Colbert Reads Ulysses
Friday, February 19th, 2010For a taping of his show at the Vancouver Olympics, Stephen Colbert stopped by the Irish House and invited a cheering throng to celebrate Irish culture:
[Fast forward to 1:55 to get to the reading]
Archive for February, 2010
Thanks to Bob Spoo
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
When we reached out to Bob Spoo back in September, we didn’t expect a reply any time soon. He’s a busy fella. Law professor at the University of Tulsa College of Law, practicing attorney, legal advisor to the James Joyce Quarterly, and author of scholarly law review articles, he’s a got a lot on his plate. So we were grateful to receive a near immediate reply from him expressing the same kind of bemused, excited interest that grips many of the visitors to our site. We were even happier when he followed up his response with a copy of his latest law review article, personally signed with a note of celebration for the advent of our little undertaking.(more…)
Happy Birthday Mr. Joyce!
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
James Joyce was famously superstitious about dates, and in particular his birthday. [Richard Ellmann helpfully includes a heading in the index of the biography: "Joyce, James: birthday important to" with no less than 11 separate entries.] When struggling with Finnegans Wake, he came to believe that it might be finished by a younger Irish writer named James Stephens, partly because Stephens shared the same birthday. Curiously, Ayn Rand and Farrah Fawcett also share February 2 as a birthday–what they might have done with the Wake, either individually or jointly, must be left to speculation.
As Joyce was finishing Ulysses, he became obsessed with the idea that the book had to be finished for his fortieth birthday–2/2/22. He put his printer, Maurice Darantiere, through hell to make sure that at least one or two copies would make it to him in time, and indeed, two were delivered to him at his birthday luncheon that day.
How should one celebrate the old man’s birthday (we like to call him the old man)? Write something in the morning. Read something in the afternoon. Drink a good bit of white wine, then some Jamesons. Read some Ulysses out loud, perhaps even from a webcomic! Dance a little spider dance. That’s what we’ll be doing…
