Monday, June 16 2008
Happy Bloomsday!
And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.
Happy Bloomsday! June 16th is the international celebration of the life of James Joyce, either the greatest author who ever lived, or the biggest literary pain in the neck yet conceived. For those who skipped freshman Lit, Joyce was an Irish writer who either wrote the first truly new literary form since the invention of the novel (generally thought to be Aphra Behn's Oroonoko in 1688) or perpetrated the most complex and multi-layered literary hoax in human history.
I think which side you come down on (if you care) depends on what kind of grade you got on that paper you wrote about Finnegan's Wake. Personally I got a C minus, which was startlingly good work for me, so I think of Joyce as the thinking man's Beckett (ha, I love that line!)
But why Joyce in a wine blog? Turns out he enjoyed a nip now and then, and his beverage of choice was . . . wine.
". . . he was a stupendous drinker and included among his companions Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett (who served as his secretary for a brief time), Ezra Pound and many other expatriate writers residing in Paris during the 1920s. Joyce drank mostly white wine . . ."
Go figure! Joyce was a white wine kind of guy, but it turns out that there's a little controversy about what his favorite wine actually was. In Finnegan's Wake he declares it a Swiss white, Fendant de Sion, Chasselas-based white with very little aroma, flavour or distinguishing characterstics--Swiss wines taste neutral? Who would have thought! Provins Valais, a Swiss winery even made a Cuvee James Joyce to commemorate this.
However, Joyce's grandson, Stephen James Joyce (a bit of a killjoy, if truth be told) declared that Grandpa's favorite tipple was actually Neuchatel. Since SJJ is known for suing, grandstanding and sucking the fun out of all things Joyce for copyright purposes, one might take this with a grain of salt, or perhaps some mild cheese and fruit.
Be that as it may, I'm going to curl up with my copy of Ulysses tonight and a glass of something crisp and white and do my best to try to figure out what Joyce was talking about.
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