‘How sick, sick, sick I am of Dublin! It is the city of failure, of rancour and of unhappiness.’

gDuring my senior year of high school, my enterprising and optimistic English teacher decided to assign our class James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I couldn't read it (sorry, Ms. Horger...). I try not to give up on books before getting at least half-way through them, but I was finished with this by the end of the first chapter. It was like digging for a lost ring in a vat of concrete: Not worth the effort for my time.

I trudged through the first hundred or so pages, but when it got to the 50-page transcript of a sermon about going to hell, I couldn't make it any farther. I SparkNoted the rest, just like any other good future English major would.

So while I can appreciate the importance of the multiday celebration of Bloomsday all over Dublin in honor of Joyce's Ulysses, where people decide it's a fantastic idea to dress up in 1904-appropriate garb and wander the streets, I can't see myself joining in any time soon.

Joyce himself had a notoriously tumultuous relationship with the city (as evidenced by his 1909 quote that titles this post).

My friend Shannon, who is currently in Dublin, said the celebrations are "awesome." There is apparently a random guy who is dressed up as James Joyce that is poking people with a cane while reading from Ulysses, and I am all for random acts of violent street performance.

Has anyone else had a James Joyce experience? Or even finished one of his books?