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Bloomsday: The Bostoniad

by David B. Lentz (Goodreads Author)

4.57 of 5 stars 4.57 · rating details · 14 ratings · 12 reviews

This tragicomic epic brings to life in America the enduring masterpiece of Homer's "Odyssey" and the Irish saga of Joyce's "Ulysses" in a Father's Day in Boston after the Vietnam War in 1974. This new "Bostoniad" portrays the American immigrant descendants of Leopold and Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus of Dublin. After Tim Finnegan's Irish wake Rudy and Penelope Bloom of...more

Paperback, 2nd, 358 pages

Published August 11th 2010 by WordsworthGreenwich Press

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Dec 08, 2012 Manny rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who's ever wondered why Ulysses needs to be so goddamn weird

Recommended to Manny by: The author

Shelves: command-performance, parody-homage, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, well-i-think-its-funny, life-is-joyce

Nasrudin and the New Qur'an

Nasrudin was at the tea house one day when he heard some idle young students talking about the Qur'an.

"It sounds magnificent, of course," grumbled one, "but half the time you can't even understand it without a commentary."

"It's supposed to respect the Bible," said another, "but Allah often seems to have forgotten about His earlier revelations."

"I don't like its attitude to women," snapped a third.

When Nasrudin got home, he took out his pen and started writing. He retur...more

15 likes · like · see review

Sep 19, 2012 Eric Sonnenschein rated it 5 of 5 stars

Bloomsday: The Bostoniad by David B. Lentz:
Eternal Recurrence, Adaptation and Improvisation

In David B. Lentz’s novel, Bloomsday, Thomas Daedalus, son of the late Stephen Daedalus and a Harvard philosophy professor, explains the role of Dionysus in Nietsche’s concept of “eternal recurrence” to a class of undergrads. As with most elements in this finely crafted and vibrant novel, “eternal recurrence” is no throwaway, but the tonic theme of Mr.Lentz’s engaging and heart-felt homage to Homer and J...more

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 09, 2012 wally rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: lentz

first from lentz for me...saw a review of his of...Herzog from Saul Bellow, i think it was...and he wished folk read more of bellow and the like, said something derogatory about Stephen King...said this here is some sort of parody of king...or something...so, here i am

dedicated "to my beloved muse, virginia"

story is divided into three parts:
book 1 awakening
6 chapters
book 2 wandering
9 chapters
book three homecoming
4 chapters

greater boston, friday, june 14-father's day june 16, 1974

has this on a...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 30, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: won-it

WOW! Just got back from 5 days in the mountains and found I won a book! Thanks First Reads Giveaways!
I just finished this book and found it not to be one of my favorites but, very well written just the same.You get to know and understand the characters and even like them.You are there and spend a couple of days in Boston interacting with them. A lot of dialog which makes the book read smooth and quick. The wake is a shock to everyone involved and the character interaction is understandable and r...more

