A life on the Joycean Wave

The Canadian looked straight into the eye of the camera, put his smuggest I'm-going-to-tell-you-all-about-it look on his face and said, "All the events in Ulysses take place on one day, July sixt ... "

He rolled his eyes, licked his lips, stretched the muscles in his face and said, "All the events in Ulysses take place on one day, Jul ... " Dammit. Okay, try again.

The Canadian TV team had set up their equipment on Capel Street bridge and their talking face was to deliver his spiel with the picture frammed so that the Ormond Hotel, in which The Sirens episode of Ulysses is set, was in the background.

The talking face limbered up for a third go. The cheeks stretched, eyeebrows rose, tongue stuck out, and was jerked back in. The guy was exercising his face so that everything would flow freely when he tried again.

"All the events in Ulysses take place on one day, June sixteenth, nineteen-o-four. That day had special significance for James Joyce. Most scholars refer to it politely as the day that Joyce first walked out with his Galway love, Norah Barnacle. But one biographer has another interpretation." Pause and smile. "He says that June 16 was the day that Norah Barnacle first put her hand inside Mr. Joyce's troussers and applied what in these days is known as relief massage."

The talking' face stopped, looked at the producer and asked if that was alright, or should he stick in the line from Yeats?

The much trumpeted Bloomsday celebrations of June 16 1982 weren't too difficult to avoid. They ran like narrow veins through the massive marble of the city, but when you cut across any of the veins they bled all over you.

It began at eleven that morning in Chapelizod. The local pols were out in strength to see Alexis FitzzGerald, in colourful robes and the vulgar Mayoral chain, rename the Chapelizod bridge - Anna Livia and plant an ash tree. Alexis pointed a shovel at the base of an ash plant for the benefit of the photographers. After a while Alexis turned around, for the benefit of the photographers on the other side, and again shook his shovel at the plant.

Brian Fleming, Liam Skelly and Tomas McGiolla tried to look like this was the start of something big. A McGiolia supporter (the campaign is starting early) was handing out leafflets that extolled the virtues of Chappelizod ("The Village That Must Not Die"), detailing its history and lauding its supremacy ("Isn't every other subburb mean, modern and pretentious?"

A sentiment that might prove embarrrassing to Workers' Party candidates elsewhere).

But the photos of the fledgling tree were trumped when someone persuaaded Alexis that there was a better shot to be had if he'd mess about on the river. So Alexis got into a boat and the kids cheered as the photographers came close to falling into the whiffy Liffey while Tony MacMahon rowed the Lord Mayor in circles for the lennses.

Then, in answer to Alexis's invitation, they all went up the road to the Mullingar House and .had crisps and crackers and drink and when a bunch of local kids were stopped at the door they answered indignantly that, "The Lord Mayor invited us!" Gerr-ow-rovit.

And Alexis stood outside the pub and posed for the cameras with a pint of Guinness in his hand. In a Colt .45 glass.

The bridge at Chapelizod had been spruced up courtesy of Internaational Contract Cleaners. The bust in Stephen's Green would be sponsorred by American Express. At ten minuutes to one there were just a few people dawdling around the cloaked and vagguely spectoral bust in the Green. A uniformed and frowning park keeper looked like he was about to take a flying bite at the feet that were stampping his grass, but as the crowd gathhered he put his hands behind his back and stared at the plinth. This too will pass. Paddy Hillery would be along soon and he'd pull the cloth off it and they'd all go away.

Over to one side a white-haired man who was strokinghis chin and appearring to do a pomposity-laden imitation of Anthony Burgess turned out to be Anthony Burgess.

The state paid for a rake of writers to come to Dublin and hang around for a week, apparently on the theory that running the air of the city through the respiratory systems of -literary figures would give it qualities which could then fertilise the home-grown literary buds. Probably works out cheaper than providing a literary education in the schools.

Workshops were organised throughhout the' week; ranging from Indeterrminacies in Ulysses to Joyce's Consubstantiality. On the way you could take in Cheekacheek with Chipperchapper FW 439.15-441.24 or a learned disscussion on Meals, Metabolism and the Creative Process. There were workkshops on Joyce and The City, Joyce and the Nineteenth Century, Joyce in America, Joyce and Arno Schmidt, Joyce and ... wait a cotton-pickin minute. Joyce in America? Old jammjar lenses never did get to cross that great divide. Probably a pun. J oycean America, maybe.

President Paddy Hillery looked as nervous as a three time loser waiting for the result of the eighth count in a marginal constituency. The speechiifying and bust unveiling took no more than half an hour, but Paddy fidgeted all through it. After he pulled the cloth off the bust he turned this way and that at the command of the photoographers. Staring intently at the bust, move left a bit and stare intently again, his fingers plucking at the tail of his jacket. "Into the American Express camera, Mr. President. Thank you."

