Joyceans bloom in baking sun
At his side his young lady companion waited expectantly for direction and raised her eyes to meet her guide’s as he began to speak thoughtfully. “We’ll skip the brothels,” he said.
Bloomsday’s 100th birthday left the capital awash with couples squinting at maps of James Joyce’s Dublin and trying to work out where the landmarks immortalised in Ulysses were in a cityscape with a century of evolution under its belt.
Up at North Great Georges Street, the clocks were turned back and not even the Bargain Booze off-licence at the corner or the Afro-Caribbean food store opposite could shake the home of the James Joyce Centre out of its Georgian fantasy.
Men in straw boaters and walking canes linked arms with women wilting under mounds of curls, feather hats, floral wraps and heavy brocade dresses trailing the ground around their feet.
No modern day political correctness dared rear its sterile head in this environment and the onlookers were treated to an energetic reading of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy which, to those who haven’t got beyond page 19 of Ulysses never mind the final chapter, is a bit like the diner scene in When Harry Met Sally. Only Molly wasn’t pretending.
Happily, the five-year-olds from the Montessori Education Centre further along the street were out of ear-shot and besides, to their innocent eyes, everything about the Bloomsday celebrations on their doorstep was just great fun.
Small heads disappearing under adult-sized boaters, they enthused endlessly about James Joyce who was, they explained in a skilled imitation of the author’s style: “A famous writer and he wrote a book and it was called Ulysses about Dublin and we’re in Dublin.”
And who of the young scholars had read the said famous book? “I have, I have, me too,” came the excited reply amidst a sea of waving arms. “Well, you’re going to read it when you’re bigger,” prompted teacher, Rachel Breen, who admitted that she too was waiting to become a grown-up in that respect.
“I have the summer off so I’m definitely going to read it in the next few months. Hopefully this group won’t wait as long. We’ve been explaining the background to them and trying to instill an interest in the book so that it’s something they’ll remember and return to when they’re older.”
For Catherine Whitley, a doctor of literature at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania returning to Joyce is like brushing her teeth. “I’ve read Ulysses so many times but there’s so much in it, I always find something new. It’s inexhaustible. If I was to be on a desert island with just one book, Ulysses is the one I’d pick.”
Even Santa is a fan, or so Pacelli Donegan discovered when he went looking for a pair of Joycean spectacles to top off his dapper Bloomsday outfit and found the perfect pair on display in a Drogheda opticians.
The proprietor was alarmed at his interest in the roundy pair with the spindly arms. “They’re not for sale. We keep those for Santa,” he informed his curious customer who nonetheless managed to talk his way into borrowing them.
“I took on a challenge about four years ago to read Ulysses. I read Dubliners and Portrait (Of The Artist As A Young Man) and some biography so I think I’m ready now.”
Mr Donegan had the encouragement, or good-humoured goading, of friend and fellow Joyce fan, Martin Murray, for inspiration as Martin had already been there, done that and bought the boater.
“The great thing about Joyce is that it’s an urban novel. As a suburban society, we have lost the whole idea of the city and what it is to live in a city,” he said.
Judging by the sun-blessed spectacle in Dublin yesterday, Joyce also gave us hot dogs thick with American mustard, al fresco Guinness breakfasts and Gavin Friday singing extracts from his work.
Such is the influence of Joyce, there were even boaters in McDonald’s. The fast food factory wasn’t there in his time but on a day when maps were melting in the heat, even the most conservative fan had to admit the air-conditioning was mighty.
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