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Bloomsday: Ulysses In Boston
This tragicomic epic brings to life in America the enduring masterpiece of Homer's "Odyssey" and the Irish saga of Joyce's "Ulysses" in a Father's Day in Boston after the Vietnam War in 1974. This new "Bostoniad" portrays the American immigrant descendants of Leopold and Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus of Dublin. After Tim Finnegan's Irish wake Rudy and Penelope Bloom of Beacon Hill meet Harvard Professor, Dr. Thomas Dedalus. "Bloomsday" narrates in a pixilistic style a chorus of New England voices blending to render new verses of the greatest epic of antiquity and the 20th century's most celebrated literary novel on the legendary wandering home of Odysseus after the fall of Troy. "Curious, appealing... picaresque and picturesque, 'Bloomsday' succeeds... The dialogue is masterful. It will have you smiling." --Times Chronicle "Challenges readers seeking a richer literary experience outside the mainstream." --Greenwich Post "His writing is... on a higher plane for a higher purpose." --Wilton Bulletin "Lentz especially like to explore how creative people survive in a large and often impersonal environment. What is the role of a talented individual, an artist for example, in a complex, vast society?" --New Canaan Advertiser "The retention of dignity is a recurring theme." --Lewisboro Ledger "His pixilism is a sort of 21st century, digital metaphor that has similarities to French Impressionist paintings. Each sentence represents an idea, image or treatment of the big picture." --Redding Pilot "Lentz's approach to writing is soul driven -- searching for the meaning of life." --Weston Forum "I'm recommending it to everyone in my 'Ulysses' class." -- Nancy Bischoff, bn.com "I'm sitting in my kitchen transfixed! It is hilarious... It's so good, I hate to have it end...Totally delicious." --Agnes Potter, bn.com
- GenresFictionContemporary
383 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2004
1 person is currently reading
295 people want to read
About the author
David B. Lentz
17 books343 followersBorn in Woburn, Massachusetts, David B. Lentz is an alumnus of Bates College as well as the Yale and Wesleyan Writers' Conferences. He is a member of the Center for Fiction in New York, the Royal Society of Literature in London, the Poetry Society of America, the Academy of American Poets, and the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He has published seven novels: "The Fine Art of Grace", "For the Beauty of the Earth", "AmericA, Inc.", "Bloomsday", "Bourbon Street", "The Day Trader" and "The Silver King." He has written two stage plays, "Bloomsday: A Tragicomedy" and "AmericA, Inc." Lentz published three volumes of poetry in "Old Greenwich Odes", "Sonnets from New England: Love Songs" and "Sonnets on the Common Man" in the latter two of which he introduced new sonnet forms. He created a new model of critical literary theory for reviewing novels in his book, "Novel Criticism." Selected excerpts from his collection of literary works among his novels, stage plays and poetry are available in "Essential Lentz." Three of his novels and one of his stage plays have been read for Pulitzer Prizes in Letters and Drama, respectively, but none has short-listed. Lentz has served Bates College as an Alumnus-in-Admissions (18 years), Stamford-Greenwich Literacy Volunteers of America, Midnight Run for New York City Homeless, Healing the Children Northeast, Inc. (Board), Hurricane Katrina JazzAid: New Orleans, Hope + Heroes Children's Cancer Foundation, St. Baldricks Foundation for Children's Cancer Research and as a Volunteer in St. Paul's Chapel at Ground Zero. Lentz has lived in the Garden District of New Orleans, Boston's Back Bay, Houston, Philadelphia's Main Line and Greenwich, Connecticut.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 22, 2018
This novel was a delight and I didn't want it to end.
It is of course a modern rendering of Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses and is set on June 14 1974 in Boston. The characters are descended from the original characters in Ulysses; the central actors are Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus. The links with Joyce's book are striking, but so are the differences. The story flows through a day when Bloom and Dedalus both lose their jobs and Dedalus finds himself being offered Bloom's old job. They meet at a wake and there follows much eating, drinking, philosophising and wandering through the streets and bars of Boston.
Of course there is much more to it than that, but you should read it. Ulysses is a masterpiece, but I enjoyed reading this book much more than Ulysses. I realised that fairly early in the book, but it took me a while to work out why. I grew to like the characters, to care about them and it was their plain humanity that I loved. I would happily go out for a drink with either or both of them! There are some thought provoking reflections on the meaning of life, love and religion, especially as it is intimated that Bloom may be terminally ill and is thinking about his end.
Lentz has produced a book that works on many different levels; a literary masterpiece with enough references to the the two classics it springs from; certainly. A profound reflection on life and love, especially pertinent as one reaches a certain age; definitely. But there is much more; laugh out loud comic moments, moments of touching tenderness and the language is a delight.
You must read it
It is of course a modern rendering of Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses and is set on June 14 1974 in Boston. The characters are descended from the original characters in Ulysses; the central actors are Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus. The links with Joyce's book are striking, but so are the differences. The story flows through a day when Bloom and Dedalus both lose their jobs and Dedalus finds himself being offered Bloom's old job. They meet at a wake and there follows much eating, drinking, philosophising and wandering through the streets and bars of Boston.
Of course there is much more to it than that, but you should read it. Ulysses is a masterpiece, but I enjoyed reading this book much more than Ulysses. I realised that fairly early in the book, but it took me a while to work out why. I grew to like the characters, to care about them and it was their plain humanity that I loved. I would happily go out for a drink with either or both of them! There are some thought provoking reflections on the meaning of life, love and religion, especially as it is intimated that Bloom may be terminally ill and is thinking about his end.
Lentz has produced a book that works on many different levels; a literary masterpiece with enough references to the the two classics it springs from; certainly. A profound reflection on life and love, especially pertinent as one reaches a certain age; definitely. But there is much more; laugh out loud comic moments, moments of touching tenderness and the language is a delight.
You must read it
December 8, 2012
Nasrudin and the New Qur'an
Nasrudin was at the tea house one day when he heard some idle young students talking about the Qur'an.
"It sounds magnificent, of course," grumbled one, "but half the time you can't even understand it without a commentary."
"It's supposed to respect the Bible," said another, "but Allah often seems to have forgotten about His earlier revelations."
"I don't like its attitude to women," snapped a third.
When Nasrudin got home, he took out his pen and started writing. He returned to the tea house the following week with a thick manuscript and sat down next to the students.
"I have written a new and improved version of the Qur'an," he announced. "Let me read it to you." But before he had even completed the first surah, they begged him to stop.
"This is dreadful!" they shouted. "Horrible! Blasphemous! It's not like the Qur'an at all!"
"Isn't that what you wanted?" asked Nasrudin.
______________________________________
The author has complained to me that the above review is unfair. Let me be more explicit. The book is, both in form and content, an updated version of Ulysses, transposed to 1974 Boston. It is divided into chapters bearing the same names as the ones in Joyce's book, and the two main characters, called "Bloom" and "Dedalus", are in many respects like their Joycean homologues. The storyline is very similar, and the themes used are also taken pretty directly from the earlier book; thus, for example, "The Sirens" is concerned with music, "Oxen in the Sun" includes multiple pastiches of various authors presented in chronological order, and "Penelope" is a stream-of-consciousness monologue by Bloom's wife.
The great difference is in the style. The vatic poetry and near-impenetrable tangle of allusions in Joyce's original, which to me are what give the the book its unique charm, have been replaced by a sub-Wildean stream of wisecracks; the general impression is roughly that of an American sitcom. My first reaction was to read Bloomsday straightforwardly as a retelling of Joyce, and from this point of view I really did not like it. To be blunt, it seemed extremely disrespectful to one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Towards the end, though, I decided that there was another way to look at the text. No one can do a second Ulysses. If you think of Lentz's book as a comedy about an attempt to perform this impossible task, it is actually quite funny, and from this point of view I recommend it. I must admit that I couldn't put it down: I constantly had to read on to see how the next episode would be treated, and in fact I completed the second half more or less at one sitting.
