Why Bloomsday Is Special This Year

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/06/why-bloomsday-special-year/53620/



DUBLIN — This weekend I am traveling to a dual celebration, of a great Irish writer and of copyright freedom. For June 16 is Bloomsday, the day in 1904 captured through the eyes of Leopold Bloom by James Joyce in his epic novel Ulysses. Each year in Dublin fans of Joyce gather to celebrate the work in a day of public readings conducted at locations across the city that are featured in the book.

2012 is a special year for these Joyceans. The 71st since Joyce’s death, it marks the first — across the EU at any rate — that his work may be shared freely among them, without needing permission — for public readings, performances, or re-interpretations — from his estate. This is no small matter: since inheriting the estate in 1982, Joyce’s grandson Stephen Joyce has gained a reputation as the most controlling literary executor in history.

Copyright’s recent history is exclusively one of concessions granted to copyright holders — who are increasingly multinational corporations such as TimeWarner and EMI and wealthy estates — either extensions in the scope of copyright’s protection or the length of its term, or streamlined mechanisms for its enforcement.

The public are the losers in these deals, yet they have rarely been moved to join the chorus of academics and archivists and their persistent protest that we are moving ever further from the view of copyright established by the framers of the Constitution: a necessary, temporary, evil to promote the health of a knowledge base that is ultimately shared. Indeed, our journey towards a corporate vision of perpetual knowledge assets exploited for profit seems unstoppable.

[6000eliot]

1. Because its my birthday!

I decree that there will be free Joyce for all in honor of the occasion!

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. The BBC is doing a 5 and a half hour radio dramatisation of it through the day

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18469904

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jl7l9

Hopefully, the podcast recordings are available outside the UK.

RTE in Ireland did do a complete recording of the entire book - about 28 hours, I think - some years ago. Whether that's available anywhere, I don't know.

[agent46]

3. Happy Bloomsday!

This is an interesting article for me because as a child of nine, I performed in a NYC off-broadway production of Stephen D, an adaptation of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In that production, I played Stephen as a boy. The actor who played Stephen as a man, was Stephen Joyce, the grandson of James Joyce. (Mentioned in this article.) He was very kind to me and took me under his wing. He and Roy Schieder often let me do my homework quietly in their dressing room, which they shared. Many formative memories. Today is a good day to remember and appreciate the deep influence Joyce had on my life from those days to this.