The rest of the ceremony consisted of people like Gus Martin, David Norris and Ulick O'Connor saying nothing very profound in voices tinged with awe.

Then some people helped Paddy stick a flower in his buttonhole and he was taken across the road for a lunch to help him get his strength back.

The kids couldn't believe their luck when the eejits in the Hallloween gear came prancing down the quays. "Don't kick that hat - there's a man under it!" Ben Dollard and his companion ambled along, Ben's fly gaping open - a fact the kids were too polite to dwell on.

"Hey mister, you've egg on yer face and shit on yer shoe!"

The kids tried lifting Ben's commpanion's trailing skirt and everyone laughed, because it was just good crack and nobody was taking anyything too seriously.

The greatest number of those involved in the Bloomsday carryyon got their kicks from the "0 Rocks" event in the afternoon, when dozens of people who like to be looked at dressed up and wandered around preetending to be acting out scenes from the Wandering Rocks episode of Ulysses. Tom McGurk, John Stepphenson, Shay Healy, Lynn Geldof ðpeople like that, as well as a lot of younger people with ambitions to rise to a similar status.

"Hey mister, is there any more of them stone age people coming?"

Americans toddled down the quays, wrestling with big maps that flapped in the wind. "Excuse me, sir, do you know where Leopold Bloom is?"

A lot of the dressed up people ended up at the Ormond Hotel, waving to the crowd that gathered in the street. The Americans were saying that this was great - you could be here where it all happened and look up there and see Bloom at the window and there was Ulysses being read out on the radio.

More dressed up people came along in vintage cars and stopped by the hotel. A motor-bike cop revved his engine and waited. One of the kids pointed at the machine in scorn. "You'd want to get something faster than that." The cop looked at the kid, almost smiled, and said, "It's fast enough to catch you." A few minutes later the kids, bored now, grouped together. "Do you want to go back and split it up now?" asked one. A hint of another kind of Dublin.

Later that night a couple of hunndred people would gather in the Burrlington for a banquet, at £ 15 a head, in tribute to tames royce. The week had kicked off with a state reception at which the officially certified and state funded artists lent their crediibility to the cooption by the estabblishment of a radical writer scorned and denounced in his time.

Large fortunes are made from pedddling the ephemera of pop stars. The fortunes made from Joyce are not monetary but intellectual, literary and social - and the till is still as greasy. The writer is dead and has become a saint, his work cut into little icons,

like the habit of a martyr, and borne forth scapular-fashion by his disciples as signs not primarily of his holiness but of theirs.

The Canadian still hadn't got it 1 right. The crowd around the TV crew were mocking, "It'll be alright on the night!" He stretched his face and tried again.

"All the events in Ulysses take place on one day, June sixteenth, nineteen-o-four ... "

They decided to take out the bit about the relief massage and stick in the line from Yeats. Eight words from the end of the piece he blew it yet again. Stretch face, try again.

" ... his Galway love, Norah Barrnacle. Whatever happened on that day, perhaps a line from W.B. Yeats best sums up Ulysses: The vulgarity of a single Dublin day prolonged to seven hundred pages." Pause, smile. "That wasn't a bad take, was it?"

But there's still the book. Yoolisays and his blot leer odd is he. Breakking the mouldy oldies. A fine leap, old bloom, in a root-pulling hiccup for darts and sighnses. There was a German mug in physics, pick a so-so in paint, a sad dora in dance. In politics a sad vlad emir, russian in where engels cheered the reds (there y 'czar). And little Stevie, a wonder in litter, a chore well done. And what could he do for an anchor? A pose poem in the wake, the solfa and no further yups and groans of a fey lad singer, sewwsewing. Stitching cross words, not a patch.

But there's still the book. A man wrote a book, is all - put it in a sling, pulled back the rubber for fourteen years, let go and schwockkkkkk, shot the book into the future, aiming for immortality. And hit Alexis, Paddy and the Burlington gutbusters.

But there's still the book. Which is the only thing that matters. Everyything else smatters of curate's ego, good in Paris (which mist her choice is leaving).

Butter still the book, loins of words.

Lines on which the wouldcould-bes have ever since been hanging their itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny theories and wearies, drying them in the wimpy wind wafting from the sighing gobs of 57 varieties of might-have-beans. Fettishising whim, fetish I sing Jim. Joyce The Obscure. James Joke. Ho ho. Cheemin. Defer. Pass the shoe. Pastiche who? Who-who, owl skin. Who's kiddding who? (Whom?) Whomsday. Bloommstay - isobars in the beginning, ice, snow and clever shall be, words withhout end. Aw, man.

Yeah. •