June 17th, 2012
UD in today’s Washington Post

When Soltan finished delivering Molly Bloom’s orgasmic finale in the ambassador’s formal living room — “His heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes” — Collins stepped up the microphone and said, “Yes, indeed!” He noted that “Ulysses” had never been banned in Ireland.

An account of Bloomsday at the embassy features your blogger.

As I say in the post below, I’m not sure the ambassador’s “Yes, indeed!” was unreservedly thrilled …

June 17th, 2012
UD does Molly.

This Bloomsday started like all of them – on the metro.

Hours before I’d been at the beach, and the sky was clear blue and the water windy and gray. I didn’t want to leave, of course, and I thought about a quiet life always at the shore.

***********************

I walked north from Dupont Circle up Connecticut Avenue, then climbed the hilly street of fine houses and clever little urban landscapes to the Irish Embassy. It was warm, but not too warm, and UD was nervous, but not too nervous, because before she left home she glugged some Gdansk Gold-Wasser Zlota Woda.

UD seldom drinks, but when she does, she’s amazed at how well it works.

***********************

The ambassador greeted me at the door. “You’re one of our readers!” he said.

“Yes. I’m your Molly Bloom.”

I said I’d worried a bit about the soliloquy’s obscenity. “My husband said there might be clergy in the audience.”

“Oh yes! There will certainly be clergy… I must say, I was listening to some actors practicing the Molly Bloom section earlier today and I was rather… uh… ”

“Well, I’ve chosen a series of short passages and nothing too over the top.”

*********************************

Four men preceded UD, reading a bit from various earlier chapters. It was a very full room, everyone standing and holding drinks. Some guests wore period costumes. UD spotted two priests.

The readers stood in front of a large fireplace; nearby windows gave out on a view of lawns and hydrangeas.

The ambassador stood just to UD‘s left — inches away. And as UD read Molly’s endless complaints about her husband (could have been a prima donna only I married him… O but then what am I going to do about him though…), she found herself using the ambassador as a stage prop, making him her Bloom. She cocked a finger in his direction with each complaint.

This certainly amused the crowd. I think it amused the ambassador, but I’m not sure.

****************************

I like performing Molly. After many years reading her thoughts, I think I am in love with her. Bloom and Stephen are Mr and Mr Gloomy Gus; Molly perks things up considerably with her unstoppable erotic drive.

The danger in reading Molly is melodrama. Overdoing it. The temptation is to be vulgar – either sexually or sentimentally. Molly is explicit, but she’s not out there.

I think what’s most striking about her – especially at the famous conclusion of the soliloquy – is her happy relationship to her own past. Her memories of her sexual power excite her, and indeed Molly gets the last word in the novel not only because she insists on living a full emotional, aesthetic, and erotic life, but also because she loves what she has been, cherishes her exotic past, and, in recalling it, delights and renews herself. At the end of Ulysses, Molly is ready for another day.

June 16th, 2012
Today is Bloomsday.

If you’re finally in the mood, here are UD‘s recent Bloomsday posts.

She and Mr UD are packing up to go back to Washington for UD‘s Bloomsday gigs at the Irish Embassy and the Cosmos Club.

June 10th, 2012
Getting Sentimental…

… in my latest Inside Higher Ed post.

Read it here.

June 6th, 2012
Part Two of UD’s Bloomsday Series…

… is now up at Inside Higher Education.

June 3rd, 2012
My Second Bloomsday Post…

… will appear at Inside Higher Ed tonight.

May 22nd, 2012
Feel free to read UD’s thoughts as she…

… revs up for her Bloomsday readings. Here.

May 21st, 2012
A Bloomsday Website

Bloomsday Central, part of the Rosenbach Library website, lists details of Bloomsday (June 16) celebrations all over the world. It doesn’t yet list Washington’s, in which UD will perform, both at the Irish Embassy and at the Cosmos Club.

