Miette's Bedtime Story Podcast » Joyce, James

Two Gallants by James Joyce

miette — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:07:16 +0000

Bloomsday is here again, as you surely know, and as is my ritual, here’s another story from the Dubliners. This is the 7th such reading, and sometimes, the thought of keeping this up for eight more years to finish the collection is one I tend to avoid.

But to keep things spicy in the meantime and extend the celebration, I have recorded a hidden bonus track. Now, before you go randomly link-clicking, if you’re offended at all by utter filth, if you think the things that two consenting grownups do with the bodies of each should should only be done with a chorus of angels humming hymns in the background while doves fly overhead, then go elsewhere, please. If none of this is true, go listen to my joyous retelling of a naughty letter from Joyce to Nora. I mean it. FILTHY. I’m warning you.

Whatever your kinky streak, happy day. Here’s the Bloomsday collection to-date.

After the Race

miette — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:38:12 +0000

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.

An Encounter

miette — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:35:40 +0000

I’m so excited about Bloomsday that I’m sharing the love a day early this year. In fact, I was so excited that I almost went ahead and read all the stories from Dubliners that I haven’t yet done for you, but then it hit me that I’d have to move forward next year with my plan to do Ulysses in its entirety. And, well, I don’t know if I have the pipes for that yet. And I don’t know if you have the perseverance to listen to me indulge the Joyce itch. Because then I think, well, if I were to consider reading Ulysses, then what I really should do is find some balls and put them on the table (eh, proverbially) and read the Wake to you. And that’s just crazy thinking.

Meanwhile, Happy Bloomsday and here’s another from Dubliners.

Eveline

miette — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:20:27 +0000

Were I a listmaker, and perhaps I am, you would be the warm recipient of many reasons to be grateful when the internet goes for broke on Bloomsday. This list, were I to make one, would include the subcategories: FOR ME and FOR YOU. Topping the FOR YOU list, were such a thing to exist, might be an extended two-day belated story from Dubliners, a way of bloody-marying your hangover into oblivion.

And in the FOR ME column of our imagined list, not in the treasured top slots but up there, would be the gift of Joycean spam upon a digital reemergence: boltmaker stippled scrapy heartedness burgoo overplentiful unended hydrophobous.

Araby

miette — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 09:00:04 +0000

Happy Bloomsday to you, and happy third Bloomsday podcast from your Miette, an event which many of you will remember is dear to me.

And I can hear you now: “Oh, that’s nice Miette, but Bloomsday is about Ulysses. When are you going to read Ulysses?”

Well, I didn’t do the entire thing (maybe next year) but with my friends at Librivox, we’ve managed to satisfy the best sort of Bloomophile. I’m serious. Really so.

The Sisters

miette — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 05:01:48 +0000

When we compare tonight’s with last year’s Bloomsday podcast, just t’ pose a friendly comparison, we see an almost incredible improvement in sound quality, due either to a highly paid audio engineer or a reluctant purchase of a piece of equipment. At this rate, I can’t help but think that next year’s podcast will be accompanied with super-surround-sound and Smellavision. So a girl can dream, anyhow.

The Boarding House

miette — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 08:00:50 +0000

Happy Bloomsday!

If your house is at all like mine (and let’s hope it’s not, let’s hope it’s, in fact, very little like mine, with the tangerine walls and the petting zoo and the flora and god knows what sort of fauna hidden in the balls of hair BUT), tonight you will not sleep at all, as you lie awake waiting up watching the clock tick down to Bloomsday morning and what might be waiting for you in your stockings. I, for one, have been very good all year, what with all the podcasting, and am expecting the Bloomsday elves to acknowledge this as fact.

A rare exercise in linkage for those new to Bloomsday festivities:

Wikipedia entry on Bloomsday

What I consider the definitive site on all online Bloomsday cheer.

For those in New York, you can listen to Bloomsday on Broadway on the radio or spend lots of money on tickets to watch those (much more adept at reading than your Miette) read it to you. Or maybe you’d rather listen online

The short of it, for those who can’t be bothered to follow links: listen to Joyce and drink an awful lot today.

This from Dubliners: