22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Vonnegut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

in Literature | July 9th, 2012

If you read Open Cul­ture, smart mon­ey says you’ll also enjoy Let­ters of Note, a site we occa­sion­al­ly ref­er­ence. They col­lect, post, and pro­vide con­text for “fas­ci­nat­ing let­ters, post­cards, telegrams, fax­es, and mem­os” to and from all man­ners of lumi­nar­ies through­out the his­to­ry of art, pol­i­tics, music, sci­ence, media, and, er, let­ters. Dig into the archives and you’ll find a mis­sive home from Kurt Von­negut, a notable let­ter-writer if ever there was one. Ded­i­cat­ed Von­negut read­ers will rec­og­nize the tone of the nov­el­ist, although here, at the age of 22, he had yet to become one. A Pri­vate in the Sec­ond World War, he was tak­en pris­on­er on Decem­ber 19, 1944, dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Bulge. Hav­ing then done time in an under­ground sec­tion of a Dres­den work camp known, yes, as “Slaugh­ter­house Five,” he sur­vived the sub­se­quent bomb­ing of the city and wound up in a repa­tri­a­tion camp by May 1945. There, he wrote what fol­lows:

Dear peo­ple:

I’m told that you were prob­a­bly nev­er informed that I was any­thing oth­er than “miss­ing in action.” Chances are that you also failed to receive any of the let­ters I wrote from Ger­many. That leaves me a lot of explain­ing to do — in pre­cis:

I’ve been a pris­on­er of war since Decem­ber 19th, 1944, when our divi­sion was cut to rib­bons by Hitler’s last des­per­ate thrust through Lux­em­burg and Bel­gium. Sev­en Fanat­i­cal Panz­er Divi­sions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges’ First Army. The oth­er Amer­i­can Divi­sions on our flanks man­aged to pull out: We were oblig­ed to stay and fight. Bay­o­nets aren’t much good against tanks: Our ammu­ni­tion, food and med­ical sup­plies gave out and our casu­al­ties out-num­bered those who could still fight — so we gave up. The 106th got a Pres­i­den­tial Cita­tion and some British Dec­o­ra­tion from Mont­gomery for it, I’m told, but I’ll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren’t wound­ed. For that much thank God.

Well, the super­men marched us, with­out food, water or sleep to Lim­berg, a dis­tance of about six­ty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, six­ty men to each small, unven­ti­lat­ed, unheat­ed box car. There were no san­i­tary accom­mo­da­tions — the floors were cov­ered with fresh cow dung. There was­n’t room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the oth­er half stood. We spent sev­er­al days, includ­ing Christ­mas, on that Lim­berg sid­ing. On Christ­mas eve the Roy­al Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hun­dred-and-fifty of us. We got a lit­tle water Christ­mas Day and moved slow­ly across Ger­many to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year’s Day. The Ger­mans herd­ed us through scald­ing delous­ing show­ers. Many men died from shock in the show­ers after ten days of star­va­tion, thirst and expo­sure. But I did­n’t.

Under the Gene­va Con­ven­tion, Offi­cers and Non-com­mis­sioned Offi­cers are not oblig­ed to work when tak­en pris­on­er. I am, as you know, a Pri­vate. One-hun­dred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dres­den work camp on Jan­u­ary 10th. I was their leader by virtue of the lit­tle Ger­man I spoke. It was our mis­for­tune to have sadis­tic and fanat­i­cal guards. We were refused med­ical atten­tion and cloth­ing: We were giv­en long hours at extreme­ly hard labor. Our food ration was two-hun­dred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unsea­soned pota­to soup each day. After des­per­ate­ly try­ing to improve our sit­u­a­tion for two months and hav­ing been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Rus­sians came. They beat me up a lit­tle. I was fired as group leader. Beat­ings were very small time: — one boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for steal­ing food.

On about Feb­ru­ary 14th the Amer­i­cans came over, fol­lowed by the R.A.F. their com­bined labors killed 250,000 peo­ple in twen­ty-four hours and destroyed all of Dres­den — pos­si­bly the world’s most beau­ti­ful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work car­ry­ing corpses from Air-Raid shel­ters; women, chil­dren, old men; dead from con­cus­sion, fire or suf­fo­ca­tion. Civil­ians cursed us and threw rocks as we car­ried bod­ies to huge funer­al pyres in the city.

