It’s Bloomsday, the day celebrating all things Joycean
It’s June 16, Bloomsday—the day Irish modernist author James Joyce went on his first date with Nora Barnacle, later his wife—she’d never leave him, predicted his father–and the day in 1904 on which the “action” of his masterpiece, Ulysses, unfolds. To commemorate, people the world over, but particularly in Dublin, get together, drink alcohol, and eat heavy breakfasts, with much offal. Also today, for the third year in a row, Twitterers Ian Bogost, a Georgia Tech professor, and a friend, Ian McCarthy, have adapted a chapter of the book to suit the social networking site’s 140-character-per-post format. But why not just read this passage, from Ulysses’s Cyclops chapter, and call it a day: “Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr. Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs. Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs. Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.”