Maybe the author will like the above even less than my first review. I'm sorry: I'm just calling it like I see it.
Nasrudin was at the tea house one day when he heard some idle young students talking about the Qur'an.
"It sounds magnificent, of course," grumbled one, "but half the time you can't even understand it without a commentary."
"It's supposed to respect the Bible," said another, "but Allah often seems to have forgotten about His earlier revelations."
"I don't like its attitude to women," snapped a third.
When Nasrudin got home, he took out his pen and started writing. He returned to the tea house the following week with a thick manuscript and sat down next to the students.
"I have written a new and improved version of the Qur'an," he announced. "Let me read it to you." But before he had even completed the first surah, they begged him to stop.
"This is dreadful!" they shouted. "Horrible! Blasphemous! It's not like the Qur'an at all!"
"Isn't that what you wanted?" asked Nasrudin.
______________________________________
The author has complained to me that the above review is unfair. Let me be more explicit. The book is, both in form and content, an updated version of Ulysses, transposed to 1974 Boston. It is divided into chapters bearing the same names as the ones in Joyce's book, and the two main characters, called "Bloom" and "Dedalus", are in many respects like their Joycean homologues. The storyline is very similar, and the themes used are also taken pretty directly from the earlier book; thus, for example, "The Sirens" is concerned with music, "Oxen in the Sun" includes multiple pastiches of various authors presented in chronological order, and "Penelope" is a stream-of-consciousness monologue by Bloom's wife.
The great difference is in the style. The vatic poetry and near-impenetrable tangle of allusions in Joyce's original, which to me are what give the the book its unique charm, have been replaced by a sub-Wildean stream of wisecracks; the general impression is roughly that of an American sitcom. My first reaction was to read Bloomsday straightforwardly as a retelling of Joyce, and from this point of view I really did not like it. To be blunt, it seemed extremely disrespectful to one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Towards the end, though, I decided that there was another way to look at the text. No one can do a second Ulysses. If you think of Lentz's book as a comedy about an attempt to perform this impossible task, it is actually quite funny, and from this point of view I recommend it. I must admit that I couldn't put it down: I constantly had to read on to see how the next episode would be treated, and in fact I completed the second half more or less at one sitting.
Maybe the author will like the above even less than my first review. I'm sorry: I'm just calling it like I see it.
December 25, 2013
Bloomsday: The Bostoniad, which pays homage to Homer and James Joyce, is funny and witty. And just plain fun. Professor Thomas Dedalus, the son of Stephen Dedalus and a drunkard, after a discourse on Nietzche, lost his job at Harvard University. At the same time, Rudy Bloom, the son of Leopold and Molly Bloom, lost his job in an advertising firm. In a twist of fate, Thomas took Rudy’s former position. They met in the wake of Tim Finnegan, who woke up after Rudy’s whiskey dripped onto his lips. After the celebration at the Union Oyster House with a cast of characters reminiscent of those in Joyce’s Ulysses, Rudy befriended Thomas, not knowing that they are half-brothers, not knowing that his mother was still living in Dublin. And all the while, Rudy worried about his wife Penelope leaving him for a more charming man, not knowing her love for him. The reader would smile at his predicament, but also grieve over his misfortune.
Just as Joyce described the landscape of Dublin to such details that a reader could reconstruct the city of his time, so Lentz those of Boston and Cambridge. From Beacon Hill to Boston Common to Harvard Yard, the sound of Beantown coming out of the pages. And the reader transported into the sights of 70’s Boston. Throughout the narrative, the readers would come across allusions to the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Ellison and the philosophical musings of Hegel, Whitehead, Nietzche and Thoreau. Including Thomas Dedalus’s discourse on existentialism.
Lentz explored poetry, drama, and prose, including stream of consciousness, to tell his story and, like Joyce, created a unique vocabulary that included words like “bulfinchbefriendingbard.” Such literary treats point to Lentz’s imagination and eclectic style.
Bloomsday: The Bostoniad, an American Ulysses, is a literary feast, a gem of a novel.
Just as Joyce described the landscape of Dublin to such details that a reader could reconstruct the city of his time, so Lentz those of Boston and Cambridge. From Beacon Hill to Boston Common to Harvard Yard, the sound of Beantown coming out of the pages. And the reader transported into the sights of 70’s Boston. Throughout the narrative, the readers would come across allusions to the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Ellison and the philosophical musings of Hegel, Whitehead, Nietzche and Thoreau. Including Thomas Dedalus’s discourse on existentialism.
Lentz explored poetry, drama, and prose, including stream of consciousness, to tell his story and, like Joyce, created a unique vocabulary that included words like “bulfinchbefriendingbard.” Such literary treats point to Lentz’s imagination and eclectic style.
Bloomsday: The Bostoniad, an American Ulysses, is a literary feast, a gem of a novel.
September 19, 2012
Bloomsday: The Bostoniad by David B. Lentz:
Eternal Recurrence, Adaptation and Improvisation
In David B. Lentz’s novel, Bloomsday, Thomas Daedalus, son of the late Stephen Daedalus and a Harvard philosophy professor, explains the role of Dionysus in Nietsche’s concept of “eternal recurrence” to a class of undergrads. As with most elements in this finely crafted and vibrant novel, “eternal recurrence” is no throwaway, but the tonic theme of Mr.Lentz’s engaging and heart-felt homage to Homer and Joyce.
In Bloomsday, David B. Lentz has transported the story of Ulysses to 1974 Boston and Cambridge, loosely recasting the principals of Daedulus, Bloom, Molly (here, Penelope, as in The Odyssey), Mulligan, Haines, Boylan, and a particularly amusing Pisser Burke as latter-day Americans. In Bloomsday, one reads stage notes from Homer and hears mellifluous echoes of Joyce’s Irish English. Yet, within the spirit and structure of the older works, David B. Lentz has created a contemporary story in the same way that jazz soloists improvise from the American songbook.
That Mr. Lentz has fashioned an American, post-Vietnam love-poem to Boston on the armature of an ancient and Modernist classic is a literary tactic consistent with the essence of storytelling. “Eternal recurrence” springs not just from a change of seasons, but a human proclivity for mimesis—imitation. The essence of storytelling is to repeat a tale until it is as finely wrought as verse a blind vagabond can recite.
But are all legends worth adopting and adapting?
If conditions of life are timeless and universal, those myths that embody them must be, as well. Mr. Lentz has put The Odyssey to the reading-eye test: are the reunion of father and son and the restoral of home and family after long estrangement as germane to us now as they were to Joyce and the audiences of Homer?
The evidence from Bloomsday is an unequivocal “Yes.”
Each novel is begotten from the stories that came before, in dialogue with other voices. Yet, when one novel overtly adapts an earlier work, as Bloomsday does with Ulysses, the reader is less concerned with what is lost in translation than with how the two versions clash and coexist in the mind.
The tension between two sensibilities can be dynamic, yielding irony and narrative freedom. Homage can turn to parody. For instance, by hijacking Homer’s epic plot, Joyce was free to lampoon the base subjugation of colonial Dublin and the shabby banality of modern life.
In Bloomsday, Lentz has turned adaptation to a different purpose. By importing Ulysses to post-Vietnam Boston, he has deployed Joyce’s special effects to intensify and glamorize everyday lives during a turbulent, yet depressing era when America had a disgraced president, a defeated army, racial, cultural and sexual confusion, spiking crime, and a stagflated economy. Strains of Joycean music imbue many moments in Bloomsday with beauty and gravitas, inviting us to heed the details of the world and recognize the value and potential in our lives—to make them mythic. Such old world overtones also evoke a languid formality alien to modern America—like a tweed cap at a baseball game.
