.30 – 11.00 From Bloom’s House, through the Morning Streets, to a Funeral

Part 3 12.00 – 12.30 From the Beach, to a Newspaper Office, into Davy Byrne’s Pub

Part 4 14.30 – 15.30 The Library, Through the Lunchtime Streets, to the Ormond Hotel

Part 5 17.30 – 18.00 In Barney Kiernan’s Pub

Part 6 20.00 – 22.00 From Sandymount Beach at Evening, to the Maternity Hospital, and into Nighttown

22.15 – 23.00: Ulysses Today Mark Lawson chairs a discussion about the abiding popularity of Ulysses and its relevance today, with Declan Kiberd, author of Ulysses And Us – The Art Of Everyday Living; Professor Anne Fogarty, Director of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School; and others.

Part 7 23.00 – 00.00 From a Cab-man’s Shelter, to Eccles Street and Home

In the week before the Bloomsday broadcasts, Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra will be broadcasting a number of programmes on the theme of Ulysses:

James Joyce had a fine singing voice and sang professionally as a young man. In James Joyce’s Playlist, David Owen Norris and guests will listen to some of Joyce’s favourite songs in the Martello Tower in Dublin where he lived for a time. This will be broadcast on Saturday, June 9th.

On Thursday, June 14th In Our Time will discuss the background to Ulysses, considering its historical and literary context, its themes, contents and style, and the impact it has had since publication. Melvyn Bragg will be joined by Steven Connor, Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck College, London; Jeri Johnson, Fellow and Tutor in English at Exeter College, Oxford; and Richard Brown, Reader in Modern Literature at the University of Leeds.

4Extra: Blind Date With Bloomsday – another chance to join Peter White on his Bloomsday visit to Dublin, during which he meets some enthusiastic celebrants. Friday, June 15th.

Happy Bloomsday!

"...good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub".

Apparently (I haven't gone to test the theory out) a solution to Bloom's musings appeared after using a computer programme.

Some dispute still exists, in terms of ignoring restaurants and hotels where passers-by can get a drink, but still a very worthy effort, I reckon.

Check out the programmer's blog here, for details.

Ulysses (page 53 in some editions)

Leopold musing...

Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the

county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and

behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then thin

of the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin

without passing a pub. Save it they can't. Off the drunks perhaps. Put

down three and carry five. What is that, a bob here and there, dribs and

drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the

town travellers. Square it you with the boss and we'll split the job, see?

How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels

of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint

Joseph's National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps

memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee

doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their

joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom.

James Joyce Centre - Dublin

Happy Bloomsday, folks!

However you choose to spend it.

Happy Bloomsday!

Bob has managed to get quite a few of us to dig back into James Joyce, and tackle some of his more daunting works, and many of us have reaped rich rewards. Bobby did some illustrations, and other Joyce stuff you can find using the Imperfect Index.

Of course, as a scurrilous old man, RAW has pointed out that Bloomsday (in which all the action of the vast novel Ulysses happens) actually commemorates Nora Barnacle giving Joyce a hand job in an alley (pretty forward for a
young Catholic woman of the time) which imprinted him on her for life, but also left him anxious (she seemed awfully good, you might say 'practiced' at it!) and often jealous. So rather than trudge around the route of the characters in Dublin, you could just as easily celebrate by giving or receiving a handjob. Why not?

What a great timebomb joke from Joyce, as the true significance of the day did not emerge until people got access to his journals - long after 'the literary experts' had knocked themselves out to analyse every detail, and guess at meanings!


..............Scene...........Time...Colour...Organ............Art...Technic.....Symbol

01 TELEMACHUS Tower 08 GDWH --- theology narrative-young heir
02 NESTOR School 09 BNCH --- history catechism-personal horse
03 PROTEUS Strand 10 BLGN --- philology monolog-male tide

04 CALYPSO House 08 OR kidney mythol/econ narrative-mature nymph
05 LOTUS-EATR Bath 09 BN skin chem/botany narcissism eucharist
06 HADES Graveyard 11 BKWH heart religion incubism caretaker
07 EOLUS Newspaper 12 RD lungs rhetoric enthymemic editor
08 LESTRYGONI Lunch 13 BD esoph architect peristalsis constables
09 SCYLLA&CHR Library 14 -- brain literature dialectic Stratford/London
10 WANDERINGR Streets 15 RB blood mechanics labyrinth citizens
11 SIRENS Concertrm.16 CL ear music fuga per canonem barmaids
12 CYCLOPS Tavern 17 GN muscle surgery/pol gigantism fenian
13 NAUSIKAA Rocks 20 GYBL eye/ns painting de/tumescence virgin
14 OXENofSUN Hospital 22 WH womb medicine embryonic develpm. mothers
15 CIRCE Brothel 23 VI leg/skl dance hallucination whore


16 EUMEUS Shelter 00 nerves navigation narrative-old sailors
17 ITHACA House 01 STMK skeltn science catechism-impers. comets
18 PENELOPE Bed zz STMK fat ---- monolog-female earth

*Colours: GolD WHite BrowN CHestnut BLue GreeN ORange BlacK ReD
BlooD RainBow CoraL GreY VIolet STarry MilKy (no yellow!?)