Today, June 16th, being the day, of course, which marks Leopold Bloom‘s epic meanderings through Dublin in James Joyce‘s modernist masterwork, Ulysses.  While those events occurred a whopping 106 years ago, Bloomsday is a still-celebrated event, complete with pub crawls and public readings of the novel.  And if you’re in New York, or even near a radio:

Bloomsday on Broadway, staged annually at Symphony Space since 1981, has a cabal of actors and writers performing scenes from the novel.  This year’s iteration, which will be simulcast on WNYC radio, and Symphony Space, explores the parallels between “Ulysses” and Homer’s “Odyssey.”  Excerpts from both works will be enacted on Wednesday by a cast that includes Stephen Colbert, Ira Glass, Malachy McCourt, Tony Roberts and David Margulies.  Isaiah Sheffer, artistic director of Symphony Space, will host.

“Joyce was a poet of sound; he wasn’t a visual person,” Mr. Sheffer said.  “It’s meant to be read aloud.  The big discovery is that it’s funny.”  Mr. Colbert, who cites Bloomsday on Broadway as one of the reasons he moved to New York, will play Odysseus.  “Performing ‘Ulysses’ on Bloomsday at Symphony Space is the only way I’ll ever finish the damn book,” Mr. Colbert admitted in an e-mail message.  The seven-hour event will culminate with a two-and-a-half-hour uncensored reading of Molly Bloom’s erotic late-night monologue by the actress Fionnula Flanagan.

Last week, I mentioned the recent passing of film director Joseph Strick.  If, say, you have today only a few hours to devote to Joyce, you can check out Strick’s 1967 film version of Ulysses at—why not?—this Chinese video site.

And while footage of the author himself is as hard to come by as that of his fellow Irishman, Samuel Beckett, what follows below is a short clip of Joyce in Paris.  The anecdote relayed by the narrator is worth the watch itself.  “Deal with him, Hemingway, deal with him!”

 
Stream of Conviviality for Leopold Bloom’s Day

(via Cynical C)

 
“I think of it as a book about family.”   The rise of Kindles and iPads have seen a corollary rise in promotional book trailers.  Many of them star the author themselves.  Hell, even my man Thomas Pynchon (his voice, anyway) did one for his last novel, Inherent Vice.  That trailer was cool.  Some, though, aren’t, and book blog Mobylives has just picked this year’s Most Annoying Performance By An Author.

The nod went to Park Slope’s Jonathan Safran Foer in recognition for his anti-eating animals book, Eating Animals.  For a variety of reasons, I’ve pretty much stricken animal protein from my diet, but watching Foer, who’s from Park Slope (wait, did I mention that already?  I hope so, ‘cause he really wants you to know that!), truck out his dog, kid and granny in the below video makes me want to head to KFC and, like, double down on these.

 
Book Blog Picks Best and Worst Promotional Videos

 
Regular readers of this blog know that we’re all big Julian Cope fans, so this is great news. The idea of a best of collection of writing from Head Heritage, his sprawling website seems especially appealing to me, but the idea of a Cope-penned novel will be Nirvana for fans. His most recent written work, 2007’s Japanrocksampler, was in my top five books for that year. From The Bookseller:

Faber has secured a three-book deal with eccentric British rock star Julian Cope. Lee Brackstone, publishing director, bought world rights in Cope’s books in all languages for an undisclosed sum from Robert Kirby at United Agents.

The first book, Lives of the Prophets: A New Perspective, is scheduled for delivery in September 2011 and for publication a year later. The publisher described the book as a biography of “‘sent men’ from The Odin and Zoroaster through St Paul, Christ, Mohammed, John Brown and beyond”.

The book suggests modern equivalents of the prophets, including figures like Malcolm X, and “such derided and despised pariahs as Oliver Cromwell, Chairman Mao and Adolf Hitler”.

The Cope Compendium is a collection of Cope’s writing on music, culture, politics and religion from his Headheritage website during the past decade. A release date is yet to be confirmed. The third book is a novel called 131, which is set during the Italia ‘90 World Cup and describes “the adventures of four lads from the north-west and their descent into the Neolithic Underworld of Sardinia over the course of the tournament”.

