Ulysses: a pre-Bloomsday conversation

Once again Bloomsday is almost upon us. What is it about Molly, Bloom and Stephen and the exhilarating but daunting multitudinousness of Ulysses that energises people all over the world to celebrate 16 June 1904 Dublin?

The allure could well be that Ulysses is great art, and great art intentionally discomfits conventional wisdom, jogs perceptual patterns, challenges ossified beliefs.

It might also be that Ulysses is fearfully complex and people like a challenge. Joyce himself admitted, “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.”

But it will certainly be that dedication yields rewards. “I don’t think the difficulties in reading it are so insurmountable,” Joyce also remarked. “Certainly any intelligent reader can read and understand it, if hereturns to the text again and again. He is setting out on an adventure with words.”

The American Irish Historical Society is delighted to invite members and guests to a pre-Bloomsday conversation featuring two leading authorities, Professor Emeritus Robert J. Seidman of New York and Professor Peter Kuch, Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Following a brief presentation of their respective research they will discuss some of the ways their respective books, Ulysses Annotated and Irish Divorce / Joyce’s Ulysses assist and stimulate the experience of reading this modern masterpiece.