It’s Bloomsday again and it’s raining and dreary, like most of the rest of June. It seems we are granted no summer this year and it will rain from January through December.
I’ve been paging through Ulysses to find some gobbet to put up here, and instead of finding a sparkling paragraph, I’ve taken a dip. It’s been two years since I read it, but I don’t seem to remember anything but flashes: Leopold Bloom reading on his toilet, one of them (is it Dedalus?) at the beach gazing at the beautiful girl with the ruined leg, and the last few pages, the ecstasy of Molly Bloom. It was all a big wash of words for me, and instead of slowing down, as you should do when your brain is tired, I sped up. I saw the book as this wall, this gauntlet – a challenge and a test of will-power (much like how I see Infinite Jest.) But this does the book an injustice as a work of art. It may be challenging, but it can’t be seen as a measure of capability. It is first and foremost an experience.
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