John Nolan has a new art exhibit in Dublin.
It’s entitled “Journey Into The Abstract" and
runs until 2004-02-28 at the Westin Hotel
in Dublin.

John Nolan is well known in Ireland for his
portrait of James Joyce which covers the
facade of no. 15 Ushers Island, Dublin City -
The Joyce House.

Here's an interesting comment about Joyce's sense
of Irishness from a 1997 Joyce list entry by Matt B.

"M. G. wrote:

> Joyce himself, however, as I understand it,
>always regarded himself as British.

Matt B responded:
... Joyce was very much anti-British in political outlook.
While his own sense of Irishness has always been a
touchy issue(what with his shouts of Erin go Bragh
after the Brits agreed to partition on one hand
and then his 'let my country die for me' attitude in
dichotomy), but JJ also supported the Sinn Féin
party in its infancy--even anachronistically including
it in CYCLOPS a year before its founding. Of course,
Griffith's anti-semitism and Catholicism would have
forbidden the dealings with a freemason jew like
Bloom, but that's just nitpicking, isn't it. Anyway,
no more time; but JJ was definitely not a man who
considered himself British--of course, like Bloom et
al, he did carry a passport that stated that he was
a member of the Empire on which the unfortunate
yahoos believed the sun never set upon, but
considered the cause of Irish independence from
Brittainia a worthy endeavor--just not the way
Cusack, Pearse, and the rest threw violence into
the mix. .....Slan go fill, "

The past few days have been so eventful that I
haven't read or thought much about James Joyce,
until today and today he's occupied my thoughts
a lot. Thoughts like: "in 13 days I'll be unemployed;
that's not so bad, James Joyce was unemployed
most of his life" and thoughts like "I'll be able to sit
in a cafe and write, despite money worries - just like
James Joyce"

Yes, I'm soon to be completely unemployed. scary.
And tomorrow's my birthday. Damn. I'll have a
better post for you tomorrow.

One good piece of news: the little caterer's down
the street offer a small variety of dinners four
days a week that one can pick up and take home.
This week they are offering Irish Stew. Won't that
make a nice dinner tomorrow night...

The Audio version of Finnegans Wake
is now out. Five hours and twelve
minutes long, the audio book is put
out by Naxos, a company which usually
puts out music cds, making it an
appropriate choice for this undertaking.

The Guardian printed a review of the new
audio book yesterday. Here’s an excerpt:

This is the perfect way, possibly the only
way, of swallowing the Joycean pill pain-
lessly, thanks largely to the exuberance,
the humour, the sheer brilliance of Jim
Norton's reading ...... Forget the plot (there
isn't one), and abandon yourself to the
fluency and sheer musicality of the writing.
To celebrate the centenary of Bloomsday
next year, Norton is reading Ulysses, all 25
hours of it, for Naxos. This is the perfect
aperitif.