A Bloomin’ daft idea that gives me no Joyce

AS the country prepares to go ‘Joyce mad’ on Sunday, Dave Kenny explains why he never shared his father’s love of Bloomsday

BLOOMSDAY. The mention of it makes my scrotum tighter than a Cavan man’s wallet. All those Joycean poseurs in faux Edwardian boaters and bonnets, poncing about the Martello Tower in Sandycove. All that pretentious goatcrap about “Hegelian ratiocinations” and “ineluctable modality”. All those whimsical pictures of David Norris doing the splits, or some plonker in round glasses eating a kidney. It would make you want to eat your own kidney.

The majority of Ulysses’s ‘celebrants’ have never read it. For these Joyce ‘fans’, Bloomsday is not a celebration of an impenetrable book about Dublin, but an excuse to raid the back of the wardrobe, sound well-read and get pissed.