Tonight, the Community Bookstore will celebrate that fictional day of days portrayed in James Joyce’s 783 page modern masterpiece, ULYSEES.
The novel recounts the hour by hour passage of a time in Dublin, June 16th, 1904. It is the odyssey of Leopold Bloom, an ordinary Dubliner — a modern-day Ulysees.
For ULYSEES fanatics and novices alike, here’s what the folks at the bookstore have planned.
–The literary largesse begins at 6:00 p.m: Gather and comingle. Uncork the Guinness.
–At 7:00 p.m., David Damrosch, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and President of the American Comparative Literature Association will give a talk called: "Ulysses Without Fear," on how to have a really pleasurable first reading of the novel.
At 7:30 or so, the read-aloud begins. Catherine, the owner of the Community Bookstore says: "We’re not entirely sure what we’re reading, yet, so any suggestions are welcome, or just show up on the night with your copy marked."
Catherine promises to read Molly Blooms’s soliloquy:
"…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."
Yes, it should be fun.
Lovely, wish I could be there! The day will probably pass unmarked here in Germany (who reads Joyce?)