Bloomsday—the annual international holiday that celebrates all things relating to James Joyce—is just around the corner.
And to mark the occasion, stately, plump Buck Mulligan
(who kicks off Joyce’s great novel Ulysses ) has just been converted to 2-D bar codes.
This transformation was wrought by the Books2Barcodes website, which breaks classics like Alice in Wonderland and Huckleberry Finn into 800-character fragments, then turns them into bar codes you can scan and read on suitably equipped mobile devices.
It’s the sort of totally pointless/oddly amusing/ultimately affecting effort that Joyce’s countryman Samuel Beckett would have appreciated. (We’re thinking, in particular, of the famous “sucking stones” sequence in Beckett’s Molloy, and hereby nominate that novel for inclusion in Books2Barcodes’ series.)
But we suspect that Joyce, too, would have been honored and amused.
1 comment:
RE-JOYCE! BLOOM IN JUNE!
The international literary shindig Bloomsday is on again this June, Thursday June 16, at the Thirsty Dog, Karangahape Rd, Auckland, 7.30pm.
Bloomsday is the celebration of James Joyce’s comic masterpiece Ulysses.
Joyce’s 300,000 word novel follows Dublin Jew Leopold Bloom as he wanders round his city on one day and one night, June 16, 1904, before finally returning to his faithless wife Molly. It’s a modern mock-parallel of the epic ancient Greek saga of The Odyssey, where sturdy Ulysses fights peril on sea and land, trying to make his way back from Troy to his wife Penelope.
Every June 16 global devotees gather, drink and re-Joyce.
Here in New Zealand Bloomsday has been celebrated for the past ten years in a unique Hibernian-Hebrew cabaret featuring Linn Lorkin and the Jews Brothers Band, with Dubliner Brian Keegan reading from Ulysses.
The cabaret transports its audience deftly and movingly through Ulysses by way of song, commentary and adapted scenes.
On this year’s bill is added guest tenor and social democrat Chris Trotter, mezzo soprano Yuko Takahashi, Unite Union organiser and street preacher “Irish Joe” Carolan, a barbershop quartet, and there’s bound to be some stage or screen star roped in for the night.
New York’s Hershal Herscher, accordionist extraordinaire, is Leopold Bloom, melancholic cuckold.
“Leopold Bloom is your basic schlemiel,” explains Hershal.
“He’s a type I really understand. For example, the world’s most famous schlemiel is Woody Allen, and people always tell me I remind them of him and that I talk just like him. Actually I do have the same specific Brooklyn accent as Woody. We come from the same neighbourhood. In fact, I was the one that used to beat him up.”
The high point for Hershal is the appearance of Bella Cohen, transvestite dominatrix.
“I’m on my knees and this six-foot bearded transvestite dominatrix straight out of K Rd forces me to lace up her very long leather boots. I’m still holding my accordion and she is schlepping me all around the floor.”
As you can imagine, given horrors like this, the show is packed to the rafters.
Thirsty Dog, Karangahape Rd, Thursday June 16, 7.30pm.
Post a Comment