Tag Archives: U.S. Cities

On Bloomsday, Dublin Comes to Many U.S. Cities or ‘Milly Bloom Also Has a Few Words to Say’

By Deborah A. Cecere

James Joyce stat­ue, Earl Street North, Dublin https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Joyce_statue,_Dublin_1998.jpg

What does the nov­el Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce (1882–1941) have to do with Amer­i­can Stud­ies? The answer is sim­ple: Blooms­day is an annu­al lit­er­ary fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ed in many U.S. cities, around the globe, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Dublin, the set­ting of the nov­el. The event is named for one of the novel’s pro­tag­o­nists, Leopold Bloom. The nov­el takes place on June 16, 1904, the day that James Joyce met his lat­er wife, Nora Bar­na­cle. Cel­e­bra­tion activ­i­ties include dress­ing up in peri­od cos­tumes, read­ings, the­ater per­for­mances, film screen­ings, and art exhibits asso­ci­at­ed with the nov­el and Joyce’s writ­ings and life. The live­li­ness of the fes­ti­vals tes­ti­fies to the fun of read­ing Ulysses, espe­cial­ly if it’s read aloud. The nov­el is often mis­tak­en­ly described as inscrutable for the aver­age read­er, but it is per­haps more accu­rate­ly described as sur­pris­ing­ly readable.

In hon­or of Blooms­day, I’ve imag­ined a tongue-in-cheek let­ter of con­do­lence from Mil­ly Bloom, now fifty-two, but at the time of the nov­el the fif­teen-year-old daugh­ter of Leopold Bloom and his wife, Mol­ly, to Mrs. Joyce (born Nora Bar­na­cle). The let­ter is dat­ed 1941, nine­teen years fol­low­ing the novel’s pub­li­ca­tion and thir­ty-sev­en years fol­low­ing that famous day in Dublin in 1904.

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