Molly Bloom

I wonder was he satisfied with me
one thing I didnt like
his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall
though I laughed
Im not a horse or an ass am I
I suppose he was thinking of his father
I wonder is he awake thinking of me
or dreaming am I in it
who gave him that flower he said he bought
he smelt of some kind of drink not whisky or stout
or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their bills up with
some liqueur Id like to sip
those richlooking green and yellow expensive drinks
those stagedoor johnnies drink
with the opera hats
I tasted once with my finger
dipped out of that American that had the squirrel
talking stamps with father
he had all he could do to keep himself from falling asleep
after the last time
after we took the port and potted meat
it had a fine salty taste yes
because I felt lovely and tired myself
and fell asleep as sound as a top
the moment I popped straight into bed
till that thunder woke me up God be merciful to us
I thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish us
when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary
like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar
as if the world was coming to an end
and then they come and tell you theres no God
what could you do if it was
running and rushing about
nothing only make an act of contrition

photo of Molly Bloom in bed in Chelsea (Louie Correia)

The Other Monologue in Ulysses: Shut your eyes and see

James Joyce championed the stream of conscious monologue in modern literature, most famously in the three hour Molly Bloom episode that concludes Ulysses. While Leopold Bloom reveals many of his inner thoughts to us throughout the book, his sexual fetishes, his artistic dreams, his preferences for lunch, he unlike Molly, does not have a chapter to himself. Bloom shares his world with all of Dublin and all her people.




Stephen Dedalus, the school teacher and aspiring poet, does have his own chapter, however: Proteus. In fact, he has a whole book (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). In Ulysses, he wrestles with his intellect while walking alone along Sandymount Strand. Stephen is the most intellectual character in the novel. His frenemy Buck Mulligan says Stephen "proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father." And in fact we hear him do just that in the library in the Scylla and Charybdis episode of Ulysses, an intellectual tour de force that only the cleverest of actors can perform as Jim Fletcher (left) did for us so wonderfully last year.


Stephen's Jesuit education supplemented by his own literary explorations is as excellent as Joyce's himself. Although he may be young and at times pretentious, there is no question that Dedalus is a truly brilliant man. In Proteus, Stephen examines the senses and what they actually represent, relives his own painful family memories and composes poetry on the beach. He is angry when he thinks of his homelessness, his financial troubles and the fact that no one has recognized his genius. His anger falls away when he follows the thread of an intellectual puzzle or creates an idea, thought or line. I have never heard an actor win the battle with Proteus when attempting this most difficult of monologues in its entirety until this week.


The Pulitzer prize winning poet, Paul Muldoon (left), the literary rockstar that Stephen aspires to be recorded the entire Proteus episode and it was amazing. Unlike in the Penelope episode, there is a little narration in the monologue, requiring, deft and delicate vocal shifts as Stephen moves from a more neutral description to his passionate and frustrated inner most thoughts. Throughout the monologue, Stephen recreates conversations with his drunken insulting useless father, wonders if he has killed his mother by refusing to kneel at her bedside, committed atheist that he is, and reminds himself not to spend what little money he has so quickly. Often the obscure phrases in Proteus fall over the listener like a lapping wave but in this recording Paul manages to fill you up with the hope, the desires, the desperation and the genius of a man on the cusp of greatness with nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of poverty.

The Proteus monologue, one poet playing another, Paul Muldoon wrestling with James Joyce, will be broadcast around 7.15 at the top of Radio Bloomsday on Wednesday, June 16th on 99.5FM in NYC and wbai.org

The beginning of Proteus:
Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

Bloomsdays around the world

I think of Bloomsday as a literary Christmas. I love the idea that people are celebrating the birth of modern literature the world over. In addition to Radio Bloomsday, our 7 hour national radio broadcast on the Pacifica Radio Network, there are many other wonderful Bloomsday events happening on June 16th across America and throughout the world.



In New York City alone, several bars are hosting readings:

The Ulysses bar on Pearl Street begins their festivities at 11.30am as local authors read from the book. They are celebrating their 7th Bloomsday.

At Solas bar in the East Village, Tablet Magazine hosts a Bloomsday devoted to the Jewish themes in Ulysses and includes an excerpt of the book that I translated into Yiddish for the Bloomsday centennial performed by the New Yiddish Rep.

Symphony Space on the Upper West Side celebrates their 29th anniversary focusing on the books parallels to Homer's Odyssey.

The International Center for Photography hosts an exhibit of art work inspired by Ulysses made by students from their class Visualizing Ulysses.

The Irish American Bar Association celebrates with readings at the Irish Consulate on Fifth Avenue beginning at 6pm.

Bloomsday in Brooklyn observes the day on Saturday, June 12th beginning at the Black Sheep Pub.

The most famous worldwide celebration of the book takes place every year for a week in Dublin at the James Joyce center and at venues throughout the city.

Another much admired event, Toronto's Bloomsday run for 25 years by actress Mary Durkan has a day long celebration that includes a full costumed performance on the beach.

In Philadelphia, the Rosenbach Museum and Library which is home to many Joyce manuscripts holds event from 12 to 7pm.

On the west coast, The Wild Geese Theater in Seattle is holding a reading of the Circe episode of Ulysses beginning at 7pm.

In Los Angeles, The Celtic Arts Center has a performance on June 13th and on June 16th The Hammer Museum has a performance.

For a list of 31 other Bloomsday Celebrations in Oslo, Brussels, Buenos Aires and more visit the website of The James Joyce Centre.

