Acclaimed novelist Joseph O'Connor celebrates Bloomsday with a dip

TO CELEBRATE Bloomsday, acclaimed novelist and Joyce aficionado Joseph O’Connor started the day by taking a dip. 

Joseph was 18 when he first "tried to read" Ulysses - and he disliked it. It was only after being encouraged by his tutor at UCD, Declan Kiberd, that he tried again in his early twenties. 

"I could then admire parts of it, but still did not love it. I guess I came back to it every few years, and in my early thirties fell head over heels with it," he said. "I read it again every few years and always find new wonders and pleasures in it. My advice to anyone wanting to get into Ulysses would be to listen to the truly wonderful RTE Radio version online. Hearing it aloud really opens up the beauty, music and power of Ulysses."

According to him, it's best to treat Ulysses like an album." If you don't like one chapter or track, just skip it, then come back to it another time."

To mark June 16, Joseph always goes for a swim at the Forty-Foot in Sandycove, Dublin. 

“If you grew up around Sandycove, Dun Laoghaire, Dalkey, as I did, with family in the Liberties, Dublin city's oldest neighbourhood, it's a book of very special pleasures and recognitions. I adore Ulysses, the most wonderful, beautiful, maddening, moving, irritating, enjoyable, funny, impenetrable novel ever written."

According to the novelist, many see the Bloomsday celebrations as “nonsense.” 

"I know many people who love Ulysses but don't mark Bloomsday at all, in fact see it as nonsense. But I associate it with my admiration for the book, which essentially is private,"Joseph noted. 

Described by many as one of the hardest novels to finish, Ulysses tells the story of protagonist Leopold Bloom and follows him wandering the streets of Dublin for a whole day -  from 8am to the early hours of the following morning. Sometimes, Joseph thinks the book is "not for the young."

"The student character, Stephen Dedalus, is a bit hard to like. Whereas Leopold and Molly, a bit older, are, despite their flaws, so human and sympathetic."

Anything else people should know about June 16? “It's Tupac Skakur’s birthday. My son, who like the great man is called James, is sitting here and says he told me,” Joseph added. 

Joseph O’Connor will be in conversation with Other Voices founder, Philip King, at the Gleneagle INEC Arena in Killarney. He’ll read from his latest novel, My Father’s House. Tickets available here.