Bloomsday

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.

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 reading. 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.

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.

"'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 Nietzsche, 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, Nietzsche 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." -- Leonard Seet, Author of "The Spiritual Life"

"Fledgling at Play I read this play, momentarily unaware that it was actually a companion to a fully-fledged novel. This might turn out to be fortuitous, because if I had read both works in reverse order, I might have been tempted to treat this work as secondary, instead of a creative act that stands and succeeds on its own merits. As you would expect with a play, the dialogue is the chief mode of communication with the reader. It’s possible that it is a distillation of the dialogue from the novel. However, there is no sense of it being disjointed or culled down from a greater whole. In fact, it propels forward like a very fast train or a jet fighter. I read it in one sitting, and upon putting it down, could only find it in myself to say, “Wow.” Extrapolation, That’s the By Word “Bloomsday”, as the title suggests, is an extrapolation on James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Structurally, it takes Episodes 14, 15, 16 and 18, and transposes them in place and time to Boston in 1974. It’s not readily apparent why David has chosen this era, except that for many of us alive today, Vietnam represents our closest cultural experience of coming home from a long and winding war, apart from the excursions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran (which, for those who remember, don’t have the same resonance as the war that divided almost every first world country and transformed culture and politics forever). So 1974 mightn’t be contemporary, but it is as symbolic as the Trojan War was to Homer and Joyce. At its heart, “Ulysses” doesn’t just describe a city (Dublin), it describes a family. At a more macro level, it describes a nation at war with England and internally within itself. I suspect David selected Boston, not just because he resides there, but because it received a large proportion of the Irish emigrants who arrived in America in the nineteenth century. It therefore makes it a likely destination for the descendants of Leopold and Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, who feature in the play. “Bloomsday” therefore perpetuates Joyce’s concerns into the twentieth century and, by inference, to today. A Play on Words If “Ulysses” is the grandparent, “Bloomsday” is a legitimate grandchild. Just as the play is not an inferior distillation of the novel, it is not a dilution of the creativity of Joyce. It’s a courageous act to stand up and ask to be measured against Joyce or “Ulysses”, but I think David has succeeded in this work. It’s a work rich with wit, punning, wordplay and wisdom. I can indulge in this wordplay in short, sharp exchanges, usually with another swordsperson or fencer, but I doubt whether I could sustain the effort so successfully for over 100 pages. Besides, spontaneous exchanges are intrinsically ephemeral. David’s words are not just designed to endure, they are intended to be spoken by live actors on the stage. It’s the quality of work that should become a mainstay of every Bloomsday. Playful Allusions An allusion isn’t just a dry reference to something. Its etymology reveals that it derives from the Latin word, “alludere”, which means "to play, sport, joke, jest." “Bloomsday” is so rich with allusion, it’s difficult to track its inspiration. I felt that its feet were grounded in the Bible, Shakespeare and, obviously, “Ulysses”. But David’s notes also mention Poe, Hemingway and Frost. The more you look, the more you find. And it’s all gold, no fool’s gold. Except to the extent that, in this work, everybody plays the fool. Men and Women of Good Fortune As with “Ulysses”, the apparent focus of “Bloomsday” is men, in this case Rudy Bloom and Dr Thomas Dedalus, descendants of the protagonists of Joyce’s novel. Yet, as with “Ulysses”, it builds to a climax that is shared with women, if not wholly concentrated on them. “Ulysses” might be construed as a romance with Dublin at the centre, but it is also a love letter to Molly Bloom and womanhood. David extrapolates on this theme, and makes “Bloomsday” a celebration of women or woman as lover, wife, muse and mother. There could be no creation unless a child was first born of a woman. From that point onwards, Men play, ultimately, not just to please themselves, but to impress and/or seduce Women. Having seduced a good Woman, “Bloomsday” might just reflect Man’s effort to deserve, retain and maintain that Woman." -- Goodreads, June 11, 2011

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. -- Eric Sonnenschein, Novelist, Author of "Ad Nomad"