Yet, despite its old-world penumbra, Bloomsday is no remake of Ulysses in an American setting. Though Thom Daedalus and Rudy Bloom use the Irish “Tis”, the soundtrack of Bloomsday has Americans speaking their minds. One ambles down the storied streets of Boston and imbibes a profusion of cultural and sensuous charms of the “Athens of America.” One brushes against damaged, Vietnam vets and kindly, old seamen, working class urbanites and affluent Yuppies, working women and sex workers, cops, hustlers, shop assistants and a hilariously feckless Right-to-Life priest. The reader experiences a specific time and place and the principal characters emerge from their Joycean molds as originals with their own ambiguities, ambitions and preoccupations. They flatter, advise, insult and argue with each other, like voices inside one universal mind—youth and age, passion and reason, madness and caution—waging a pitched debate over how to lead one’s life.
It is to Mr.Lentz’s credit as a novelist that the world he has conjured in Bloomsday is new—a synthesis of Joyce and American optimism. We hear reverberations of Ulysses but none of its dark pessimism. Mr. Lentz’s ‘70’s Boston is a warm and glowing burg, where the good guys win and bad guys lose. This is a place not of bleak ambivalence but of happy endings.
While it is tempting to focus on the intellectual attributes of a novel with such wide compass and deep roots, Bloomsday is also fun, brimming with broad humor and dry wit. Boisterous, outrageous, at times improbable, and always diverting, Bloomsday: The Bostoniad does what fiction should. It transports the reader to another place, where life unfolds exotically enough to entertain us. And while it works on many levels, and will excite Joyce lovers, no prior reading list is required to enjoy Bloomsday. It pays tribute to its forebears but sings in its own voice.
Eternal Recurrence, Adaptation and Improvisation
In David B. Lentz’s novel, Bloomsday, Thomas Daedalus, son of the late Stephen Daedalus and a Harvard philosophy professor, explains the role of Dionysus in Nietsche’s concept of “eternal recurrence” to a class of undergrads. As with most elements in this finely crafted and vibrant novel, “eternal recurrence” is no throwaway, but the tonic theme of Mr.Lentz’s engaging and heart-felt homage to Homer and Joyce.
In Bloomsday, David B. Lentz has transported the story of Ulysses to 1974 Boston and Cambridge, loosely recasting the principals of Daedulus, Bloom, Molly (here, Penelope, as in The Odyssey), Mulligan, Haines, Boylan, and a particularly amusing Pisser Burke as latter-day Americans. In Bloomsday, one reads stage notes from Homer and hears mellifluous echoes of Joyce’s Irish English. Yet, within the spirit and structure of the older works, David B. Lentz has created a contemporary story in the same way that jazz soloists improvise from the American songbook.
That Mr. Lentz has fashioned an American, post-Vietnam love-poem to Boston on the armature of an ancient and Modernist classic is a literary tactic consistent with the essence of storytelling. “Eternal recurrence” springs not just from a change of seasons, but a human proclivity for mimesis—imitation. The essence of storytelling is to repeat a tale until it is as finely wrought as verse a blind vagabond can recite.
But are all legends worth adopting and adapting?
If conditions of life are timeless and universal, those myths that embody them must be, as well. Mr. Lentz has put The Odyssey to the reading-eye test: are the reunion of father and son and the restoral of home and family after long estrangement as germane to us now as they were to Joyce and the audiences of Homer?
The evidence from Bloomsday is an unequivocal “Yes.”
Each novel is begotten from the stories that came before, in dialogue with other voices. Yet, when one novel overtly adapts an earlier work, as Bloomsday does with Ulysses, the reader is less concerned with what is lost in translation than with how the two versions clash and coexist in the mind.
The tension between two sensibilities can be dynamic, yielding irony and narrative freedom. Homage can turn to parody. For instance, by hijacking Homer’s epic plot, Joyce was free to lampoon the base subjugation of colonial Dublin and the shabby banality of modern life.
In Bloomsday, Lentz has turned adaptation to a different purpose. By importing Ulysses to post-Vietnam Boston, he has deployed Joyce’s special effects to intensify and glamorize everyday lives during a turbulent, yet depressing era when America had a disgraced president, a defeated army, racial, cultural and sexual confusion, spiking crime, and a stagflated economy. Strains of Joycean music imbue many moments in Bloomsday with beauty and gravitas, inviting us to heed the details of the world and recognize the value and potential in our lives—to make them mythic. Such old world overtones also evoke a languid formality alien to modern America—like a tweed cap at a baseball game.
Yet, despite its old-world penumbra, Bloomsday is no remake of Ulysses in an American setting. Though Thom Daedalus and Rudy Bloom use the Irish “Tis”, the soundtrack of Bloomsday has Americans speaking their minds. One ambles down the storied streets of Boston and imbibes a profusion of cultural and sensuous charms of the “Athens of America.” One brushes against damaged, Vietnam vets and kindly, old seamen, working class urbanites and affluent Yuppies, working women and sex workers, cops, hustlers, shop assistants and a hilariously feckless Right-to-Life priest. The reader experiences a specific time and place and the principal characters emerge from their Joycean molds as originals with their own ambiguities, ambitions and preoccupations. They flatter, advise, insult and argue with each other, like voices inside one universal mind—youth and age, passion and reason, madness and caution—waging a pitched debate over how to lead one’s life.
It is to Mr.Lentz’s credit as a novelist that the world he has conjured in Bloomsday is new—a synthesis of Joyce and American optimism. We hear reverberations of Ulysses but none of its dark pessimism. Mr. Lentz’s ‘70’s Boston is a warm and glowing burg, where the good guys win and bad guys lose. This is a place not of bleak ambivalence but of happy endings.
While it is tempting to focus on the intellectual attributes of a novel with such wide compass and deep roots, Bloomsday is also fun, brimming with broad humor and dry wit. Boisterous, outrageous, at times improbable, and always diverting, Bloomsday: The Bostoniad does what fiction should. It transports the reader to another place, where life unfolds exotically enough to entertain us. And while it works on many levels, and will excite Joyce lovers, no prior reading list is required to enjoy Bloomsday. It pays tribute to its forebears but sings in its own voice.
November 16, 2011
This is an astonishing book. In Bloomsday the magic of David Lentz’s imagination has produced a fictional transmigration of souls, a rebirth of James Joyce’s characters in a modern time and place. Dedalus, Bloom, Haines, Buck Mulligan and others of the original Dublin cast have been reborn in contemporary Boston. Mr. Lentz has accomplished this feat not only with prodigious erudition, but also with a delicate whimsy and an exquisitely chiseled poetic language. For this is a poetic prose of the first order – lyrical and learned, but brought down to earth by the real particulars of modern life and enlivened by punning, rapid-fire repartee.
The reader recurrently experiences a pleasure like déjà vu, because his footing is in two places at the same time – both in the present narrative and in Joyce’s prototype. Here again are the carnal appetites and pathos of an apparently soon-to-be-cuckolded Bloom. But now it is Leopold Bloom’s dead son Rudy who is reborn and relives his father’s drama. Dedalus is now Stephen’s son Thom who, after he has been fired from Harvard for drunkenness, first meets Bloom at Tim Finnegan’s wake.
Not only Joyce’s characters but also each episode of his drama has been reimagined and reclothed in modern dress. In the Proteus episode a drunken, despairing Dedalus delivers a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy stumbling through Harvard Yard. In Lentz’s recasting of the Nausicca episode, the language of Rudy Bloom’s passionate, melancholy meditations is worthy of Joyce himself. In the Oxen of the Sun chapter, Mr. Lentz’s acrobatic literary clowning is more reminiscent of the Marx Brothers. After Dedalus gives Bloom LSD, the Circe episode becomes a boisterous, hallucinogenic rhapsody. And what of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy? It has been reforged as a splendid, down-to-earth, exquisitely moving prose poem delivered by
Rudy Bloom’s ravishingly beautiful and deeply loyal wife Penelope.
