Simon McGuinness, Bloomsday's very first director, has alerted me to a piece in the Irish Times. It's an article about a recording made at Sylvia Beach's instigation in 1924 (and produced in 1926) to promote Ulysses. It struck me as particularly interesting because of the accent (mid-English Channel?), and also because of the power of the voice (I'm familiar with the older man's voice reading Finnegans Wake). This is a younger confident man. The dates are also interesting - the novel was still banned in US, and effectively then in UK. The passage chosen is quite tame, perhaps for that reason.
How is it that in the month before Bloomsday, these treasures seem to resurrect themselves to be auctioned?
Bloomsday has fond memories of writing Her Singtime Sung around a missing letter of the raunchy correspondence between Nora and Joyce (inventing a fictional letter to fill the gap), only to have such a letter surface for auction at Sotheby's in 2004, and sell to an anonymous bidder for much more than the deluxe first edition. We felt our play was quite prescient!
Bloomsday in Melbourne festival begins on 12 June at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.
How is it that in the month before Bloomsday, these treasures seem to resurrect themselves to be auctioned?
Bloomsday has fond memories of writing Her Singtime Sung around a missing letter of the raunchy correspondence between Nora and Joyce (inventing a fictional letter to fill the gap), only to have such a letter surface for auction at Sotheby's in 2004, and sell to an anonymous bidder for much more than the deluxe first edition. We felt our play was quite prescient!
Bloomsday in Melbourne festival begins on 12 June at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.
