Happy Bloomsday!

105 years ago, James Joyce received the first handjob he didn’t have to pay for afterwards…go Nora!!

In love, the entirety of his masterpiece Ulysses takes place on June 16, just like their first date. I first learned about Ulysses in high school. I wanted to write my final AP English paper on it, because like so many bookwormish girls, I had developed a fascination with Ireland, and with ancient Greece. The teacher actually laughed at me, for an instant. Then he walked me back to the shelf I had found it on, handed me Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to write my paper on, and told me to hold off on Ulysses until college where I could take a whole class just on that one book. So I did. I’ve read it twice, first when I was studying abroad in Ireland, and later for a grad school course in modernist lit.

oh, yeah, and jingle jangle:

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyrining imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid! And gold flushed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the
Gold pinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castille.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores.
Peep! Who’s in the … peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long, and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose! Notes chirruping answer. Castille. The morn is breaking.
Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
Coin rang. Clock clacked.
Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!
Jingle. Bloo.
Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The typanum.
A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.

and then, this bit:

She laughed:
—O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots?
With sadness.
Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear.

The Sirens chapter takes place at 3pm, so I’ve automated this entry to publish at that time; it is absolutely my favorite bit of Ulysses — the way the language moves so effortlessly without (reference to) meaning — you just know it was his funnest, favorite part to write.