When Gen­er­al Pat­ton took Leipzig we were evac­u­at­ed on foot to (‘the Sax­ony-Czecho­slo­va­kian bor­der’?). There we remained until the war end­ed. Our guards desert­ed us. On that hap­py day the Rus­sians were intent on mop­ping up iso­lat­ed out­law resis­tance in our sec­tor. Their planes (P‑39’s) strafed and bombed us, killing four­teen, but not me.

Eight of us stole a team and wag­on. We trav­eled and loot­ed our way through Sude­ten­land and Sax­ony for eight days, liv­ing like kings. The Rus­sians are crazy about Amer­i­cans. The Rus­sians picked us up in Dres­den. We rode from there to the Amer­i­can lines at Halle in Lend-Lease Ford trucks. We’ve since been flown to Le Havre.

I’m writ­ing from a Red Cross Club in the Le Havre P.O.W. Repa­tri­a­tion Camp. I’m being won­der­ful­ly well feed and enter­tained. The state-bound ships are jammed, nat­u­ral­ly, so I’ll have to be patient. I hope to be home in a month. Once home I’ll be giv­en twen­ty-one days recu­per­a­tion at Atter­bury, about $600 back pay and — get this — six­ty (60) days fur­lough.

I’ve too damned much to say, the rest will have to wait, I can’t receive mail here so don’t write.

May 29, 1945

Love,

Kurt — Jr.

 As always, Let­ters of Note offers scans of the orig­i­nal let­ter for your direct inspec­tion.

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William Faulkner Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

in Literature | July 6th, 2012

faulkner nobel

Today is the 50th anniver­sary of the death of William Faulkn­er. To mark the occa­sion, we bring you a 1954 record­ing of Faulkn­er read­ing his Nobel Prize speech from four years ear­li­er. “I feel that this award was not made to me as a man,” Faulkn­er says on the tape, “but to my work–a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spir­it, not for glo­ry and least of all for prof­it, but to cre­ate out of the mate­ri­als of the human spir­it some­thing which did not exist before.”

In clas­sic nov­els like As I Lay Dying, Absa­lom, Absa­lom! and The Sound and the Fury, Faulkn­er cre­at­ed his own cos­mos, com­bin­ing his knowl­edge of the peo­ple and his­to­ry of Mis­sis­sip­pi with his gift for spin­ning tales. He called his cos­mos Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty. “I dis­cov­ered,” Faulkn­er said in his 1956 Paris Review inter­view, “that my own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil was worth writ­ing about and that I would nev­er live long enough to exhaust it, and that by sub­li­mat­ing the actu­al into the apoc­ryphal I would have com­plete lib­er­ty to use what­ev­er tal­ent I might have to its absolute top.”

Faulkn­er died at Wright’s Sana­to­ri­um in Byhalia, Mis­sis­sip­pi in the ear­ly morn­ing hours on July 6, 1962, which also hap­pened to be the birth­day of the great-grand­fa­ther he was named for, William Clark Falkn­er, the flam­boy­ant rail­road builder and nov­el­ist who was remem­bered as the “Old Colonel.” Faulkn­er had been suf­fer­ing from back pain due to an ear­li­er fall from a horse. His pre­ferred way to deal with pain was to drink alco­hol. After a binge he would typ­i­cal­ly go to the sana­to­ri­um to recov­er. This par­tic­u­lar vis­it had seemed rou­tine. Joseph Blot­ner describes the scene in Faulkn­er: A Biog­ra­phy:

The big clock ticked past mid­night and July 6 came in–the Old Colonel’s birthday–with no promise of a let­up in the heat. Insects thumped against the screens while elec­tric fans hummed here and there. Faulkn­er had been rest­ing qui­et­ly. A few min­utes after half past one, he stirred and then sat up on the side of his bed. Before the nurse could reach him he groaned and fell over. With­in min­utes Dr. Wright was there, but he could not detect any pulse or heart­beat. He began exter­nal heart mes­sage. He con­tin­ued it for forty-five min­utes, with­out results. He tried mouth-to-mouth resus­ci­ta­tion, again with no results. There was noth­ing more he could do. William Faulkn­er was gone.