3 likes · like · see review

Nov 16, 2011 Terry Bazes rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an astonishing book. In Bloomsday the magic of David Lentz’s imagination has produced a fictional transmigration of souls, a rebirth of James Joyce’s characters in a modern time and place. Dedalus, Bloom, Haines, Buck Mulligan and others of the original Dublin cast have been reborn in contemporary Boston. Mr. Lentz has accomplished this feat not only with prodigious erudition, but also with a delicate whimsy and an exquisitely chiseled poetic language. For this is a poetic prose of the...more This is an astonishing book. In Bloomsday the magic of David Lentz’s imagination has produced a fictional transmigration of souls, a rebirth of James Joyce’s characters in a modern time and place. Dedalus, Bloom, Haines, Buck Mulligan and others of the original Dublin cast have been reborn in contemporary Boston. Mr. Lentz has accomplished this feat not only with prodigious erudition, but also with a delicate whimsy and an exquisitely chiseled poetic language. For this is a poetic prose of the first order – lyrical and learned, but brought down to earth by the real particulars of modern life and enlivened by punning, rapid-fire repartee.
The reader recurrently experiences a pleasure like déjà vu, because his footing is in two places at the same time – both in the present narrative and in Joyce’s prototype. Here again are the carnal appetites and pathos of an apparently soon-to-be-cuckolded Bloom. But now it is Leopold Bloom’s dead son Rudy who is reborn and relives his father’s drama. Dedalus is now Stephen’s son Thom who, after he has been fired from Harvard for drunkenness, first meets Bloom at Tim Finnegan’s wake.
Not only Joyce’s characters but also each episode of his drama has been reimagined and reclothed in modern dress. In the Proteus episode a drunken, despairing Dedalus delivers a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy stumbling through Harvard Yard. In Lentz’s recasting of the Nausicca episode, the language of Rudy Bloom’s passionate, melancholy meditations is worthy of Joyce himself. In the Oxen of the Sun chapter, Mr. Lentz’s acrobatic literary clowning is more reminiscent of the Marx Brothers. After Dedalus gives Bloom LSD, the Circe episode becomes a boisterous, hallucinogenic rhapsody. And what of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy? It has been reforged as a splendid, down-to-earth, exquisitely moving prose poem delivered by
Rudy Bloom’s ravishingly beautiful and deeply loyal wife Penelope.
A very brief review can’t do justice to Mr. Lentz’s touching, funny, intricate, seemingly infinite variations on a theme by Joyce.
But here’s the crux of the matter: this is a major work by a major writer – and sophisticated readers will relish it.
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Dec 14, 2011 Corey rated it 5 of 5 stars

This novel is a wow. With Bloomsday, David Lentz is one fearless and daring author. He not only pays tribute to the Joyce novel from which his title comes, but he toasts the original Homer myth as well. And he does it with a humorous, shrewd, heightened language, like Oscar Wilde on crack. Lentz seems drunk on language—his dialog here sizzles and pops, with puns, allusions, wordplay—but he is not only here to play. There is seriousness behind the amusement, meaning behind the rollicking speech a...more

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Dec 23, 2011 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-novels

This novel was a delight and I didn't want it to end.

It is of course a modern rendering of Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses and is set on June 14 1974 in Boston. The characters are descended from the original characters in Ulysses; the central actors are Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus. The links with Joyce's book are striking, but so are the differences. The story flows through a day when Bloom and Dedalus both lose their jobs and Dedalus finds himself being offered Bloom's old job. They meet...more

3 likes · like · see review

Sep 25, 2012 Leonard rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature-english

