Happy Bloomsday everybody. Today, 16 June, is the day on which the events of James Joyce’s epic novel, Ulysses, is set and the anniversary is celebrated every year by fans, scholars and people who simply want to look clever.
Millions of people either cite the tome as the greatest piece of literature ever written, or as the biggest load of pretentious drivel: so complicated that you can’t get past page 46 before giving up.
Hardcore devotees to the 1922 work based on Homer’s Odyssey, will even follow the route taken by its central character, Leopold Bloom, through Dublin from a Martello Tower on the coast via a funeral and a selection of pubs and bars and the red light district of this fair city. Many fail to make it to the end – and the same can be said of a great many who have tried to read it.
But those who have? Well, it’s like the old joke, originally about vegetarians.
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