Cope, a practising druid, is best known for his work with the post-punk group The Teardrop Explodes but has also written several books, including the critically acclaimed music title Krautrocksampler.

Faber’s Brackstone said: “Part Robert Graves, part Iggy Pop, part Lester Bangs, Julian’s prose and his unconventional way of looking at the world is inspiring, necessary and always surprising.”

Faber signs three from rocker Cope (The Bookseller)

 
Wait, what ? Giorgio Moroder did a coffee table book for Taschen about all of the most gorgeous colored vinyl/ picture disc/ odd shaped records produced during vinyl’s multi-decade reign as sound medium of choice ? One for me, please !
 

 

 

 

 

io9 dug up this excellent UK blog that regularly links to the worst science fiction and fantasy book covers of all time. Some of these are true finds.

(Good Show, Sir)

 
Having tackled such topics as prostitution, the nature of violence, and the Imperial Valley, author William Vollmann‘s certainly navigated a few of the world’s darker corners.  His just-released work of non-fiction, Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, seems like it’s going to strike that typical Vollmann balance between the bleak and the beautiful.

Here’s how Vice describes it:

As its title suggests, it is a sociological exploration of the strange, veiled world of Noh and its practitioners.  The book is filled with transvestites, geishas, sex fiends of the red-light Kabukichō district, and many other interesting characters both elegant and perverted.  It also marks the first time that we have read the word “neovagina.”

Vice is also carrying an excerpt from the book’s Chapter 16, “They Just Want To Look In The Mirror.”  In it, Vollmann recounts his session with a makeup artist (see above photos) whose clientele includes a large number of cross-dressing Japanese businessmen:

Only about 10 percent of her customers dare to go out.  They often wear femme-executive or businesswoman outfits when they come to her; a few play with lingerie, but never here; some keep secret apartments furnished with their woman things, so that their families will never know.  They tend to order clothes on the internet, a circumstance which requires them to buy repeatedly before discovering a garment which actually fits; but anonymity remains infinitely more important to them than cost or convenience.

“Why do they do it?”

“Stress,” she replies. “And they have the pleasure of hiding something secret.”

 
Here’s another excellent fan-made video syncing print to music via Michael Mantler’s wonderful 1976 LP The Hapless Child and Other Inscrutable Stories. It’s a collection of delightful and dark children’s verse by Edward Gorey set to music by a stellar cast including Wyatt, Carla Bley, Jack Dejohnette and Terje Rypdal. I’m pretty sure I could listen to Robert Wyatt sing a shopping list and find it to be genius but this is a real treat, a match made in heaven.
 

 
Caught an excellent interview last week with recovering skinhead Frank Meeink.  Meeink’s promoting a new autobiography on how he went from neo-Nazi mouthpiece to lecturer for the ADL, so I thought maybe the time was right to revisit Stormfront and see what might be looming on their summer reading list.  Here’s a sampling of what those white-priders are recommending on the Whatcha Reading thread:

The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor by David Irving

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby by Paul Findley

Remotely Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives by Aric Sigman

Ultimate Sniper: An Advanced Training Manual For Military And Police Snipers by John Plaster

An Evil Love: The Life of Frederick West by Geoffrey Wansell

Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer by Elliott Leyton

Ford County by John Grisham

The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem by Henry Ford

Dune by Frank Herbert

Via Cool Hunting, here’s an excellent find: Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton’s new book “Cartographies of Time,” which collects ways in which the human race has represented time throughout, um, time; a timeline of timelines. I want one.

In their new book “Cartographies of Time,” Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton dissect and track the methods people used when attempting to record the passage of time. These timelines, lists and antiquated infographics reveal particular attitudes and novel approaches to documenting history.

Rosenberg and Grafton organize Cartographies, naturally, in chronological order, tracing the earliest timelines from ancient Greece all the way to modern reinterpretations. Expertly showing the evolution of the form, the book’s fascinating swathe of cartographic imagery will appeal to history buffs and data visualization fans alike.

The central dilemma these historians and chronologists faced over the centuries was to decide what was important, and—the central theme of Chronologies—the myriad methods employed to illustrate and recreate those histories.

(Cool Hunting: Cartographies of Time)