Frank McCourt on “Ulysses”, and the famous readings done at Symphony Space every June 16 – called “Bloomsday on Broadway”:
Nineteen sixty-four, the year of my forgettable thesis, was the sixtieth anniversary of Bloomsday. (Richard Ellmann had published his masterly biography in 1959.) Joyceans might have marked June 16 on their calendars in 1964 but you’d search in vain for the kind of celebration the day has engendered since. In certain places Ulysses, all of it, is read by people, some who haven’t the foggiest notion of what they’re reading. Still, the book sings in your head for a long time and you won’t forget its characters — Bloom, Stephen, Molly, Blazes Boylan, or scenes. It’s your life.
At these readings there is still a thrill in the crowd with the opening line that Joyceans know refers to my man, Gogarty: “Stately plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead …” We’re off on a journey through Dublin and Ireland and family and Catholicism and eroticism and love and infidelity. The journey ends on a powerful, tumescent note, “yes I will Yes.” (Note the uppercase Y on the final Yes. This is not an end but a beginning.)..
Look! Ulysses is more than a book. It’s an event — and that upsets purists, but who’s stopping them from retiring to quiet places for an orgy of textual analysis?
I will read at “Bloomsday on Broadway” as long as Isaiah permits me and as long as I can croak out Joyce’s wondrous words.
Over the years we’ve aged, the hair whitening or graying, and many of us have long passed the age at which Joyce died, fifty-eight. Joyce’s work has liberated many an artist while his life stands as a lesson for all of us. He suffered greatly: the growing failure of his eyes, the growing madness of his daughter. All his days he skirmished for pennies and fought pitched battles for his art. He was a family man, fiercely tribal, and we must not forget he was driven by love.
Did he love Ireland? As the squirrel loves the nut.
Did he love Catholicism? Imagine his work without it.
