To celebrate, let’s take a look at Joyce’s drawing of Leopold Bloom:
And here is 1955 photograph of Marilyn Monroe in a bathing suit reading Ulysses:
Does it get any better than that? I think not. Here’s some background on the photo.
…celebrating the travels of Leopold Bloom through Dublin on June 16, 1904.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Bloomsday. I didn’t know that the manuscript of Ulysses resided in Philadelphia. Here is a page from the Circe episode:
Speaking of revisions, Joyce did his share. I remember seeing a page from the manuscript of Finnegan’s Wake at the British Library, and every single word on it was crossed out.
Here is a great reading of the final lines of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. In it, Joyce probably breaks every rule of good writing. And it doesn’t matter; fiction doesn’t get any better than this:
Richard Bowker 