A very brief review can’t do justice to Mr. Lentz’s touching, funny, intricate, seemingly infinite variations on a theme by Joyce.
But here’s the crux of the matter: this is a major work by a major writer – and sophisticated readers will relish it.
The reader recurrently experiences a pleasure like déjà vu, because his footing is in two places at the same time – both in the present narrative and in Joyce’s prototype. Here again are the carnal appetites and pathos of an apparently soon-to-be-cuckolded Bloom. But now it is Leopold Bloom’s dead son Rudy who is reborn and relives his father’s drama. Dedalus is now Stephen’s son Thom who, after he has been fired from Harvard for drunkenness, first meets Bloom at Tim Finnegan’s wake.
Not only Joyce’s characters but also each episode of his drama has been reimagined and reclothed in modern dress. In the Proteus episode a drunken, despairing Dedalus delivers a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy stumbling through Harvard Yard. In Lentz’s recasting of the Nausicca episode, the language of Rudy Bloom’s passionate, melancholy meditations is worthy of Joyce himself. In the Oxen of the Sun chapter, Mr. Lentz’s acrobatic literary clowning is more reminiscent of the Marx Brothers. After Dedalus gives Bloom LSD, the Circe episode becomes a boisterous, hallucinogenic rhapsody. And what of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy? It has been reforged as a splendid, down-to-earth, exquisitely moving prose poem delivered by
Rudy Bloom’s ravishingly beautiful and deeply loyal wife Penelope.
A very brief review can’t do justice to Mr. Lentz’s touching, funny, intricate, seemingly infinite variations on a theme by Joyce.
But here’s the crux of the matter: this is a major work by a major writer – and sophisticated readers will relish it.
December 14, 2011
This novel is a wow. With Bloomsday, David Lentz is one fearless and daring author. He not only pays tribute to the Joyce novel from which his title comes, but he toasts the original Homer myth as well. And he does it with a humorous, shrewd, heightened language, like Oscar Wilde on crack. Lentz seems drunk on language—his dialog here sizzles and pops, with puns, allusions, wordplay—but he is not only here to play. There is seriousness behind the amusement, meaning behind the rollicking speech and witty, acutely drawn characters. Lentz wants you to walk with him, so he keeps it entertaining, but he is also a tour guide for the modern zeitgeist. His characters seems to float and struggle, yammer and struggle. They are on a journey, inward and outward, just like Ulysses, just like Bloom. The novel is a pitch-perfect chorus of voices, comic, dour, intelligent. At times the novel reminded me of the best of J. P. Donleavy, or that other cracked Boston novelist, Todd McEwen. I am a little in awe of what Lentz attempted here—and accomplished! This is a grand achievement.
August 30, 2011
WOW! Just got back from 5 days in the mountains and found I won a book! Thanks First Reads Giveaways!
I just finished this book and found it not to be one of my favorites but, very well written just the same.You get to know and understand the characters and even like them.You are there and spend a couple of days in Boston interacting with them. A lot of dialog which makes the book read smooth and quick. The wake is a shock to everyone involved and the character interaction is understandable and realistic. Not my genre but, a good book just the same.
I just finished this book and found it not to be one of my favorites but, very well written just the same.You get to know and understand the characters and even like them.You are there and spend a couple of days in Boston interacting with them. A lot of dialog which makes the book read smooth and quick. The wake is a shock to everyone involved and the character interaction is understandable and realistic. Not my genre but, a good book just the same.
July 17, 2012
Review forthcoming...
August 10, 2012
first from lentz for me...saw a review of his of...Herzog from Saul Bellow, i think it was...and he wished folk read more of bellow and the like, said something derogatory about Stephen King...said this here is some sort of parody of king...or something...so, here i am
dedicated "to my beloved muse, virginia"
story is divided into three parts:
book 1 awakening
6 chapters
book 2 wandering
9 chapters
book three homecoming
4 chapters
greater boston, friday, june 14-father's day june 16, 1974
has this on a white page, from the odyssey--book 8
"all men owe honor to the poets--honor and awe, for they are dearest to the muse who puts upon their lips the way of life."
and this, from ulysses--proteus
"the cords of all link back. strand entwining cable of all flesh. that is why mystic monks. will you be as gods? gaze into your omphalos."
followed by a couple more quotes from the same two...buy the book...
begins:
telemachus (chapter 1)
o muse, the young maiden of dawn came up brazen from the couch of her reclining into the east over the silent streaming of the wine dark river into the flawless, brimming mystic sea.
strange connections
2nd page of the story, thomas dedalus describes "harvard is the navel on the blunt belly of the boston brahmin."..."contemplated...not conquered." strange curious, for a previous story 5-6 back, South of Broad,Pat Conroy, the prologue ends, with the eye in a tree, looking down on charleston, a dimple on the horizon...so...we're standing on our head?...feet cold?...or we're held upside down?...by whom? what? or is the charleston dimple further south?...and if that strange connection don't fit...conroy's name for the eye-narrator should, leopold bloom king...i think the dates are 'bout the same, as well...bloom day give or take
onward & upward
characters
malcolm "buck" mulligan, portly august, doctor of women's medicine, doctor of bostonian mothers-to-be, three ex-wives
thomas dedalus, doctor of the mother tongue, poet
haines, an attorney, native son of philadelphia
the three bachelors share a penthouse suite on holyoke street adjacent the hasty pudding club & overlooking the harvard yard. buck & thom exchange words...buck exits as haines enters...thom & haines jog five miles
chapter 2 calypso
each chapter, t'would appear, begins with a quote from the odyssey & another from ulysses "2" w/1 from book 5 & calypso, repospectively
characters
rudy bloom, 56 years old, was adopted, has 2 parakeets, skyler & comet, an orange tabby, kip, at 27 charles street, an advertising writer, b-day is father's day this year, married to
penelope bloom, a much younger woman (a dozen years), a real looker
...penelope keeps a bookshop, books in bloom, also a poet
luigi deluca, italian grocer (what is it w/the italians? they own ALL the groceries!)
blaine boyston, a beacon hill publisher, wants to publish pen's love sonnets
breakfast, paper...obits: tim finnegan passed, fell overboard drowned...left behind a wife/9 kids, walks to grocery...home, w/wife, talk of fan mail dropped thru slot...from blaine...talk of tim's wake etc...talk of blaine/pen...pen/blaine
chap 3, nestor
the freshman class of harvard english students listened attentively and took notes as the distractions of the season tempted them.
--thomas dedalus lecturer...speaking of a school of criticism w/roots in hegel & nietzsche...apollo/dionysius...
characters
student scholar harriet crotthers
ramzi, an indian student
daniel, from phillips andover
dr. deasy, chairman of english department, harvard
greek word, sophrosyne...nothing in excess (know thyself)
tragedy--the name of grain used to make beer.
later, chairman's office, harvard english department, gives dedalus the news that he is not being kept, no tenure, no job, that he is a drunk. their exchange is presented as script.
chap 4 the lotos eaters
rudy bloom (married) at the post office, sniffing a letter from maddy dunne, a contact from the personals in boston phoenix...rudy will read letter in a private setting.
