Ulysses unbound: why does a book so bad it "defecates on your bed" still have so many admirers?

Reason, July, 2004 by Tim Cavanaugh

And even if all their ancillary products are not equal. The cultural universe is certainly big enough to contain Donal Donnelly's agile, hilarious book-on-tape reading of the unabridged Ulysses, Peter Costello's 197-page biography The Life of Leopold Bloom, the dance hit "Yes" (in which Dutch chanteuse Amber does Molly Bloom's soliloquy over a driving beat), and anything else the book's oddball fans can dream up. I have reservations about Walsh's movie--Strick's underrated 1967 version, I think, gets a better flavor of the book--and I avoid Bloomsday festivities like the plague.

But I salute a fellow fan. May Walsh be the first term in a new series of fan/entrepreneurs, and may a thousand Blooms flower.

Tim Cavanaugh (tcavanaugh@reason.com) is reason's Web editor.