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Today is Bloomsday, the hundred and tenth anniversary of the events in James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” The weather in Dublin looks good; the sun won’t set tonight until just before ten. If you are a young tryster who happens to be in Dublin, why not take a walk through Ringsend Park, the way Joyce and his girl did that evening? Everybody else can commemorate the day by buying and reading Kevin Birmingham’s terrific new “biography” of Ulysses, “The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses.”

The hero—the Ulysses—of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” is Leopold Bloom: a man, like Homer’s hero, skilled in all manner of contending, a wanderer, a strategist, a man of polytrypos—“many twists and turns.” For Joyce, Homer’s hero was the only complete person in literature. Hamlet was a human being, Joyce said, but he was “son only”:
Ulysses is son to Laertes, but he is father to Telemachus, husband to Penelope, lover of Calypso, companion in arms of the Greek warriors around Troy and King of Ithaca. He was subjected to many trials, but with wisdom and courage came through them all. Don’t forget that he was a war dodger who tried to evade military service by simulating madness. He might never have taken up arms and gone to Troy, but the Greek recruiting sergeant was too clever for him and, while he was ploughing the sands, placed young Telemachus in front of his plough. But once at the war the conscientious objector became a jusqu’auboutist. When the others wanted to abandon the siege he insisted on staying till Troy should fall.

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