...walks, stops crabtree & evelyn shop buys stuff for wife...walks, meets michael mccoy, a prudential agent...walks, emmanuel church...reads maddy's letter--maddy knows rudy is married, does not matter to her...rudy is "henry flower" to her...walks...reads quotes...buys booze for wake...thoughts...bernie lyons he meets, is told of teddy purefoy, whose wife...minnie o'toole is in labor 2 days now mass general...they share rudy's newspaper...rudy won $500 pick-4...walks...y.m.c.a....wonders what rich, lithe, & lonely wives would be swimming today...
characters
maddy dunne, exchanges letters w/rudy
michael mccoy, a prudential agent
"henry flower" rudy is to maddy
bernie lyons, acquaintance of rudy...one he tries to avoid
teddie purefoy...ditto
minnie o'toole, wife of teddie
chap 5, proteus
verse...not in the shape of a candlestick...
the poet wandered... thomas dedalus...sacked...the river is my penelope. in verse...both descriptive of thom's doin's...and stream-of-his consciousness...qqc bout mark twain mrs. sip as 'the body of the nation'...just hmmm..."i must craft a new paradise from humble stuff."
dedalus, wandering around, moping...decisions...
chap 6, hades
3 former boston latin students share rudy's dime bag of hooch...take cab to finnegan's wake...
characters
martin cunningham, boston college graduate, vice president of john hancock life insurance company
herbert "hub" hynes, tufts...editor
& rudy
tim did 2 tours in nam as green beret
there is an irish cabby (and at times other assorted minor char.)
john j. o'connell--greets the 3 at door/house/wake
rudy signs "mike mccool" for character from earlier chapter, and his name, too
mrs. finnegan.
there is a hilarious scene at the casket...then...bloom leaves for work
book 2 wandering
chapter 7, aeolus
rudy bloom leaves subway for advertising agency where he...works...
characters
wyman, account executive
myles crawford, creative director...c.e.o.
rudy is done! fired! end of the road for him...he is also dying...?
a sodden, long-haired hippie freak
lawyer named linneham
helen what's-her-name
chap 8, lestrygonians
rudy rides subway...underground man...muses on a kingston trio song, charlie & the mta...also...in chapter 1, buck and thomas exchange words...play on uber...unter...mensch and thomas...if i have that right...check...calls himself charlie, lost on the mta...says he is not the uber, is the untermensch.
characters
a blind man, viet vet, going to india wharf ...this blind vet is going to india wharf, and rudy helps him out.
margaret breen...steps out of legal seafood...
asks about
emily?/emmy--school, at bates
mark?--school, ithaca, cornell
rudy's children...
dennis breen...asylum in danvers, also a viet vet...it's that time of year
mina o'toole...is a friend of margaret's...attended to by malcolm "buck" mulligan.
rudy eats...jim & bob, two gents eating..
sees blaine boyston...worries/wonders pen/blaine
chapter 9 scylla & charybdis
the boston public library...dedalus w/nietzsche & wagner on his mind...looking for emerson book...bates hall/buck, tells buck lost job, & had job interview at hill haliday ad agency (where rudy was canned)
...the underground man...the everyday absurdity of the underground man...buck/thom back-and-forth...
rudy bloom is reading a novel...writing a novel, a picaresque bildungsroman...the 3 talk: rudy: "hacks are killing our national literary culture." "america treats best-sellers like literary lions," thomas said. "and literary lions worse than dogs."
"there is just no accounting for the tyranny of the majority," buck said.
buck is late...leaves
chap 10, wandering rocks
many characters in this chapter
reverend john conmee
one-eyed viet vet (sam, could be)
wife of donald sheehy
begins straight narrative, then has script form
a freckled grade school boy, james connor murphy, and the rev.
--pretty young shop girl
--bernie lyons
--mother & 3-yr-old daughter, puerto rican mother mom-to-be
--2 college students
--kennny kelleher, funeral director
--mortician, john k o'connell
more straight narrative, the rev riding the mbta...the green line subway
--kelleher funeral home/more script
--boston police officer ned kelly
--the viet vet...again? i think so...he shows later, too...eye-patch
--mrs rudy bloom
--blaine boyston
--miss thornton/flower shop/ playboy roses
--maddy dunne/valley of the dolls...working, legal firm
styffe, crucke, poltroon, shyster & linnehan
--she talks phone w/patty brophy
--the priest is underground on subway...wrong directions...
--rudy bloom, buying frost
--blaine, buys book for pen
--john wadsworth, rare book dealer
--jim linnehan & mike mccoy at jacob wirth's tavern on stuart street
--tom finnegan makes a delivery
--buck & haines, dinner
--father conmee, lost beneath boston on the mbta...loses his protest sign: save the unborn! had lost his wallet, earlier to the two college students
chap 11, the sirens
2 sensual college girls sang folk songs, guitar case open w/$ inside
rudy bloom...drops 2 fives...i think it was...rudy and the 2 go for drinks...contest...he loses the contest/wagers...heh!
--karen kennedy
--donna douce
--blind vet here, too...he's been here & there in the story...
12, cyclops
rudy, at jake wirth's tavern...almost runs into a chimney sweep...or vice versa....
a quote
it's the inscrutably vexing destiny of learned men to be perpetually tormented by fools.
ha ha ha ha ha!...unless you're a (learned) carpenter teaching the new apprentice how to-do...how not to-do...day one...start of day six, you are repeating the lesson...this goes on for years, and it gets to the point where you discover you're far happier (and wealthier) by going it alone...we're doomed...
characters
--one-eyed viet vet of african-american descent, sam...
--has a dog w/big balls...licks them...the dog does...not sam...the dog is called daisy, a boston terrier...all stories are better w/dogs in them, this one is a hoot.
--barney, the bar keep
--alf
--bob doran
--pisser burke, all bar guys, they discuss politics and such
a quote from p.b. : "in matters of the heart there's no man as blind as one who won't see."
--rudy, is 56 years old
--rudy and sam bet on the sox/yankees...rudy escapes sam...
chapter 13, nausicca
the daylight was coming to a close in a brash blaze of burnt umber...
--two girl friends & a nanny
--cissy caffrey, twin sons, sean & john
--edie borden, her baby son, bobby
--cissy's nanny, jennifer macdowell
--wukk wykue, boyfriend of j.m....honors, biology, trinity college
--a gentleman dressed in black mourning....rudy bloom...
--he takes a swan boat ride, solo...(omphalos)
14, oxen in the sun
rudy, visits teddy purefoy, wife 3 days agony of childbirth
amid the great miracle of life what father can say life is absurd?
thom & buck
rudy & thomas go to union oyster house...many gather there...ms harriet crotthers, haines, buck called ahead, hr horn proprietor..dr. lynch, dan maddon, dr. dixon, buck arrives...they parody a number of writers, m. crotthers does the shining...and the tool is not working now, of course..from stephen king...as the dick & jane primers from ago...
15 circe
many characters appear in this chapter...all that have already appeared, or at least, most of them...some new characters...including but not limited to smokey the bear, a house fly, elijah from the three dog night tune as an elvis...adam & eve...a couple privates w/cissy caffrey...
...i'd looked/searched, not having read joyce's work...homer's yes...not joyce, and there is a kind of re-telling of his/joyce's story...seems like...this chapter involves a brothel...bella kirke...much of this chapter is script-form
book 3 homecoming
16, eumaeus
dedalus & bloom...at the new england shelter for homeless seaman
--prince charles...old schoolmate
--an ancient gatekeeper
--pipe fitter and sheet metal worker
--they decided to go...to parker house...or how'd that work? they spot sam and daisy and they duck into the parker...or something.
some script here, too...
--a colonial wench
rudy wants to help thomas over the hump of liquor... a.a. at emmanuel church, father's day
i think it is here that rudy learns that thomas has his old job...the pope of pap...at the ad agency.
thom tells rudy he is writing/has written a novel...the bostoniad..."more like the odyssey than the iliad"...
17, ithaca
this chapter takes the form of questions, italicized, with answers in narrative form...and i'm reminded of some of the stuff they..."they"...heh! have at the back of some books now...usually some form of q&a with the author...
