Happy Birthday Mr. Joyce!
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…
