Happy Bloomsday

This is Bloomsday, of course, and literary folks are even now tromping through Dublin, commemorating June 16, 1904, the day on which Stephen Deadalus and Leopold Bloom, the two characters at the heart of James Joyce great wanderdream of a novel have their adventures.  (Thursday, June 16, 1904 was, by the way, the date of…

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10 Questions never to ask a writer

I wonder how many of you have asked a writer of your acquaintance what you thought was a perfectly harmless question, one intended to show your interest in that person and what they do, only to be rewarded by a mumbled response, possibly a trembling chin, or, horrors, a glower.  You walk away thinking, What’s…

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Graveyards, James Joyce, Heaventalk

I have always loved graveyards. Old ones, with lichen on the tilting stones, overgrown edges and tall twisted trees are my favorite. In Massachusetts the earliest gravestones are carved with hourglasses, death’s heads, coffins, imps, dragons, and intricately caved vines and fruit. In Paris the cemeteries are called Cities of the Dead, and are, in…

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