...so much of the story has experimented w/various forms of narration/telling...so...? i dunno...that's the form, q&a...and in this section, we get mucho back-story of rudy and thomas and family...and not having read joyce's bigger volumes, i can't say if this is "in addition" or if this is...what? thomas was born may 24, 1929....he is 45....and rudy, june 16, 1917...what was it earlier? 56?
18 penelope
here is one long sentence, penelope's stream to do w/all of rudy's concerns, addressed and then some, yet another form of narration, the use of "i"...the long sentence that one can actually read w/a hiccup or two. rudy probably doesn't deserve her...but isn't that the case for most? i dunno. probably.
19, eurykleia
this is a long prayer, the mother, praying based on the lord's prayer...the end...
overall impression
there is such a wide variety of narrative technique put to use that that alone helps move the story along...two times i thought there was a bad word choice...stop that simile...something about clam chowder the one time...and another time when two or three aromas..."entangled"...but thinking back on that one, now...hmmm, perhaps one needs to read it in context as now it seems...tolerable...
i've said i haven't read joyce's long tomes...only his portrait of the artist as a young man...but i know a bit about what his ulysses story is...a day-long narrative...the various characters...anyway, i don't know if one needs to be familiar with joyce, or homer, to experience this...perhaps a knowledge or prior reading would be a plus...or perhaps all that is required is a knowledge that this is an echo of that past?...perhaps an understanding of "circe" in joyce...or one or two of the other chapters/sequences?
tim did not die...is that a spoiler? ha ha ha ha ha! he revived...
so...finished...12 aug 12, sunday evening...earlier...'bout 5:30 p.m. e.s.t.
note also: there is a timeline at the back...bloomsday...
dedicated "to my beloved muse, virginia"
story is divided into three parts:
book 1 awakening
6 chapters
book 2 wandering
9 chapters
book three homecoming
4 chapters
greater boston, friday, june 14-father's day june 16, 1974
has this on a white page, from the odyssey--book 8
"all men owe honor to the poets--honor and awe, for they are dearest to the muse who puts upon their lips the way of life."
and this, from ulysses--proteus
"the cords of all link back. strand entwining cable of all flesh. that is why mystic monks. will you be as gods? gaze into your omphalos."
followed by a couple more quotes from the same two...buy the book...
begins:
telemachus (chapter 1)
o muse, the young maiden of dawn came up brazen from the couch of her reclining into the east over the silent streaming of the wine dark river into the flawless, brimming mystic sea.
strange connections
2nd page of the story, thomas dedalus describes "harvard is the navel on the blunt belly of the boston brahmin."..."contemplated...not conquered." strange curious, for a previous story 5-6 back, South of Broad,Pat Conroy, the prologue ends, with the eye in a tree, looking down on charleston, a dimple on the horizon...so...we're standing on our head?...feet cold?...or we're held upside down?...by whom? what? or is the charleston dimple further south?...and if that strange connection don't fit...conroy's name for the eye-narrator should, leopold bloom king...i think the dates are 'bout the same, as well...bloom day give or take
onward & upward
characters
malcolm "buck" mulligan, portly august, doctor of women's medicine, doctor of bostonian mothers-to-be, three ex-wives
thomas dedalus, doctor of the mother tongue, poet
haines, an attorney, native son of philadelphia
the three bachelors share a penthouse suite on holyoke street adjacent the hasty pudding club & overlooking the harvard yard. buck & thom exchange words...buck exits as haines enters...thom & haines jog five miles
chapter 2 calypso
each chapter, t'would appear, begins with a quote from the odyssey & another from ulysses "2" w/1 from book 5 & calypso, repospectively
characters
rudy bloom, 56 years old, was adopted, has 2 parakeets, skyler & comet, an orange tabby, kip, at 27 charles street, an advertising writer, b-day is father's day this year, married to
penelope bloom, a much younger woman (a dozen years), a real looker
...penelope keeps a bookshop, books in bloom, also a poet
luigi deluca, italian grocer (what is it w/the italians? they own ALL the groceries!)
blaine boyston, a beacon hill publisher, wants to publish pen's love sonnets
breakfast, paper...obits: tim finnegan passed, fell overboard drowned...left behind a wife/9 kids, walks to grocery...home, w/wife, talk of fan mail dropped thru slot...from blaine...talk of tim's wake etc...talk of blaine/pen...pen/blaine
chap 3, nestor
the freshman class of harvard english students listened attentively and took notes as the distractions of the season tempted them.
--thomas dedalus lecturer...speaking of a school of criticism w/roots in hegel & nietzsche...apollo/dionysius...
characters
student scholar harriet crotthers
ramzi, an indian student
daniel, from phillips andover
dr. deasy, chairman of english department, harvard
greek word, sophrosyne...nothing in excess (know thyself)
tragedy--the name of grain used to make beer.
later, chairman's office, harvard english department, gives dedalus the news that he is not being kept, no tenure, no job, that he is a drunk. their exchange is presented as script.
chap 4 the lotos eaters
rudy bloom (married) at the post office, sniffing a letter from maddy dunne, a contact from the personals in boston phoenix...rudy will read letter in a private setting.
...walks, stops crabtree & evelyn shop buys stuff for wife...walks, meets michael mccoy, a prudential agent...walks, emmanuel church...reads maddy's letter--maddy knows rudy is married, does not matter to her...rudy is "henry flower" to her...walks...reads quotes...buys booze for wake...thoughts...bernie lyons he meets, is told of teddy purefoy, whose wife...minnie o'toole is in labor 2 days now mass general...they share rudy's newspaper...rudy won $500 pick-4...walks...y.m.c.a....wonders what rich, lithe, & lonely wives would be swimming today...
characters
maddy dunne, exchanges letters w/rudy
michael mccoy, a prudential agent
"henry flower" rudy is to maddy
bernie lyons, acquaintance of rudy...one he tries to avoid
teddie purefoy...ditto
minnie o'toole, wife of teddie
chap 5, proteus
verse...not in the shape of a candlestick...
the poet wandered... thomas dedalus...sacked...the river is my penelope. in verse...both descriptive of thom's doin's...and stream-of-his consciousness...qqc bout mark twain mrs. sip as 'the body of the nation'...just hmmm..."i must craft a new paradise from humble stuff."
dedalus, wandering around, moping...decisions...
chap 6, hades
3 former boston latin students share rudy's dime bag of hooch...take cab to finnegan's wake...
characters
martin cunningham, boston college graduate, vice president of john hancock life insurance company
herbert "hub" hynes, tufts...editor
& rudy
tim did 2 tours in nam as green beret
there is an irish cabby (and at times other assorted minor char.)
john j. o'connell--greets the 3 at door/house/wake
rudy signs "mike mccool" for character from earlier chapter, and his name, too
mrs. finnegan.
there is a hilarious scene at the casket...then...bloom leaves for work
book 2 wandering
chapter 7, aeolus
rudy bloom leaves subway for advertising agency where he...works...
characters
wyman, account executive
myles crawford, creative director...c.e.o.
rudy is done! fired! end of the road for him...he is also dying...?
a sodden, long-haired hippie freak
lawyer named linneham
helen what's-her-name
chap 8, lestrygonians
rudy rides subway...underground man...muses on a kingston trio song, charlie & the mta...also...in chapter 1, buck and thomas exchange words...play on uber...unter...mensch and thomas...if i have that right...check...calls himself charlie, lost on the mta...says he is not the uber, is the untermensch.
characters
a blind man, viet vet, going to india wharf ...this blind vet is going to india wharf, and rudy helps him out.
margaret breen...steps out of legal seafood...
asks about
emily?/emmy--school, at bates
mark?--school, ithaca, cornell
rudy's children...
dennis breen...asylum in danvers, also a viet vet...it's that time of year
mina o'toole...is a friend of margaret's...attended to by malcolm "buck" mulligan.
rudy eats...jim & bob, two gents eating..
sees blaine boyston...worries/wonders pen/blaine
chapter 9 scylla & charybdis
the boston public library...dedalus w/nietzsche & wagner on his mind...looking for emerson book...bates hall/buck, tells buck lost job, & had job interview at hill haliday ad agency (where rudy was canned)
...the underground man...the everyday absurdity of the underground man...buck/thom back-and-forth...
rudy bloom is reading a novel...writing a novel, a picaresque bildungsroman...the 3 talk: rudy: "hacks are killing our national literary culture." "america treats best-sellers like literary lions," thomas said. "and literary lions worse than dogs."
