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https://doi.org/10.1353/jjq.2020.0002
Copy DOIJournal: James Joyce Quarterly | Publication Date: Jan 1, 2020 |
Zooming Bloomsday 2020 Richard J. Gerber (bio) Events planned for the annual commemoration of Leopold Bloom's verbal and physical engagements with his fellow Dubliners were upended this year by Covid-19, the deadly global pandemic that changed all our lives. With lockdowns, sheltering-in-place, and social distancing, the coronavirus knocked out in-person attendance at Ulysses activities all over the world. In hindsight, Bloomsday 2020 will be remembered as Zoomsday, when digital media—including Zoom, a conferencing application and various other Internet sites—were the primary means for taking part in recognizing the one-hundred-sixteenth anniversary of the big day. In short, on 16 June 1904, Bloom got out and about … but this year, we didn't. In contrast to Bloomsdays of the past, this year's events were transformed into a series of broadcasts from performers' homes, readings without live audiences and pre-recorded films, all watched or listened to remotely. As a result, ironically, Bloomsday 2020 was the most broadly experienced celebration of Ulysses of all time … if only virtually. In fact, watching Bloomsday readings and performances on-line was the most important form of entertainment worldwide on 16 June 2020. So the good news is that millions of people all over the planet experienced Bloomsday-related events, and mostly from the convenience of their homes. Maybe now more will read Joyce's novel. One great advantage of the changed circumstance this year was the necessarily increased availability of access to multiple Bloomsday-related activities via the flexibility of electronic media, often at little or no cost. For the first time, viewers (I prefer voyeurs) and listeners could easily dip in and out of multiple events, both live and in rerun, during the course of the entire day—picking and choosing the best each venue had to offer—all from the convenience of anywhere at any time, on radios, computers, and cell/mobile phones. Bloomsday devotees could skip around, hearing or seeing portions or entire performances sequentially, in real or delayed time—listening or watching as they pleased—-thereby celebrating Ulysses round-the-clock. Voyeurs indeed! Zoom zoom! RTÉ, Ireland's national broadcaster, kicked off festivities with a replay of its 1982 dramatization, a thirty-hour reading of the complete Ulysses. Commencing at 8:00 A.M. Dublin time, listeners in New York tuned in on short-wave radios at 3:00 A.M. to get an early morning dose of "Stately, plump." Later in the day, in keeping with this year's unwelcome and unexpected theme, Trinity College, Dublin, conducted an on-line discussion of "Ulysses, Pandemic and Social Distancing," while John McCourt speculated in a blog about [End Page 240] "Leopold in Lockdown." The coronavirus certainly generated new vantage points and perspectives on Joyce's novel. Several presentations in New York and environs were on tap, all readily sampled on-screen with just a few strokes of a keyboard in the new "stay-at-home" computer format. On the upper westside, the thirty-ninth annual Bloomsday on Broadway, a fourteen-hour uninterrupted serial reading, could be seen live on Symphony Space's YouTube channel starting at 8:00 A.M. New York time. Featuring its usual smattering of all-stars, now reading from their homes, highlights included CBS Late Show's Stephen Colbert as host and Malachi McCourt's captivating reading of "Hades." Kate Mulgrew's "Lestrygonians" and Cynthia Nixon's "Scylla and Charybdis" were equally enchanting. A personal favorite was Claire Danes's coquettish reading of "Nausicaa," with just the right mix of flirtation and insouciance. By 11:00 A.M., Origin Theatre's seventh annual "Bloomsday Breakfast" got underway (virtually) at Bloom's Tavern on East 58th Street in midtown. While no "grilled mutton kidneys" were to be had this year, there was plenty of Ulysses-inspired music and song. The "fine tang of faintly scented urine" (U 4.04-05) had to be imagined. Meanwhile, toggling on-line one hundred miles south, the Rosenbach Museum and Library's "Bloomsday Virtual Festival" in Philadelphia began at the same hour as the Bloom's Tavern breakfast, with poet Paul Muldoon sonorously intoning the day's third helping of the opening lines of...
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