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!”