Forget the Inner Organs of Beasts and Fowl—Instead, Eat Greens Today

Today is Bloomsday, a literary holiday that celebrates the date on which all the action in James Joyce’s seminal novel Ulysses takes place. As the characters in the book go about their daily business in Dublin, forever moored to June 16, 1904, their paths cross in churchyards and pubs and on the streets of the city. Joyce said one of the reasons he wrote the book, which is full of details about Dublin and its inhabitants, was so that if the town were ever destroyed in a catastrophe, Ulysses could be used as a resource to rebuild the whole city.

Why is it called Ulysses when it’s about a day in Dublin? A lot of people have probably asked that question, and there’s a simple answer: Joyce never did anything simply. The novel is constructed on a framework of the Greek epic poem The Odyssey, which is of course about a long trip home from the Trojan War taken by the hero Ulysses as he returned to his island kingdom of Ithaca, encountering sorceresses, sirens, and storms along the way. Like Ulysses, Leopold Bloom takes a roundabout way home on June 16, and the chapters he wanders through have metaphorical ties to parts of The Odyssey.

The real question you are asking yourself right about now, however, is why the Enright CSA blog is pondering the details of a book that has an unfair reputation for being notoriously difficult to read. Well, that’s simple—it’s a book set in Ireland, and people always celebrate things Irish with the wearin’ o’ the green. It’s just one step farther to celebrate this Bloomsday with the bounty of our gardens—so be sure to participate in the eatin’ o’ the greens today.

And Happy Bloomsday!