"there is just no accounting for the tyranny of the majority," buck said.
buck is late...leaves
chap 10, wandering rocks
many characters in this chapter
reverend john conmee
one-eyed viet vet (sam, could be)
wife of donald sheehy
begins straight narrative, then has script form
a freckled grade school boy, james connor murphy, and the rev.
--pretty young shop girl
--bernie lyons
--mother & 3-yr-old daughter, puerto rican mother mom-to-be
--2 college students
--kennny kelleher, funeral director
--mortician, john k o'connell
more straight narrative, the rev riding the mbta...the green line subway
--kelleher funeral home/more script
--boston police officer ned kelly
--the viet vet...again? i think so...he shows later, too...eye-patch
--mrs rudy bloom
--blaine boyston
--miss thornton/flower shop/ playboy roses
--maddy dunne/valley of the dolls...working, legal firm
styffe, crucke, poltroon, shyster & linnehan
--she talks phone w/patty brophy
--the priest is underground on subway...wrong directions...
--rudy bloom, buying frost
--blaine, buys book for pen
--john wadsworth, rare book dealer
--jim linnehan & mike mccoy at jacob wirth's tavern on stuart street
--tom finnegan makes a delivery
--buck & haines, dinner
--father conmee, lost beneath boston on the mbta...loses his protest sign: save the unborn! had lost his wallet, earlier to the two college students
chap 11, the sirens
2 sensual college girls sang folk songs, guitar case open w/$ inside
rudy bloom...drops 2 fives...i think it was...rudy and the 2 go for drinks...contest...he loses the contest/wagers...heh!
--karen kennedy
--donna douce
--blind vet here, too...he's been here & there in the story...
12, cyclops
rudy, at jake wirth's tavern...almost runs into a chimney sweep...or vice versa....
a quote
it's the inscrutably vexing destiny of learned men to be perpetually tormented by fools.
ha ha ha ha ha!...unless you're a (learned) carpenter teaching the new apprentice how to-do...how not to-do...day one...start of day six, you are repeating the lesson...this goes on for years, and it gets to the point where you discover you're far happier (and wealthier) by going it alone...we're doomed...
characters
--one-eyed viet vet of african-american descent, sam...
--has a dog w/big balls...licks them...the dog does...not sam...the dog is called daisy, a boston terrier...all stories are better w/dogs in them, this one is a hoot.
--barney, the bar keep
--alf
--bob doran
--pisser burke, all bar guys, they discuss politics and such
a quote from p.b. : "in matters of the heart there's no man as blind as one who won't see."
--rudy, is 56 years old
--rudy and sam bet on the sox/yankees...rudy escapes sam...
chapter 13, nausicca
the daylight was coming to a close in a brash blaze of burnt umber...
--two girl friends & a nanny
--cissy caffrey, twin sons, sean & john
--edie borden, her baby son, bobby
--cissy's nanny, jennifer macdowell
--wukk wykue, boyfriend of j.m....honors, biology, trinity college
--a gentleman dressed in black mourning....rudy bloom...
--he takes a swan boat ride, solo...(omphalos)
14, oxen in the sun
rudy, visits teddy purefoy, wife 3 days agony of childbirth
amid the great miracle of life what father can say life is absurd?
thom & buck
rudy & thomas go to union oyster house...many gather there...ms harriet crotthers, haines, buck called ahead, hr horn proprietor..dr. lynch, dan maddon, dr. dixon, buck arrives...they parody a number of writers, m. crotthers does the shining...and the tool is not working now, of course..from stephen king...as the dick & jane primers from ago...
15 circe
many characters appear in this chapter...all that have already appeared, or at least, most of them...some new characters...including but not limited to smokey the bear, a house fly, elijah from the three dog night tune as an elvis...adam & eve...a couple privates w/cissy caffrey...
...i'd looked/searched, not having read joyce's work...homer's yes...not joyce, and there is a kind of re-telling of his/joyce's story...seems like...this chapter involves a brothel...bella kirke...much of this chapter is script-form
book 3 homecoming
16, eumaeus
dedalus & bloom...at the new england shelter for homeless seaman
--prince charles...old schoolmate
--an ancient gatekeeper
--pipe fitter and sheet metal worker
--they decided to go...to parker house...or how'd that work? they spot sam and daisy and they duck into the parker...or something.
some script here, too...
--a colonial wench
rudy wants to help thomas over the hump of liquor... a.a. at emmanuel church, father's day
i think it is here that rudy learns that thomas has his old job...the pope of pap...at the ad agency.
thom tells rudy he is writing/has written a novel...the bostoniad..."more like the odyssey than the iliad"...
17, ithaca
this chapter takes the form of questions, italicized, with answers in narrative form...and i'm reminded of some of the stuff they..."they"...heh! have at the back of some books now...usually some form of q&a with the author...
...so much of the story has experimented w/various forms of narration/telling...so...? i dunno...that's the form, q&a...and in this section, we get mucho back-story of rudy and thomas and family...and not having read joyce's bigger volumes, i can't say if this is "in addition" or if this is...what? thomas was born may 24, 1929....he is 45....and rudy, june 16, 1917...what was it earlier? 56?
18 penelope
here is one long sentence, penelope's stream to do w/all of rudy's concerns, addressed and then some, yet another form of narration, the use of "i"...the long sentence that one can actually read w/a hiccup or two. rudy probably doesn't deserve her...but isn't that the case for most? i dunno. probably.
19, eurykleia
this is a long prayer, the mother, praying based on the lord's prayer...the end...
overall impression
there is such a wide variety of narrative technique put to use that that alone helps move the story along...two times i thought there was a bad word choice...stop that simile...something about clam chowder the one time...and another time when two or three aromas..."entangled"...but thinking back on that one, now...hmmm, perhaps one needs to read it in context as now it seems...tolerable...
i've said i haven't read joyce's long tomes...only his portrait of the artist as a young man...but i know a bit about what his ulysses story is...a day-long narrative...the various characters...anyway, i don't know if one needs to be familiar with joyce, or homer, to experience this...perhaps a knowledge or prior reading would be a plus...or perhaps all that is required is a knowledge that this is an echo of that past?...perhaps an understanding of "circe" in joyce...or one or two of the other chapters/sequences?
tim did not die...is that a spoiler? ha ha ha ha ha! he revived...
so...finished...12 aug 12, sunday evening...earlier...'bout 5:30 p.m. e.s.t.
note also: there is a timeline at the back...bloomsday...
September 18, 2013
I'm always suspicious of writers such as Mr Lentz, who feel the need to rate their own books with 5 stars, and to proudly add them to lists such as 'Most Difficult Novels', as if proximity to Joyce and Eco in a list will add some intellectual merit to their own work. Mr Lentz seems to have intentionally written a book that it is difficult to read, wrongly equating difficulty with intellectual complexity. This of course is not the same as writing a book such as Ulysses, which is 'difficult' not because Joyce choose it to be, but because he couldn't help but write it so.
If this novel is indeed 'difficult', it is not because it is profound, just rather badly written. Interior monologue is beautiful in the hands of Woolf or Proust, but when used by an amateur, it just becomes embarrassing and ridiculous.
Perhaps if Mr Lentz didn't try so hard to be someone he is not, he might one day write a good book.
