James Joyce

Today is the 16th of June, Bloomsday, the day that James Joyce chose to set his great novel Ulysses and also the day that he met his wife, Nora Barnacle, for the first time. It’s worth celebrating if you’re a Joycian.

I’ve been going through some of my notes today. I have a vague recollection that Ray mentioned James Joyce in one of his letters but I can’t find it. He read Eliot whose poetry makes an appearance in The Long Goodbye and he probably read Ulysses too. It is the sort of book that would have amused him. But he had complicated views on what he saw as literature, often arguing in his letters that the literary establishment (in America at least) had a very narrow view on what constituted a literary novel so its perfectly possible that Ulysses did not appeal.

Still, Bloomsday is worth celebrating and I will be doing so with a Gorganzola sanwich, as Leopold Bloom did in the novel.