UD will read, at the Club, from the end of the Ithaca chapter from Joyce’s Ulysses, when after a long day Leopold Bloom finally falls asleep next to his wife, Molly. UD loves the way, as Bloom loses consciousness, the text itself drops off.

He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.

The visible signs of postsatisfaction?

A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.

What followed this silent action?

Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excitation, catechetical interrogation.

With what modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation?

Negative: he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence between Martha Clifford and Henry Flower, the public altercation at, in and in the vicinity of the licensed premises of Bernard Kiernan and Co, Limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, the erotic provocation and response thereto caused by the exhibitionism of Gertrude (Gerty), surname unknown. Positive: he included mention of a performance by Mrs Bandman Palmer of Leah at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street, an invitation to supper at Wynn’s (Murphy’s) Hotel, 35, 36, and 37 Lower Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous pornographical tendency entitled Sweets of Sin, anonymous, author a gentleman of fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely calculated movement in the course of postcenal gymnastic display, the victim (since completely recovered) being Stephen Dedalus, professor and author, eldest surviving son of Simon Dedalus, of no fixed occupation, an aeronautical feat executed by him (narrator) in the presence of a witness, the professor and author aforesaid, with promptitude of decision and gymnastic flexibility.

Was the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications?

Absolutely.

Which event or person emerged as the salient point of his narration?

Stephen Dedalus, professor and author.

What limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal rights were perceived by listener and narrator concerning themselves during the course of this intermittent and increasingly more laconic narration?

By the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage had been celebrated 1 calendar month after the 18th anniversary of her birth (8 September 1870), viz. 8 October, and consummated on the same date with female issue born 15 June 1889, having been anticipatorily consummated on the 10 September of the same year and complete carnal intercourse, with ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ, having last taken place 5 weeks previous, viz. 27 November 1893, to the birth on 29 December 1893 of second (and only male) issue, deceased 9 January 1894, aged 11 days, there remained a period of 10 years, 5 months and 18 days during which carnal intercourse had been incomplete, without ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ. By the narrator a limitation of activity, mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete mental intercourse between himself and the listener had not taken place since the consummation of puberty, indicated by catamenic hemorrhage, of the female issue of narrator and listener, 15 September 1903, there remained a period of 9 months and 1 day during which in consequence of a preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension between the consummated females (listener and issue), complete corporal liberty of action had been circumscribed.

How?

By various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the masculine destination whither, the place where, the time at which, the duration for which, the object with which in the case of temporary absences, projected or effected.

What moved visibly above the listener’s and the narrator’s invisible thoughts?

The upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series of concentric circles of varying gradations of light and shadow.

In what directions did listener and narrator lie?

Listener, S. E. by E.; Narrator, N. W. by W.: on the 53rd parallel of latitude, N. and 6th meridian of longitude, W.: at an angle of 45ø to the terrestrial equator.

In what state of rest or motion?

At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being each and both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by the proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of neverchanging space.

In what posture?

Listener: reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, right leg extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the attitude of Gea-Tellus, fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed. Narrator: reclined laterally, left, with right and left legs flexed, the indexfinger and thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge of the nose, in the attitude depicted on a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn, the childman weary, the manchild in the womb.

Womb? Weary?

He rests. He has travelled.

With?

Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.

When?

Going to a dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc’s auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler.

Where?

At the embassy, UD will get about five minutes to read excerpts she’ll select from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. She is grazing that grassy consciousness now, seeking outcrops.

May 8th, 2012
UD has been asked to read from Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy…

… at the Irish Embassy this Bloomsday (June 16) at 6 PM.

A lesser man might tremble at the thought of throbbing out those orgasmic yeses in front of H.E. Ambassador Michael Collins, but not UD! No sir! Lemme at him!

January 2nd, 2012
Freedom of …

Joyce.

November 6th, 2011
The Warren Commission Report, Don DeLillo wrote in his novel …

Libra, is “the megaton novel James Joyce would have written if he’d moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred.”

