Celebrate Bloomsday with Marilyn Monroe

The image of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses is from the cover to James Joyce: A Critical Guide, by Lee Spinks and since it is Bloomsday today, we thought we would point out a few Joyce-related titles from our list.

In addition to Spinks’s book which covers Joyce’s entire oeuvre, there is also James Joyce: Ulysses / A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Essays • Articles • Reviews, edited by John Coyle. Part of the Columbia Critical Guides series, the book brings together critical writings about Joyce from both critics and fellow writers.

Rebecca Walkowitz’s Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation devotes a chapter to Joyce and specifically, Joyce’s critique of Irish nationalism and British imperialism. In particular, Walkowitz discusses the “Cyclops” chapter and Bloom’s confrontation with overt racism and anti-Semitism.

And while it is not yet published, The Letters of Sylvia Beach (due in February of 2010), includes correspondence regarding Beach’s decision to publish Ulysses as well as her efforts to curb pirate editions of the novel from springing up in the United States.

For more on Bloomsday, the Guardian has a look at Bloomsday around the world and closer to home there is BloomsdayNYC, which lists Bloomsday-related events in New York City and links to other Bloomsday cities. Finally, over at Twitter you can follow the #bloomsday tag, which includes plenty of 140 character excerpts from the novel!