After the Race

Looking at the Bloomsday readings I’ve done to date, it’s evident that my written prefaces have become an absurd equivalent of squealing fangirlish bra-tossing. I may (OR MAY NOT!) be an excellent bra-tosser with perfect aim and pitch, and we all know that Joyce wouldn’t be one to have a problem with women’s undergarments tossed his way. But my first exposure to Joyce was in a sleepy little black shoebox theatre, where a troupe of mild-mannered turtlenecked barnstormers read from Dubliners from a stage decorated with high stools, and where I, underexposed and underage and over my head, had too much to drink and fell asleep in mid-performance.

It’s a confession I was embarrassed to make for years and years, but now I think it wasn’t so bad (my young indiscretion, that is; to this day, I still think the performance could’ve benefited from a little bra-tossing). If you’ve used the Joyce readings to-date successfully as soporific, here’s where we are, in reverse chronological order:

An Encounter, Eveline, Araby, The Sisters, and The Boarding House.

As you can see, only another few hundred years until I’m reading annual chapters of the Wake to you. Whether you snooze or send your undergarments airbound, Happy Bloomsday.