Bloomsday Online: James Joyce, Ulysses and Dublin

Tomorrow, June 16, is “Bloomsday.” Celebrated since 1954, it honors James Joyce and his groundbreaking novel Ulysses, set in the Irish capital and modeled on the ancient Greek epic, the Odyssey. The events of the novel are set on a single day, June 16, in 1904. Lionized and reviled, the novel celebrates the aspirations and lust, dignity and foolishness, of its protagonists, Leopold Bloom and Molly, Stephen Dedalus and others.

For over 50 years Bloomsday has been celebrated with journeys to the locations in the novel, marathon readings of the book and even a road race. Now we can add the social web as both a “place” of celebration and an aid to that celebration.

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Watch and listen online.

Molly’s speech, the last lines of Ulysses, is read by Marcella Riordan.

iPad App.

Ulysses Seen, the graphic novel interpretation of Ulysses on Web and iPad; formerly banned by Apple!

Cross Dublin without passing a pub.

Rory McCann decided to take a line from Ulysses as a challenge: “(A) good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub.” He created a map that does just that. Using OpenStreetMap, he wrote a Python script to parse the data for usable routes. He also used some common sense, trial-and-error and reader input. (His original route passed two pubs until helpful souls pointed out the mistake.)

Radio Bloomsday

WBAI, Pacifica Radio in NYC, will be broadcasting readings of the novel from 7:00 pm Eastern Time until 2:00 am the next morning. Readers include Alec Baldwin, Garrison Keillor, John Lithgow, Bob Odenkirk, Wallace Shawn, Jerry Stiller, Kate Valk, Caraid O’Brien and more. You can listen on the radio, online or via streaming audio.

Tweet the book.

More accurately, receive and engage it via @11ysses, the Twitter account where the entire book will be tweeted tomorrow, at the rate of 25 messages per hour for 24 hours.

Read the book.

You can get Ulysses in pretty much any format and for any reader. One option is particularly appealing: the Project Gutenberg version. It’s free. That’s key. You can download it in ePub, Kindle, Plucker, HTML, QiOO and other formats. But in addition to that, you can scan a QR code and your phone will automatically download the novel. Also, Project Gutenberg is the world’s oldest digital library. It was started in 1971 and it’s always run on the passion of volunteers.

Thanks to Dermot McNally for pointing out the Crossing Dublin project to me on Twitter.

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