An interview with all four members of Throwaway Horse will air this evening on NPR’s “All Things Considered”. Thanks to WHYY Philadelphia’s Joel Rose for a great set of questions, and we’ll look forward to hearing the piece along with you!
Ulysses “Seen” has inspired me to write something about my first ever encounter with “The Book.” For me, it was the right book at the right time. I can’t put it any more perfectly than that. I was finally starting to feel at home in college, and when I ran into my professor on the ferry, he told me he was teaching a class the next semester that would read it. “I only do this once in a decade, so it’s like Haley’s Comet: if you want to see it in your lifetime, it’s gotta be now.” I’m paraphrasing. Anyway, I not only took the course, I forced all my friends to take it. I lost a lot of friends that semester!
I remember there being a lot of freaky-seeming coincidences over the course of our reading it. The one that sticks with me is when we had a long, deep discussion of the significance of keys sparked by the Alexander Keyes ad Bloom is designing, and a student from an earlier class entered the room looking for his lost keys. We all laughed and freaked out; some of us actually screamed. Someone accused our prof of setting it up. The student was stunned. Then there was the time we were approximating how much money Stephen spent over the course of the day & someone out in the quad started playing Pink Floyd’s “Money” loud enough for us to hear. I know there were more, but I can’t remember them (jeez, it’s 22 years ago now!).
A huge percentage of the book flew over my head, and a lot of it still does, all these years and 6 full reads later. I really felt the characters though, and the verbal pyrotechnics are completely amazing. Not until my fourth read through it did I begin to comprehend the book as a unified whole, rather than a series of episodes. There are more priceless moments in it than I can count.
Two years ago I assembled a group of high school students to read the book aloud every week. I’ve kept my notes on those crazy meetings – a gazillion in-jokes resulted – & someday I’ll write something about that. Maybe next year 
You can read Stevie D’Arbanville’s blog here.
Annually, lovers of Joyce’s Ulysses read, revisit, and celebrate the novel on its central day (June 16) on a pseudo-holiday we call “Bloomsday.” Essentially, we make a “feast day” of this canonical work of literature.
But how problematic is it that we make a feast of a work of Irish literature, bearing in mind that Irish history bears the marks of famine maybe more so than feasting?
This year, The Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia (which holds the original, handwritten manuscript of Ulysses) asks this very question. Phrased another way: Why does Ulysses, in its very earthiness, provide its readers with such literary sustenance in the face of an Irish history that is literally starving?
Ironically, the answer may be this: More impressive than the enviable, centuries-long agricultural products of Ireland (wool, potatoes, herbs, and liquor, to name a few), there is Ireland’s greatest product and most viable export: the printed word. Literature (Ulysses being an ideal example) is the premium export of this island nation.
Accordingly, the Rosenbach Museum and Library’s Bloomsday exhibit this year is titled “A Taste for Ulysses” and celebrates the centrality of food, feasting, and fine (and unfine) dining in Joyce’s most famous novel.
“Stately, plump”: the first line of Ulysses
by M. Thomas Gammarino
(author of the novel BIG IN JAPAN: A GHOST STORY)
First a caveat:
Ulysses is my favorite novel. I’d just as soon it be something else—I dislike bandwagons as much as the next serious reader—but Ulysses, which routinely tops the best-novel-ever lists, happens to be the one book which has most provoked and inspired me, and it’s one of very few novels I intend to reread regularly until I die. By way of evidence, I’ll cite the pilgrimage I made a few years back to the Martello Tower so that I could better feel the first chapter. And I might mention also that my own first novel, Big in Japan, pays homage to Ulysses throughout.
Happy Bloomsday to all, and welcome to all of our new readers! We’ve had quite a bit going on in the last week, and we’ll have a lot going on today, as well. Rob will be interviewed on air on NPR’s All Things Considered (U.S.) and Newstalk 106-108 FM (Ireland), and we’ll have stories in the Washington Post, The Guardian, and a whole host of other places.
Rob will be at Bloomsday on Broadway in New York, and the rest of us will be at the Rosenbach Museum and Library’s Bloomsday celebration in Philadelphia, where Mike will be reading from “Sirens”. If you’re in either of those areas, come on out and join in the fun.
We will be running a series of posts all day, beginning with a great piece from M. Thomas Gammarino, author of BIG IN JAPAN: A GHOST STORY on the first line of ULYSSES, and we’ll be tweeting (in varying states of sobriety) from both New York and Philadelphia.
Thanks to everyone for reading, and enjoy the day!
