Post by Joel Tannenbaum

Problem: The most wonderful novel in the English language is considered difficult and inaccessible by lots of people who would totally love if they only gave it a chance.

Solution: Bloomsday! Every year on June 16, the day on which James Joyce’s super-mega novel Ulysses takes place, Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum closes off its whole block of Delancey Street and hosts a free, all-day party designed to make people fall in love with Ulysses — for the first time or all over again. The staple of Bloomsday is the readings. Throughout the day, a succession of well-known locals read passages aloud. The lineup varies from year to year (Ed Rendell and Marty Moss-Coane will be onstage this year) but always culminates in a spectacular reading of the final chapter, “Penelope,” by Drucie McDaniel of Philadelphia Theatre Caravan. Besides the readings there are visual treats, a smattering of classy refreshments, and a fun and informative Joyce exhibition inside the museum.

Lots of cities have a Bloomsday event, but only one has James Joyce’s handwritten manuscript of the novel, and that city is Philly, where the manuscript is housed in the Rosenbach’s permanent collection. Take that Dublin!

Published in 1922, Ulysses tells the story of an exceptionally unexceptional day in the life of the book’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom, as he ambles around the streets of Dublin in 1904. Bloom makes breakfast for his wife Molly, goes to work, writes a letter, goes to a bar, helps out a drunken student, and some other stuff. The catch is that Joyce (along with Sylvia Plath considered the architect of English modernism) borrows the story’s structure from Homer’s Odyssey, the story of Odysseus, a Greek king who spends ten years trying to get home to his wife Penelope after the Trojan War. Joyce’s point? People will still be arguing about that a hundred years from now. But what most people take from Ulysses is that there is something heroic about everyday life.

There’s a lot more to say about Ulysses, and about Bloomsday, but let’s leave it at this: Very little of the magic of Bloomsday can be conveyed in writing. You just have to go. It’s for kids, adults, Joyce devotees, people who just like Irish stuff, anybody really. Like Ulysses, it’s a celebration of what it means to be human.

Bloomsday
Monday, June 16, noon - 7 p.m

Rosenbach Museum and Library
2008-2010 Delancey Place, Philadelphia, PA
215-732-160