Category Archives: James Joyce

“Something is gone and that’s why you write.” — Eamon Grennan

“I have a double sense of things, but I tend to write about what’s under my nose. I write about here when I’m here and when I go back to Ireland I write about what’s there. I regard myself not … Continue reading

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“I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not to be among the greatest.” –John Keats

I was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. – James Joyce, Ulysses Born in 1795 on this day, John Keats was orphaned at fifteen. Because his … Continue reading

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“[At Swim-Two-Birds is] just the book to give to your sister, if she is a dirty, boozey girl.” – Dylan Thomas on Flann O’Brien’s masterpiece

When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put … Continue reading

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On This Day: August 7, 1934: “It must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.”

On December 6, 1933, the US Court of Appeals (Judge John Woolsey) judged Ulysses by James Joyce to be NOT obscene and declared that the book could be admitted into the United States. There were then appeals to this decision. … Continue reading

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“Tennyson’s rank is too well fixed and we love him too much.” — Oscar Wilde

He was not only a minor Virgil, he is also with Virgil as Dante saw him, a Virgil among the Shades, the saddest of all English poets. – T.S. Eliot It’s Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s birthday, born on August 6, 1809. … Continue reading

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2024 Books Read

1. Brotherhood of Tyrants: Manic Depression and Absolute Power, by D. Jablow Hershman I was talking with the doctor who helps me manage my bipolar. He saved my life back in 2013. Well, it was a group effort. He knows … Continue reading

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2023 Books Read

I think I might have read more books by non-American authors than American this year. Countries represented below: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Ireland, France, Russia, Colombia. I revisited some old favorites, which I will continue to do in … Continue reading

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This is what James Joyce has made me do.

A list of Molly’s so-called lovers (debatable), and where they are mentioned in the text, and what Bloom imagines, and then what Molly says about these men later … which reveals Bloom’s ratcheting paranoia – I mean, the organgrinder? Really? … Continue reading

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Kidney of Bloom, pray for us.

Bloomsday 2023 at Ulysses pub. The pub opened its doors on June 16, 2003. I have no idea how I heard about it back then (I just looked it up: Aedin told me.) – but I did. The pub opened … Continue reading

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Rejoyce. It’s Bloomsday.

Some men send flowers to commemorate an anniversary. James Joyce wrote Ulysses. Overachiever. On June 15, 1904, young James Joyce sent a note to Nora Barnacle, who was a waitress at Finn’s Hotel. Barnacle (what an apt name) was a … Continue reading

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