The Blooms: A Family of Artists

The more I peck through the layers of Ulysses, the more I see it as a meditation on the artistic process. Unlike other writers, Joyce continually hurls his reader out of the flow of his narrative by endlessly switching styles from stream of consciousness to Elizabethan prose from play form to Catholic Catechism forcing the reader to re-examine his technique and re-enter his prose again and again. Each of his three main characters - Leopold, Stephen and Molly is an artist contemplating the artistic process. Stephen, a new teacher and recent college graduate, composes poetry on the beach, frustrated that the world has yet to recognize his genius. Molly, the sometime singer, performs occasionally, as little as once a year, preparing and yearning and dreaming in bed about her next moment onstage. Bloom continually switches his day job, dreams of writing sketches, short stories, and operas for Molly. Bloom's daughter Milly, a photographer's assistant, is a young artist starting out on her career.


On Tuesday, the legendary actor Jerry Stiller recorded the thoughts of Leopold Bloom from the Calypso episode of Ulysses. In this segment which takes place in the morning, Bloom reads a letter from his daughter Milly, eats his breakfast, and goes to the outhouse where he contemplates his chances of making money off of his writing. People often forget Bloom's artistic yearnings and see him as an everyman but Bloom is as unique a character as ever appeared in print, as eccentric perhaps as Joyce, himself. Jerry's decades of experience creating an artistic life brought a knowing poignancy to Bloom's hopes and the session flew by as he inhabited the mind of Bloom.

Jerry's daughter Amy Stiller, an actress I have loved since I saw her perform Off Broadway in Anne Meara's excellent play Down the Garden Paths read Milly's letter to her father. Last year, Amy read the words of Virginia Woolf criticizing Ulysses. Amy's mother, Anne Meara did a recording for Radio Bloomsday a few years ago when she read the words of Gertie, the woman Bloom fantasizes about on the beach. Anne is one of the few actresses who has performed the complete Molly Bloom. She also appeared as one of the prostitutes in that famous Zero Mostel production of Ulysses in Nighttown in 1958.

Like the Blooms, the Stiller's are an extraordinary artistic family. Jerry and Amy laid down a beautiful recording that you will really enjoy when you listen to it around 8pm on Bloomsday, Wednesday, June 16, 2010. Artists interpret Ulysses, a book about the artistic process in an attempt to uncover the truth about what it means to live an artistic life, to create art that influences generations.

Ulysses on Film

We had an amazing day in the studio today recording some incredible actors but more on that tomorrow as I have to actually get some work done as opposed to writing about getting some work done which is a clever new addictive form of procrastination. All the kids are doing it.

Meanwhile, here is a clip from the 1967 film version of Ulysses focusing on that sexpot Stephen Dedalus. Nunc es bibendum.

Our Postcard - Molly Bloom in bed

For you New York locals, we have started papering the town with our Radio Bloomsday 2010 postcards and many people have asked about the images. Molly Bloom photographed by Louie Correia adorns the front and back of the card. We built a set in my bedroom, covering two sides of the wall with several 6 foot sheets of white butcher paper, then pasting on several layers of the New York Post, before adding a layer of gesso, to create the idea of a book. We then used charcoal to draw lines and handwrite two pages from Molly Bloom's monologue beginning with the word flagellate. Finally, we painted over the charcoal with black acrylic paint and a square brush. Our photographer, Louie Correia, a gifted graduate of FIT and a descendant of several generations of Portuguese Circus performers, came over for about 4 hours and took approximately 400 images with a digital camera of Molly Bloom at different stages of her day in bed.



Our aim is to present Molly Bloom as if she has just been hurled from the pages of a giant copy of Ulysses. Art in motion. Literature in progress. On the front color side, it is daylight and she is rehearsing with Blazes Boylan just after they make love around 4 oclock in the afternoon. On the backside, she is alone in bed in the wee hours of the morning waiting for Bloom to come home. Molly Bloom, the singer, the artist, working and living and eating and loving all day long in bed. Bed as the female power center of the home. Bed as canvas. Bed as work station. Bed as concert hall. Bed as the stage for life. Bed, bed, bed.

Let us know if you see the postcards and tell us where! Or send us your address and we will mail you one old school. Special thanks to Raphaele Shirley, Bobby of Bibberbox and Olivia Beall for their advice and expertise.

Radio Bloomsday Cast 2010

We've have been working around the clock here at Radio Bloomsday central (aka Molly Bloom's bed) to put together a really exciting cast of artists ready to throw down some vocal acrobatics on the 16th of June. In addition to Charles Busch, T. Ryder Smith and Aaron Beall who prerecorded for us earlier in the week, we have a dozen New York super talents ready to enter the ring. Barbara Vann of the Medicine Show Theater, who performed Finnegans Wake for us last year, will open the show this year and invoke the goddess of literature with a recitation of the famous Irish poem The Hag of Beare circa 800 BC.

The first hour of the program will focus on Stephen Dedalus with the Pulitizer Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon performing Proteus. Speaking of poets, we are introducing a new segment in this year's broadcast devoted to new writers reading their own work. Poets Merideth Finn and Mac Barrett, both seasoned Bloomsday performers will read from their new work.

Alec Baldwin, Jerry Stiller, Amy Stiller, Bob Dishy, Judy Graubart, Anna Goodman-Herrick, Brian O'Doherty, Jim Fletcher, Kate Valk, James Kennedy, Mara McEwin, Tara Bahna James, Janet Coleman, David Dozer, Richard Maxwell and Tory Vasquez will be performing this year. We are working on a Los Angeles contingent of performers to join us from the Left Coast via ISDN. More on that as it develops.

Now I must return to the script. More on Molly in the morning...