If this novel is indeed 'difficult', it is not because it is profound, just rather badly written. Interior monologue is beautiful in the hands of Woolf or Proust, but when used by an amateur, it just becomes embarrassing and ridiculous.
Perhaps if Mr Lentz didn't try so hard to be someone he is not, he might one day write a good book.
June 30, 2011
Perhaps the most striking aspect—at least initially—of Bloomsday: The Bostoniad is the decidedly striking parallels to Joyce’s Ulysses. These parallels are, of course, wholly intentional and justified in that Bloomsday is meant to be both a continuation and re-imagination of its predecessor. Clearly, it is a bold undertaking, and admittedly, as someone who admires Joyce and delights in Ulysses, I had my misgivings about such an enterprise. However, to put it plainly, author David B. Lentz pulls it off unequivocally with no small amount of flair.
Readers who are familiar with Joyce’s work will find the parallels between Ulysses and Bloomsday arresting at times—almost to the point of distraction—but will no doubt chuckle and even hee-haw at the ingenuity of the author. (For example, the Citizen throws bottles of beer at an escaping Bloom instead of a biscuit tin). However, after the first few chapters, the parallels become simply pleasing enhancements and the story of Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus takes command of the reader’s imagination on its own terms.
The plot of Bloomsday resembles that of Ulysses only superficially. Bloomsday offers some notable variations, especially those pertaining to the surprising paternity of Bloom and Dedalus. Another important variation is both Bloom and Dedalus lose their jobs on the morning of June 16th, although as the day wears on, Dedalus unwittingly picks up the very copywriting job which Rudy Bloom has earlier lost. This is a significant in that it informs one of the major themes of Bloomsday—capitalist greed in a society where one’s value is measured by his/her net worth. The setting, too, is important to this theme: Beantown, the Dublin of America. The sense of alienation that Rudy Bloom feels in Beantown has nothing to do with his being Jewish (he has converted to Christianity) as Leopold Bloom’s sense of alienation in the Dublin of Ulysses does, but stems from the fact that he is jobless in a rampantly (rabidly) capitalist society. In fact, consuming is at the heart of nearly everything Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus do throughout their wanderings in the day and night duration of Bloomsday, and money facilitates that consumption. However, the plain fact that Rudy Bloom has lost his job is a constant source of tension for Bloom, as well as the reader. Also at the back of Rudy Bloom’s mind is his wife Penelope’s supposed intimate rendezvous with Blaine Boylston, womanizer, and the publisher of her poems. Like Leopold Bloom, Rudy is reluctant to go home—to give up his wandering—for fear of what he believes he will find there. Also like Leopold Bloom, Rudy is guilty of his own romantic dalliances. (He writes suggestive letters to Maddy Dunne and lusts after Margaret Breen.) And in this way, Lentz manages to make Rudy Bloom as lovable and yet as flawed a character as Joyce’s Leopold Bloom.
Thomas Dedalus’s predicament is just the opposite of Rudy Bloom’s. Having taken Bloom’s copywriting job, Dedalus now finds himself in a position to reap the benefits of living in a capitalist society. Like Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, Thomas’s turmoil stems from an unrealized sense of identity. In short, he is the artist who has sold his proverbial soul and along with it, his sense of self. Forced from the hallowed halls of academe, he now braces himself for a world of dining and drinking with wealthy clients who wouldn't know Prada from Proust. And in this way does he, the artist, “suffer” for his art.
In Bloomsday, Lentz has written a novel very much in the style of Joyce, replete with wit and wordplay, inner monologues, and dialogues based on rapid-fire repartee. (When Margaret Breen tells Bloom that the special of the day is “scrod,” he replies: “You rarely hear that word in the pluperfect subjunctive.”) It also comes loaded with both literary and popular allusions with a decidedly American bent. Like Ulysses, Bloomsday is a challenging but ultimately rewarding book. It demands to be savored and begs to be studied, for inevitably there is much that is missed in the first pass. At the same time, it is a highly entertaining book that can be enjoyed simply on the merits of Lentz’s remarkable command of the language and his ability to turn a phrase. In this sense, then, it really is about the journey and not the destination.
Readers who are familiar with Joyce’s work will find the parallels between Ulysses and Bloomsday arresting at times—almost to the point of distraction—but will no doubt chuckle and even hee-haw at the ingenuity of the author. (For example, the Citizen throws bottles of beer at an escaping Bloom instead of a biscuit tin). However, after the first few chapters, the parallels become simply pleasing enhancements and the story of Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus takes command of the reader’s imagination on its own terms.
The plot of Bloomsday resembles that of Ulysses only superficially. Bloomsday offers some notable variations, especially those pertaining to the surprising paternity of Bloom and Dedalus. Another important variation is both Bloom and Dedalus lose their jobs on the morning of June 16th, although as the day wears on, Dedalus unwittingly picks up the very copywriting job which Rudy Bloom has earlier lost. This is a significant in that it informs one of the major themes of Bloomsday—capitalist greed in a society where one’s value is measured by his/her net worth. The setting, too, is important to this theme: Beantown, the Dublin of America. The sense of alienation that Rudy Bloom feels in Beantown has nothing to do with his being Jewish (he has converted to Christianity) as Leopold Bloom’s sense of alienation in the Dublin of Ulysses does, but stems from the fact that he is jobless in a rampantly (rabidly) capitalist society. In fact, consuming is at the heart of nearly everything Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus do throughout their wanderings in the day and night duration of Bloomsday, and money facilitates that consumption. However, the plain fact that Rudy Bloom has lost his job is a constant source of tension for Bloom, as well as the reader. Also at the back of Rudy Bloom’s mind is his wife Penelope’s supposed intimate rendezvous with Blaine Boylston, womanizer, and the publisher of her poems. Like Leopold Bloom, Rudy is reluctant to go home—to give up his wandering—for fear of what he believes he will find there. Also like Leopold Bloom, Rudy is guilty of his own romantic dalliances. (He writes suggestive letters to Maddy Dunne and lusts after Margaret Breen.) And in this way, Lentz manages to make Rudy Bloom as lovable and yet as flawed a character as Joyce’s Leopold Bloom.
Thomas Dedalus’s predicament is just the opposite of Rudy Bloom’s. Having taken Bloom’s copywriting job, Dedalus now finds himself in a position to reap the benefits of living in a capitalist society. Like Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, Thomas’s turmoil stems from an unrealized sense of identity. In short, he is the artist who has sold his proverbial soul and along with it, his sense of self. Forced from the hallowed halls of academe, he now braces himself for a world of dining and drinking with wealthy clients who wouldn't know Prada from Proust. And in this way does he, the artist, “suffer” for his art.
In Bloomsday, Lentz has written a novel very much in the style of Joyce, replete with wit and wordplay, inner monologues, and dialogues based on rapid-fire repartee. (When Margaret Breen tells Bloom that the special of the day is “scrod,” he replies: “You rarely hear that word in the pluperfect subjunctive.”) It also comes loaded with both literary and popular allusions with a decidedly American bent. Like Ulysses, Bloomsday is a challenging but ultimately rewarding book. It demands to be savored and begs to be studied, for inevitably there is much that is missed in the first pass. At the same time, it is a highly entertaining book that can be enjoyed simply on the merits of Lentz’s remarkable command of the language and his ability to turn a phrase. In this sense, then, it really is about the journey and not the destination.
August 7, 2011
This was an excellent book. Some of the subject matter, though I regret to say, might have gone over my head a bit simply because this is just such a striking read. I definitely would recommend it, but only after you've given the Odyssey a quick review to really indulge in all this book has to offer.
**I won this book in a First-Reads Giveaway. My review is a reflection of my honest opinion and is not influenced by the fact that I got the book for free.
**I won this book in a First-Reads Giveaway. My review is a reflection of my honest opinion and is not influenced by the fact that I got the book for free.
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