ESP.LITERATURE

The books of James Joyce, Ulysses in particular, were banned and burned by both British and American publishing pundits although several were lauded as literary masterpieces. A child of a rancorous, impoverished family, educated in Dublin by Jesuits, he held himself invulnerable behind a wall of aesthetic and ethical abstractions, rejecting family, nation, and church to do so. On June 16, 1904, he first stepped out with Nora Barancle whom he eventually married; and, in October, escaped with her to Trieste in northern Italy. At the suggestion of Ezra Pound, Joyce moved to Paris in 1920 to finish Ulysses; and he and his family made that city their home for the next twenty years, living, for the most part, hand-to-mouth, and that only by the grace of several generous patrons. He died in January of 1941 in Zurich.

Leopold Bloom is the central character in Ulysses, the book focusing on one day in this man’s life, memorializing everything from his breakfast kidneys to the drunken, witty ditties sung by his wife and her lover, the drunken revelries of Stephen Daedalus, and, finally, the saucy interior monologue of wife, Molly, that ends the novel.

Pints are raised globally to honor Joyce and his now famous creation.

As good a reason for bending an arm as any, I reckon.

Sláinte.

COMPLIMENTARY EBOOKS NOW AVAILABLE AT KNOTBUCHWERKS (link in side panel).