REJOYCE! Here is the epitome of my intellectual achievement. I have read this book. Twice. Unabridged. On the campus of that bastion of educational supremacy, Harvard University. Having had the privilege of living in Dublin for a short while whilst undertaking some literature studies in college ( Yeats, Joyce, Wilde) in the town Joyce had so much disdain for, the book seemed like a natural progression in my classic reading pursuits. I read Dubliners, in Dublin, a then crusty city in economic decay, and U2, having just released Joshua Tree, the album that would launch them into super stardom and put Dublin on the map. My heritage, and my love of reading is what brought me to Ireland. As an impressionable college student, I explored the city of ghosts of saints, sinners, poets, writers, actors, artists and rebels, a city that time had seemed to forget, of nights in smokey pubs drinking pints of black beer listening to an impromptu gathering of old traditional musicians passionately belt out Irish rebel songs that brought a tear to the eye of many an old man. Damp cobblestone sidewalks, the smell of malt barley, of peat buring in thousands of fireplaces, the ripple of the Liffey, and the constant drizzle that kept a chill deep in my bones always, was the Dublin that I came to know. The cold was made up for, however, by the warm hospitality and generosity of the citizens of Dublin. Well, most of them anyway.
Joyce's Dublin was once a gorgeous Georgian city falling into decrepit decay as a diamond in the rust in the British crown. This image as opposed to today where a booming economy built on IT ( nicknamed the Celtic Tiger) has made it one of the most desirable cities in Europe. Real estate prices are currently through the ceiling, and the city, with it's new cosmopolitan status has lost the crusty, poor, unsophisticated feeling of the fine de siecle Dublin of James Joyce's day. Even though developed and modern , you can still trace Bloom's adventures around town, and many of the physical elements ( churches, pubs, streets, bridges and even Bloom's house on Eccles Street) still exist. Joyce's portrayal of Dublin, written while he lived abroad, was so exacting, that he said of Ulysses;
"I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book."
However, Joyce despised Dublin. He lived in voluntary exile in England, Switzerland, and Italy. He is buried in Zurich, and while I have been to Switzerland, I never took the opportunity to visit his grave site. Shame on me! Joyce was very cynical about many things, and many are questioned and examined in the pages of Ulysses. His views on politics, Catholicism, sex, marriage, history, literature ( Shakespeare, Homer for example) his family, and other people and institutions in general. His main muse, Nora Barnacle, a country girl from Galway, became his lifelong, live in companion/lover and the mother of his two children.
It has been speculated that she is the model for Molly Bloom, and many of the female characters in his novels ( ie Lilly in The Dead- Nora had a boyfriend in Galway who died young). I read a wonderful biography about her by Brenda Maddox, and she was a remarkable woman in her own right. Although not an intellectual, she was witty, fun , robust and represented the parts of Ireland that Joyce did indeed idealize. She was his lifeline, his reason, his symbol of life. Some scholars say that without her, these works would not exist. I have no proof about that, but Nora is a very strong figure in Joyce's world, both real and imaginary. I love the biography of her. Knowing about Nora is the key into Joyce's very soul.
I suppose I a pompous, intellectual ass for reading this novel of 18 long chapters about one day in the lives of Bloom and Dedalus, June 16, 1924. This opus magnus of this many layered, stream of consciousness,
TBC..........
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