It seemed that Bloomsday would go unobserved this year chez t&p since I could not think of anything interesting to say on the matter (not that this has stopped me from offering Bloomsday postings in the past). There was also the ever-present threat of a lawsuit being launched at us by the legal minions of the Joyce estate if we were to post a syllable without the say-so of grandson Stephen (“a handsome man of seventy-four, with a grey beard, sloping forehead, and deep blue eyes; […] the way Joyce might have looked if he had not smoked and drunk himself to death, at fifty-eight, in 1941.”)

But then I remembered a Joycean bone I’d like to pick (which thus allows me to continue my annual tradition) and that is my disappointment at not being able to buy a DVD copy of John Huston’s lovely final film The Dead, based on Joyce’s wonderful short story from The Dubliners. I have only seen the movie once, in 1987 (the year it was released), and perhaps the sadness and sorrow I associate with the story and the film are tangled, somehow, in the the emotions I would have been experiencing from the disintegration of a longtime relationship that same year; whatever the true source of those emotions (and what point in trying to disentangle them now?) I have ever since included that film among my favorites, and would like to see it again someday (with a rich selection of DVD special features of course).

It was released in the UK as a Region 2 DVD in April (which bodes well, I think). I’ll keep you posted.