File this under why it's better to be living in Berkeley than in Akron [Kevan's from Akron.] ... My front door is just steps off Telegraph Avenue, where I can get my body pierced, buy flowers, visit a hipster music store, have an espresso and eat falafel without ever leaving the intersection. Just two windows around the corner is Moe's bookstore, which hosted a 13-hour reading of Ulysses today.

I dropped in near the end (10th hour) expecting them to at least be at Nighttown... they were just ending the chapter before Sirens (my edition didn't have the titles) [That'd be Wandering Rocks.]. They were seated in a circle just taking turns at breaks in the text. I wasn't there to read aloud, more out of curiosity to see what it would be like.

I know what a public celebration of music looks like (and appropriately enough, the radio station at the coffeeshop today was playing Carmina Burana); and I sort of get what a public celebration of art looks like (I haven't been to an official art exhibition but I think I get it). I was just curious to see what a celebration of literature would look, would feel like... Bloomsday being the perfect occasion.

Aside from just being funny -- Ulysses is even funnier aloud -- I did take something else away from it.

When I got to the bookstore there was a girl in a wheelchair at the top of the circle... from my vantage point I could only see ULYSSES spread-eagled in front of her face. It was soon her turn to read (wasn't even sure if she would); I looked ahead at the passage - it was, I think, mainly a list of the attendees at Dignam's funeral or something similar - certainly not a coveted passage at all. Then I heard an energetic, wry voice emerge from behind the book, almost perfectly on meter. This girl was not only managing this torrent of names and titles, but also having quite a bit of fun with it -- her voice assuming an air of snobbery (think over-refined British) while skipping through Joyce's excess of pretense.

Listening to her really made my day because you heard someone who truly loved this book... when she did put the book down it was clear she had muscular dystrophy or something related... I was absolutely stunned by her command of the prose... perhaps someone who struggles with everyday speech just bounding through Joyce like she'd read it aloud a hundred times.

For all the pooh-poohing about inaccessibility and such, seeing that proven wrong was meaningful. I certainly never thought I'd see Ulysses as an example of literature as democracy, of its equalizing power - to be enjoyed by anyone who cares to pick up a book and read. It was also nice to see art's ability to give pleasure so openly manifest - it does have quite the reach.