#bloomsday 2026

[sivavakkiyar]

A Bloomsday tradition: once upon a time, a young man (wait, have you heard this one before?—) met Mr. James Joyce on the streets of Paris, and he excitedly asked: “May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?”

To which Mr. Germ’s Choice responded: “You’d better not—it did other things, too.”

[tomblesabuckets]

it’s nice that James Joyce has tricked all of us into celebrating the anniversary of his future wife jerking him off. Happy bloomsday!

[sivavakkiyar]

[sivavakkiyar]

What opera resembles a railway line? The Rose of Castille. (“Rows of cast steel”, get it, ha ha)

[sivavakkiyar]

In chapter 1 of portrait, when he’s about seven or eight years old i think, there’s a famous scene where Dedalus is caned at school in front of all his classmates (my mother went to catholic school in the 50’s; when she read that part in portrait she cried). Those are the words that that prefect used: “I see it in your face, lazy idle little schemer.” At 22 in Ulysses the simple phrase “I see it in your face” is enough to bring Dedalus back to that.

I get that this is probably a weird way to say ‘yeah you should totally read Dubliners and Portrait first cuz you get stuff like this out of Ulysses’.

Otoh for Joyce it’s not just the phrase, it’s the context: Dedalus is being encouraged here, but encouraged in order to put him to rightwing nationalist work by two old bigots who are his bosses—something that he finds similar, and humiliating.

[sivavakkiyar]

[yt]

[tomblesabuckets]

happy bloomsday to all the pretentious losers out there! You should take this as an opportunity to read a piece on maybe the most fascinating person on Earth:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/magazine/the-strange-case-of-the-missing-joyce-scholar.html