The Life of Leopold Bloom: A Novel in James Joyce Reading Group

Nov 11, 2020 Nick Sweeney rated it it was amazing

Over the last 45 years or so, I've fallen to thinking of myself as a fan of James Joyce and all who hang onto his often grubby coat-tails, but I switched off from reading peripheral texts 'some' years back - probably many more than I think. That's the only reason I can think of that I wasn't paying attention when Peter Costello's books on Joyce came out. I recently finished his book on the young Joyce (James Joyce: the Years of Growth), and was duly impressed. I felt it stood up there with the b Over the last 45 years or so, I've fallen to thinking of myself as a fan of James Joyce and all who hang onto his often grubby coat-tails, but I switched off from reading peripheral texts 'some' years back - probably many more than I think. That's the only reason I can think of that I wasn't paying attention when Peter Costello's books on Joyce came out. I recently finished his book on the young Joyce (James Joyce: the Years of Growth), and was duly impressed. I felt it stood up there with the best of the biographies, by Richard Ellmann, Stan Gebler-Davies and Gordon Bowker. (I've yet to read Edna O'Brien's, but I'm sure it's great.)

Anyway, this biography of Leopold Bloom also caught my eye. Bloom is one of the central characters in Joyce's 1904 wander around Dublin among its denizens, Ulysses, and though no quick description does him justice, suffice it to say that, on the 16th June 1904 he is a 38-year-old newspaper ad canvasser in Dublin, with a troubled relationship with his wife Molly, and a somewhat wistful one with his daughter Milly. If Bloom has friends, from the evidence in Ulysses, they are not good ones; he is largely disdained as he goes about his business, usually behind his back, but sometimes to his face, such as in the Cyclops episode, facing the not very well hidden derision of a group of drinkers, blossoming soon into open hostility. Bloom is an outsider in Ulysses, his one-time friendships now in evidence only in his stray thoughts and memories as the day goes on.

He is also a set of walking contradictions: kind to the point of annoying, informative to the point of pedantic, liberal to the point of collusion in his wife’s betrayal of him, a secular Jew on his father’s side – both a Jew and a non-Jew, depending on which criteria are used to examine this – a Dubliner in the fact of his circumstances, but also an Everyman figure with palpable ties to the rest of the world – perhaps a hint of the ‘cosmopolitanism’ that was used as a barely veiled anti-Semitic broadside throughout the 19th century and beyond.

Unlike my sketch above, Peter Costello, I think, does him great justice, and brings him to life in a way that ‘completed’ his character for me. Throughout, the details of Bloom’s life up to 1904 dovetails carefully with what we know from Ulysses; the schoolfriends he had, the girlfriends, or mere crushes, the jobs, the suicide of his father, the meeting of Molly, the raising of Milly, and the loss of their son, Rudy.

The text is interspersed with word-for-word adverts from the Dublin of the day, to point to Bloom’s profession – a little overdone, I thought at first, and found myself skimming them, then going back and reading them assiduously; they are meant to be there, after all.

The 16th June 1904 gets a little section all to itself, but of course it was just a day in a life. It was just right, and delivered me to an exciting point in the book: the leaving of a comforting familiarity and the unknown future of Bloom. Naturally, if the first part hadn’t been done so well, the rest wouldn’t have rung as true as it did.

At this point I’ll avoid spoilers, but will say that Bloom goes on to be the kind man he is in Ulysses, and in fact doesn’t need to evolve very much to remain true to that man. I loved the depictions of his day-to-day life, and its big events, a little foreign travel, and his meticulous approach to relationships both with people and the general world around him.

The author of a certain book that scandalised Dublin for a few decades is dealt with very skilfully, and amusingly. Costello's book has plenty of comic moments, only fitting with its familial connection to a book with such a mine of comedy gold at its heart.

Bloom moved around Dublin a bit, and I was amused further to see that he lived in two of the streets in which my mother was brought up, in Cabra – her parents moved house a lot, like the Joyces, though not for the same reasons. I inevitably began to think of her wandering down the road on childish and teenage business and, if she could be torn away from her preoccupations, seeing her ‘darkbacked’ neighbour shuffling by and stepping aside for him, or catching his eye challengingly if he turned his habitual face towards her, full of kindness, and possible friendship, but always curiosity about every part of his world.
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