When Albert Camus died two years ear­li­er, Faulkn­er was asked by La Nou­velle Revue Française to write a few words about his fall­en friend. What Faulkn­er wrote of Camus could be his own epi­taph:

When the door shut for him, he had already writ­ten on this side of it that which every artist who also car­ries through life with him that one same fore­knowl­edge and hatred of death, is hop­ing to do: I was here.

NOTE: To fol­low along as Faulkn­er reads his Nobel address, you can find the text at the Ole Miss Faulkn­er on the Web site. (The page will open in a new win­dow.) The Ole Miss page also includes  a par­tial record­ing of Faulkn­er giv­ing his speech in Stock­holm on Decem­ber 10, 1950, along with film footage of the cer­e­mo­ny. (Faulkn­er won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture for 1949 but it was­n’t pre­sent­ed until 1950, the year Bertrand Rus­sell won the award. So Rus­sell and Faulkn­er can both be seen in the film footage.) To hear more of Faulkn­er’s 1954 Caed­mon record­ings, vis­it Harp­er Audio. You can also hear over 28 hours of lec­tures by Faulkn­er at the audio archive of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, where he was writer-in-res­i­dence in 1957 and 1958. The archive con­cludes with a half-hour press con­fer­ence giv­en by the Eng­lish Depart­ment fac­ul­ty 50 years ago today, as they react­ed to the news of Faulkn­er’s death.

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The Spanish Earth: Ernest Hemingway’s 1937 Film on The Spanish Civil War

in Film, History, Literature | June 28th, 2012

Ger­man war­planes cross the sky. Explo­sions flash. Shell-shocked vil­lagers stag­ger out of their dam­aged homes and begin to grieve. “Before,” says Ernest Hem­ing­way in his flat Mid­west­ern accent, “death came when you were old or sick. But now it comes to all this vil­lage. High in the sky and shin­ing sil­ver, it comes to all who have no place to run, no place to hide.”

The scene is from the 1937 film The Span­ish Earth, an impor­tant visu­al doc­u­ment of the Span­ish Civ­il War and a rare record of the famous writer’s voice. Hem­ing­way went to Spain in the spring of 1937 to report on the war for the North Amer­i­can News­pa­per Alliance (NANA), but spent a good deal of time work­ing on the film. Before leav­ing Amer­i­ca, he and a group of artists that includ­ed Archibald MacLeish, John Dos Pas­sos and Lil­lian Hell­man band­ed togeth­er to form Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ri­ans, Inc., to pro­duce a film to raise aware­ness and mon­ey for the Span­ish Repub­li­can cause. The group came up with $18,000 in pro­duc­tion money–$5,000 of it from Hemingway–and hired the Dutch doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Joris Ivens, a pas­sion­ate left­ist, to make the movie.

MacLeish and Ivens draft­ed a short out­line for the sto­ry, with a theme of agrar­i­an reform. It was MacLeish who came up with the title. The film, as they envi­sioned it, would tell the sto­ry of Spain’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary strug­gle through the expe­ri­ence of a sin­gle vil­lage. To do that, Ivens planned to stage a num­ber of scenes. When he and cam­era­man John Fern­hout (known as “Fer­no”) arrived in Spain they decid­ed to focus on the tiny ham­let of Fuent­e­dueña de Tajo, south­east of Madrid, but they soon real­ized it would be impos­si­ble to set up elab­o­rate his­tor­i­cal re-enact­ments in a coun­try at war. They kept the theme of agrar­i­an strug­gle as a coun­ter­point to the war. When Dos Pas­sos arrived in Fuent­e­dueña, he encour­aged that approach. “Our Dutch direc­tor,” wrote Dos Pas­sos, “did agree with me that, instead of mak­ing the film pure­ly a blood and guts pic­ture we ought to find some­thing being built for the future amid all the mis­ery and mas­sacre.”

That changed when Hem­ing­way arrived. The friend­ship between the two writ­ers was dis­in­te­grat­ing at the time, so they did­n’t work togeth­er on the project. It was agreed upon in advance that Hem­ing­way would write the com­men­tary for the film, but while in Spain he also helped Ivens and Fern­hout nav­i­gate the dan­gers of the war zone. “Hem­ing­way was a great help to the film crew,” writes Hans Schoots in Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly: A Biog­ra­phy of Joris Ivens. “With a flask of whisky and raw onions in his pock­ets, he lugged equip­ment and arranged trans­port. Ivens gen­er­al­ly wore bat­tle dress and a black beret. Hem­ing­way went as far as a beret but oth­er­wise stuck to civvies. Although he rarely wore glass­es, he almost nev­er took them off in Spain, clear evi­dence of the seri­ous­ness of their task.” In “Night Before Bat­tle,” a short sto­ry based par­tial­ly on his expe­ri­ence mak­ing the movie, Hem­ing­way describes what it’s like film­ing in a place where the glint from your cam­era lens draws fire from ene­my snipers:

At this time we were work­ing in a shell-smashed house that over­looked the Casa del Cam­po in Madrid. Below us a bat­tle was being fought. You could see it spread out below you and over the hills, could smell it, could taste the dust of it, and the noise of it was one great slith­er­ing sheet of rifle and auto­mat­ic rifle fire ris­ing and drop­ping, and in it came the crack of the guns and the bub­bly rum­bling of the out­go­ing shells fired from the bat­ter­ies behind us, the thud of their bursts, and then the rolling yel­low clouds of dust. But it was just too far to film well. We had tried work­ing clos­er but they kept snip­ing at the cam­era and you could not work.

The big cam­era was the most expen­sive thing we had and if it was smashed we were through. We were mak­ing the film on almost noth­ing and all the mon­ey was in the cans of film and the cam­eras. We could not afford to waste film and you had to be awful­ly care­ful of the cam­eras.

The day before we had been sniped out of a good place to film from and I had to crawl back hold­ing the small cam­era to my bel­ly, try­ing to keep my head low­er than my shoul­ders, hitch­ing along on my elbows, the bul­lets whock­ing into the brick wall over my back and twice spurt­ing dirt over me.

The West­ern front at Casa de Cam­po on the out­skirts of Madrid was just a few min­utes’ walk from the Flori­da Hotel, where the film­mak­ers were stay­ing. Any doubt about whether the pas­sage from “Night Before Bat­tle” is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal are dis­pelled in the fol­low­ing excerpt from one of Hem­ing­way’s NANA dis­patch­es, quot­ed by Schoots:

Just as we were con­grat­u­lat­ing our­selves on hav­ing such a splen­did obser­va­tion post and the non-exis­tent dan­ger, a bul­let smacked against a cor­ner of brick wall beside Iven­s’s head. Think­ing it was a stray, we moved over a lit­tle and, as I watched the action with glass­es, shad­ing them care­ful­ly, anoth­er came by my head. We changed our posi­tion to a spot where it was not so good observ­ing and were shot at twice more. Joris thought Fer­no had left his cam­era at our first post, and as I went back for it a bul­let whacked into the wall above. I crawled back on my hands and knees, and anoth­er bul­let came by as I crossed the exposed cor­ner. We decid­ed to set up the big tele­pho­to cam­era. Fer­no had gone back to find a health­i­er sit­u­a­tion and chose the third floor of a ruined house where, in the shade of a bal­cony and with the cam­era cam­ou­flaged with old clothes we found in the house, we worked all after­noon and watched the bat­tle.

In May, Ivens returned to New York to over­see the work of edi­tor Helen van Don­gen. Hem­ing­way soon fol­lowed. When Ivens asked Hem­ing­way to clar­i­fy the theme of the pic­ture, accord­ing to Ken­neth Lynn in his biog­ra­phy Hem­ing­way, the writer sup­plied three sen­tences: “We gained the right to cul­ti­vate our land by demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions. Now the mil­i­tary cliques and absen­tee land­lords attack to take our land from us again. But we fight for the right to irri­gate and cul­ti­vate this Span­ish Earth which the nobles kept idle for their own amuse­ment.” (more…)

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents a Chilling Tale by Roald Dahl (1960)

in Literature, Television | June 27th, 2012

“Good evening, ladies and gen­tle­men.” From 1955 to 1962, Alfred Hitch­cock greet­ed view­ers to his week­ly series Alfred Hitch­cock Presents with some ver­sion of this phrase, in his unmis­tak­able Eng­lish drawl. After the icon­ic intro­duc­to­ry sequence fea­tur­ing Hitch­cock step­ping into a caricature—drawn by himself—of his jow­ly pro­file, the vet­er­an direc­tor intro­duced the audi­ence to the week’s episode with a droll mono­logue writ­ten by long­time TV writer James B. Allardice, in which Hitch­cock would poke fun at him­self, the view­ers, and the show’s spon­sors. In addi­tion to Allardice, Hitchcock’s series relied on the tal­ents of sev­er­al well-known writ­ers, includ­ing lit­er­ary names like John Cheev­er, Robert Bloch (author of Psy­cho), and, most famous­ly, the much-loved Roald Dahl.

Pri­mar­i­ly known for his whim­si­cal, and often quite dark, children’s books (James and the Giant Peach, Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox), Dahl was also a nov­el­ist, screen­writer, and a writer of macabre short sto­ries for adults (he won three Edgars, or mys­tery writer awards). In 1958, Alfred Hitch­cock Presents adapt­ed Dahl’s sto­ry “Lamb to the Slaugh­ter.” And, two years lat­er in 1960, Dahl’s sto­ry “Man from the South” pro­vid­ed the basis for AHP’s most pop­u­lar episode (above). The episode stars Steven McQueen as a young man talked into a gris­ly wager by a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure named Car­los, played by Peter Lorre. “Man from the South” was adapt­ed sev­er­al more times in the fol­low­ing years: in 1979 by Dahl him­self in a tele­vi­sion series called Tales of the Unex­pect­ed, again in the 1985 revival of AHP (star­ring John Hus­ton as Car­los), and in 1995 as the basis for Quentin Tarantino’s seg­ment in the film Four Rooms. With­out a doubt, how­ev­er, this orig­i­nal adap­ta­tion of Dahl’s sto­ry remains the most mem­o­rable and haunt­ing.

J. David Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Bob Dylan Classic, “Forever Young,” Animated for Children

in Books, Literature, Music | June 26th, 2012

Bob Dylan record­ed “For­ev­er Young” on his 1974 album Plan­et Waves. It’s a clas­sic “pater­nal love song,” a song inspired by his then four year-old son Jakob, who lat­er became the front­man of The Wall­flow­ers. Count­less musi­cians have since cov­ered this Dylan stan­dard — from Joan Baez and John­ny Cash to Rod Stew­art, The Pre­tenders, Eddie Ved­der and even Norah Jones, who sang a poignant ver­sion at Steve Jobs’ memo­r­i­al ser­vice last year.

The lyrics of “For­ev­er Young” lend them­selves per­fect­ly to a chil­dren’s book:

May you grow up to be right­eous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights sur­round­ing you
May you always be coura­geous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay for­ev­er young
For­ev­er young, for­ev­er young
May you stay for­ev­er young

And so, in 2008, Dylan teamed up with Paul Rogers to pub­lish the illus­trat­ed ver­sion of For­ev­er Young. The lyrics are the only text; and the illus­tra­tions (high­light­ed in the video above) pro­vide the real nar­ra­tive, show­ing a young­ster com­ing of age in the folk scene of 1960s Green­wich Vil­lage. The book (avail­able in paper and dig­i­tal for­mats) is a plea­sure to read to kids. But it’s even bet­ter when they read it to you…

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Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writers

in Books, Literature, Writing | June 25th, 2012

“If it sounds like writ­ing,” says Elmore Leonard, “I rewrite it.”

Leonard’s writ­ing sounds the way peo­ple talk. It rings true. In nov­els like Get Shorty, Rum Punch and Out of Sight, Leonard has estab­lished him­self as a mas­ter styl­ist, and while his char­ac­ters may be lowlifes, his books are received and admired in the high­est cir­cles. In 1998 Mar­tin Amis recalled vis­it­ing Saul Bel­low and see­ing Leonard’s books on the old man’s shelves. “Bel­low and I agreed,” said Amis, “that for an absolute­ly reli­able and unstint­ing infu­sion of nar­ra­tive plea­sure in a prose mirac­u­lous­ly purged of all false qual­i­ties, there was no one quite like Elmore Leonard.”

In 2006 Leonard appeared on BBC Two’s The Cul­ture Show to talk about the craft of writ­ing and give some advice to aspir­ing authors. In the pro­gram, shown above, Leonard talks about his deep appre­ci­a­tion of Ernest Hem­ing­way’s work in gen­er­al, and about his par­tic­u­lar debt to the 1970 crime nov­el The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Hig­gins. While explain­ing his approach, Leonard jots down three tips:

  • “You have to lis­ten to your char­ac­ters.”
  • “Don’t wor­ry about what your moth­er thinks of your lan­guage.”
  • “Try to get a rhythm.”

“I always refer to style as sound,” says Leonard. “The sound of the writ­ing.” Some of Leonard’s sug­ges­tions appeared in a 2001 New York Times arti­cle that became the basis of his 2007 book, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writ­ing. Here are those rules in out­line form:

  1. Nev­er open a book with the weath­er.
  2. Avoid pro­logues.
  3. Nev­er use a verb oth­er than “said” to car­ry dia­logue.
  4. Nev­er use an adverb to mod­i­fy the verb “said.”
  5. Keep your excla­ma­tion points under con­trol!
  6. Nev­er use the words “sud­den­ly” or “all hell broke loose.”
  7. Use region­al dialect, patois,  spar­ing­ly.
  8. Avoid detailed descrip­tions of char­ac­ters.
  9. Same for places and things.
  10. Leave out the parts read­ers tend to skip.

You can read more from Leonard on his rules in the 2001 Times arti­cle. And you can read his new short sto­ry, “Ice Man,” in The Atlantic.

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Salvador Dalí Sketches Five Spanish Immortals: Cervantes, Don Quixote, El Cid, El Greco & Velázquez

in Art, Literature | June 20th, 2012

A few weeks back, we brought you Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy and men­tioned that we were sav­ing Dalí’s draw­ings of Don Quixote for anoth­er day. Well, that day has come.

In the ear­ly 1960s, a Swiss pub­lish­er com­mis­sioned Dalí to cre­ate a print edi­tion cel­e­brat­ing five real and imag­ined fig­ures who loom large in the Span­ish cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion. The col­lec­tion was called The Five Span­ish Immor­tals, and it fea­tured sketch­es of Cer­vantes, Europe’s first great nov­el­ist and his unfor­get­table pro­tag­o­nist, Don Quixote. The book also paid homage to the medieval hero El Cid; the mas­ter painter El Gre­co; and Diego Rodríguez de Sil­va y Velázquez — some­one The Met calls “the most admired—perhaps the greatest—European painter who ever lived.” Cer­vantes appears above, and the remain­ing quar­tet below.

Don Quixote

El Cid

El Gre­co

Velázquez

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Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

in Books, Literature | June 16th, 2012

Today is “Blooms­day,” the day when lit­er­a­ture lovers around the world gath­er in book­stores and Irish pubs and oth­er fit­ting places to cel­e­brate James Joyce’s mas­ter­piece of high mod­ernism, Ulysses.

June 16, 1904 was the day Joyce first went out for a walk with his future wife, Nora Barnacle–a fate­ful day in his life, which he decid­ed to com­mem­o­rate in his great nov­el, first pub­lished in Paris in 1922. All the events in the book–more than 700 dense­ly writ­ten pages of exper­i­men­tal prose rich in allu­sions and struc­tured around Home­r’s Odyssey–take place on that sin­gle day in 1904. Just as William Blake could hold eter­ni­ty in an hour, Joyce could frame an epic in a day.

To cel­e­brate the occa­sion we bring you a pair of videos. Above, the British actor and writer Stephen Fry speaks briefly about his love of Joyce’s book. To find out if there are any events near you, vis­it the Rosen­bach Muse­um & Library’s Blooms­day Cen­tral Web site. And to dive into the book, you can find copies in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

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