Bloomsday: The Bostoniad, which pays homage to Homer and James Joyce, is funny and witty. And just plain fun. Professor Thomas Dedalus, the son of Stephen Dedalus and a drunkard, after a discourse on Nietzche, lost his job at Harvard University. At the same time, Rudy Bloom, the son of Leopold and Molly Bloom, lost his job in an advertising firm. In a twist of fate, Thomas took Rudy’s former position. They met in the wake of Tim Finnegan, who woke up after Rudy’s whiskey dripped onto his lips. A...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Perhaps the most striking aspect—at least initially—of Bloomsday: The Bostoniad is the decidedly striking parallels to Joyce’s Ulysses. These parallels are, of course, wholly intentional and justified in that Bloomsday is meant to be both a continuation and re-imagination of its predecessor. Clearly, it is a bold undertaking, and admittedly, as someone who admires Joyce and delights in Ulysses, I had my misgivings about such an enterprise. However, to put it plainly, author David B. Lentz pulls...more Perhaps the most striking aspect—at least initially—of Bloomsday: The Bostoniad is the decidedly striking parallels to Joyce’s Ulysses. These parallels are, of course, wholly intentional and justified in that Bloomsday is meant to be both a continuation and re-imagination of its predecessor. Clearly, it is a bold undertaking, and admittedly, as someone who admires Joyce and delights in Ulysses, I had my misgivings about such an enterprise. However, to put it plainly, author David B. Lentz pulls it off unequivocally with no small amount of flair.
Readers who are familiar with Joyce’s work will find the parallels between Ulysses and Bloomsday arresting at times—almost to the point of distraction—but will no doubt chuckle and even hee-haw at the ingenuity of the author. (For example, the Citizen throws bottles of beer at an escaping Bloom instead of a biscuit tin). However, after the first few chapters, the parallels become simply pleasing enhancements and the story of Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus takes command of the reader’s imagination on its own terms.
The plot of Bloomsday resembles that of Ulysses only superficially. Bloomsday offers some notable variations, especially those pertaining to the surprising paternity of Bloom and Dedalus. Another important variation is both Bloom and Dedalus lose their jobs on the morning of June 16th, although as the day wears on, Dedalus unwittingly picks up the very copywriting job which Rudy Bloom has earlier lost. This is a significant in that it informs one of the major themes of Bloomsday—capitalist greed in a society where one’s value is measured by his/her net worth. The setting, too, is important to this theme: Beantown, the Dublin of America. The sense of alienation that Rudy Bloom feels in Beantown has nothing to do with his being Jewish (he has converted to Christianity) as Leopold Bloom’s sense of alienation in the Dublin of Ulysses does, but stems from the fact that he is jobless in a rampantly (rabidly) capitalist society. In fact, consuming is at the heart of nearly everything Rudy Bloom and Thomas Dedalus do throughout their wanderings in the day and night duration of Bloomsday, and money facilitates that consumption. However, the plain fact that Rudy Bloom has lost his job is a constant source of tension for Bloom, as well as the reader. Also at the back of Rudy Bloom’s mind is his wife Penelope’s supposed intimate rendezvous with Blaine Boylston, womanizer, and the publisher of her poems. Like Leopold Bloom, Rudy is reluctant to go home—to give up his wandering—for fear of what he believes he will find there. Also like Leopold Bloom, Rudy is guilty of his own romantic dalliances. (He writes suggestive letters to Maddy Dunne and lusts after Margaret Breen.) And in this way, Lentz manages to make Rudy Bloom as lovable and yet as flawed a character as Joyce’s Leopold Bloom.
Thomas Dedalus’s predicament is just the opposite of Rudy Bloom’s. Having taken Bloom’s copywriting job, Dedalus now finds himself in a position to reap the benefits of living in a capitalist society. Like Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, Thomas’s turmoil stems from an unrealized sense of identity. In short, he is the artist who has sold his proverbial soul and along with it, his sense of self. Forced from the hallowed halls of academe, he now braces himself for a world of dining and drinking with wealthy clients who wouldn't know Prada from Proust. And in this way does he, the artist, “suffer” for his art.
In Bloomsday, Lentz has written a novel very much in the style of Joyce, replete with wit and wordplay, inner monologues, and dialogues based on rapid-fire repartee. (When Margaret Breen tells Bloom that the special of the day is “scrod,” he replies: “You rarely hear that word in the pluperfect subjunctive.”) It also comes loaded with both literary and popular allusions with a decidedly American bent. Like Ulysses, Bloomsday is a challenging but ultimately rewarding book. It demands to be savored and begs to be studied, for inevitably there is much that is missed in the first pass. At the same time, it is a highly entertaining book that can be enjoyed simply on the merits of Lentz’s remarkable command of the language and his ability to turn a phrase. In this sense, then, it really is about the journey and not the destination.
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Aug 07, 2011 Kyrsten rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

This was an excellent book. Some of the subject matter, though I regret to say, might have gone over my head a bit simply because this is just such a striking read. I definitely would recommend it, but only after you've given the Odyssey a quick review to really indulge in all this book has to offer.

**I won this book in a First-Reads Giveaway. My review is a reflection of my honest opinion and is not influenced by the fact that I got the book for free.

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Jun 18, 2011 David Lentz rated it 5 of 5 stars · (Review from the author)

This novel was read for a Pulitzer Prize in Letters but did not short-list.

1 like · like · see review

Jul 16, 2012 Jacqueline Valencia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Review forthcoming...

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About David B. Lentz

Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, David B. Lentz graduated from Bates College. He is a member of the Center for Fiction in New York, the Royal Society of Literature in London, the Academy of American Poets and the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He has published six novels: "For the Beauty of the Earth", "AmericA, Inc.", "Bloomsday", "Bourbon Street", "The Day Trader" and "The Silver...more

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“God in His infinite wisdom blessed humans with redundant tongues: one to outfit the mouth for speech. And a mother tongue to give it meaning... Though it wags out such inconceivable beauty, attached to the mother tongue lies one much maligned woman.” — 1 person liked it

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