But Joyce is more likely to have written the upcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The DSM’s predecessor, four, has a thousand pages, and we may be sure that five will have many more than that. It’s a megaton psychotropic prescription machine. As Allen Frances, editor of earlier, more sane, DSMs, writes, “DSM-5 is suggesting many new and untested diagnoses and also markedly reduced thresholds for old ones.”

Frances offers an example:

‘Attenuated psychosis syndrome’ will have a ridiculously high false positive rate ( 80-90%), no effective treatment, would promote unnecessary exposure to harmful antipsychotics, and would cause needless worry and stigma. Since studies prove conclusively that the symptoms are so very rarely predictive of psychosis, why in the world would DSM-5 give someone the stigmatizing and absurdly misleading label ‘attenuated psychosis syndrome’ and open the door to inappropriate antipsychotic use? Recognizing all these risks, a large portion of schizophrenia and prodromal researchers are sensibly opposed to the inclusion of ‘attenuated psychosis syndrome’ in DSM-5. But unaccountably, the work group stubbornly clings to its proposal and, without the petition, there is a good chance it may sneak into DSM-5.

In great part, the DSM-5 is a work of the imagination. Like all ambitious novels, it exhibits enormous scope and imaginative energy. Told from the point of view of a detached omniscient narrator, it chronicles the plummeting of populations into pre-psychosis, and their ultimate rescue by “the number one revenue producer of all classes of drugs,” anti-psychotics. Its pages evoke a les misérables America, massively prodromal, holding out its butyrophenone-bowl on every street corner.

June 16th, 2011
Bloomsday at the Beach

UD, who usually takes part in Washington’s Bloomsday reading, is this year at Rehoboth Beach.

The Irish beach Stephen Dedalus walks:

The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath. He coasted them, walking warily. A porter-bottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.

Sentences and phrases from this chapter that UD loves:

Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air.

**************************

Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field…. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think?

**************************

February 25th, 2011
Morrissey is in Dublin…

…and staying, or so they say, at The Clarence Hotel.

In a couple of weeks, UD and her Morrissey-mad sister will be at the same hotel for a few nights, on their way to Galway to see La Kid.

The hotel’s right on the Liffey, where, a few days ago, the city’s Anna Livia statue was floated down that river on its way to Croppy Acre park.

“We floated her down the Liffey. We could have brought her in a truck but given all the circumstances the sculptor made the suggestion in a slightly offhand manner,” said [the Dublin parks superintendent.] This small idea turned into a reality when the organisers got in touch with Ringsend Boat Club, who were more than happy to bring Anna Livia to her new home. “We brought her down the river at lunchtime, so that people were able to see her. We thought it was appropriate that on her last journey she would float down the middle of the city. It gave it a sense of occasion.”

Here’s what UD might have seen (enlarge the picture) from the balcony of The Clarence if she’d been staying there this week. Lord, that would’ve been lovely.

January 24th, 2011
The great Irish writers as earners.

[Q.] If you had to rank the great Irish writers as earners, who would be in your top five?

[A.] Well, Joyce is obviously first and foremost. He’s huge on the international market and has held his value very well. Second, Wilde. We’ve got a few signed first editions of his. Third, Yeats. Fourth, Beckett. He also holds his value on the international market but unless it’s a signed Waiting for Godot, not at the same level. Finally, of course, Seamus Heaney.

January 23rd, 2011
“Throughout his life, Joyce considered his birthday to be an auspicious day, and he often contrived to make it …

particularly special.”

This year a group of Washington DC Joyceans is contriving to make it special by doing another reading (they did one on Bloomsday, natch).

The James Joyce Birthday Party, on Wednesday, February 2, 2011, takes place at 5:00 PM, upstairs at Guapo’s Restaurant at 4515 Wisconsin Avenue, NW.

UD will be reading excerpts from Proteus, Sirens, and Penelope.

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