A few stray notes and observations from last night’s Bloomsday reading, which I blogged about in a more official capacity at the site linked below:
– I freely admitted to everyone I spoke to that I’ve never read the damn thing. This made for some fun–in a room full of devotees and proselytizers, I was a cause! But the best argument on the book’s behalf were the readings themselves, some of them rip-roaringly funny.
– Because of my background and interests, I tend to think of Ulysses first as a monument of literary modernism and second as one of Irish literature. Last night went some way toward changing this habit, especially hearing the wonderful performances of Charles Sheehan and Rory Childers.
– My favorite sort of enthusiast is an enthusiast with a cocktail.
– What a view! Not only in the obvious ways–the 22-story birds-eye on Millennium Park, the Art Institute, Buckingham Fountain et al.–but also the cool sights at eye-level. To the south was the sign on D.H. Burnham’s Santa Fe Building, the letters large as life. The sculpted lion heads decorating whatever building sits to the north seemed close enough to pat, and more ferocious than you could know from any other perspective.