Rejoycing

Today, as many of you know, is Bloomsday. On this day every year James Joyce aficionados everywhere re-enact the fictitious June 16 1904 walkabout through Dublin taken by Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s “Ulysses”. It is a glorious tradition, with just the right degree of nuttiness to hold our attention. Any such celebration needs to calibrate its insanity carefully, for as Saint-Gaudens once said: “As garlic is to food, insanity is to art.”

Which is why I am puzzled as to why all famous works of narrative fiction do not inspire similar celebrations. Where are the fans retracing Holden Caulfield’s journey around Manhattan? Why do we not see hordes of young women in little black dresses dining at Tiffany’s at 5am each morning? And why is nobody getting on a raft to follow the path laid down by Huckleberry Finn and his friend Jim?

Wouldn’t it be fun to recreate the journey to the heart of darkness that Joseph Conrad described so vividly — or at least its cinematic imitation by Francis Ford Coppola? And why aren’t football fans everywhere revisiting that Longest Yard? I am referring of course to the real version from 1974, not whatever the hell Adam Sandler thought he was doing in 2005.

Who wouldn’t want to travel from Paris to Marseille, across the Mediterranean Sea to Oran, Algeria, then across French Morocco to Casablanca, only to nobly give up one’s exit visa to Lisbon and the New World? I know I would. If you’re going to hand off the woman you love to some other guy just to show her how much you love her, Rick Blaine was way more practical about it than, say, Sidney Carlton.

If you see what I mean.

There are limits, to be sure. I can see why there is no annual day of re-enactment of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001, A Space Odyssey”. The expense alone would be astronomical. And I am really glad nobody is trying to re-enact the final scene of “Dr. Strangelove”. At least, I hope they’re not.

2 thoughts on “Rejoycing”

  1. We need to start our own tradition. Showing up at Tiffany’s at 5am in a black dress is a great idea! 😉

  2. Yes, it could be a movement. Although I suspect you would look a lot better in one of those little black dresses than I would. 😉

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