James Joyce’s Love Letters to His “Dirty Little Fuckbird” by Nadja Spiegelman

I was reading these last night and goddamn they are dirty. I was telling my wife about the farts and she just went, "ewee".

This comes up periodically and as a massive James Joyce fan I must point out that most people don't know that Ulysses, as a middle finger to the conservatism of the Catholic Church which he considered had a stranglehold on Irish society, was set on one day, June 16th, known now as Bloom's Day, which in James Joyce's life was the first date he went on with his wife/from then on to be life partner Nora Barnacle.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18693899-the-most-dangerous-book

On this first date, Nora Barnacle gave James Joyce a handjob, and so Ulysses the most famous book in all of English Literature is devoted to a handy J given by the love of his life, which is a clear fuck you to prudes time eternal lol.

All of this to say, if you read this and think James Joyce goes hard, you have no idea, I am not sure anybody in the last 200 years has given less fucks.

::: spoiler longer response

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An honesty about sexuality and bodily functions is a huge part of Ulysses and politically it is a driving reason James Joyce wrote with everything so tangled up, at the time saying something sexual or talking about farting was considered illegal, Victorian culture in the US and England codified talking about these things as illegal under obscenity laws.

There is a lot of cool history here, but there are two important things to know.

1. Ulysses WAS the work of art that shattered the Victorian conservative grip on culture in both the US and England, before that in the US the Post Office would literally search through US mail to screen for Obscene Material (which includes of course just talking about obscene things). Interestingly, the reason when you pick up any copy of Ulysses the Court Case in the front is there because Ulysses was reprinted to include the favorable ruling of the lower court at the beginning of the book specifically so that it couldn't be thrown out as evidence in the subsequent Supreme Court Case. See the fascinating book The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle For James Joyce's Ulysses for an exciting tour through the history that rings as relevant as ever today!

2. The most controversial section of the book features one of the main characters masturbating... and this is where the novel really reached a flashpoint culturally, so Joyce didn't hide this in his fiction even a little bit, rather he smashed the cultural norms of the time using it as part of his art. The most interesting part with sexuality in Ulysses both in artistic ability and in politics is the last chapter of Ulysses which describes Molly Bloom, one of the main characters/wife of one of the main characters, as she dreams half asleep and at points expresses explicit sexual desires about multiple men. It is beautiful, crude, funny and overwhelming, highly recommended! What made it so radical for the time was how Ulysses portrays this as not bad, or not even good, just often a part of being a human body whether you are male, female or whatever.

https://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=82405

All of this is quite romantic but the truth is dirtier, as it usually is with Joyce: On June 16, 1904, James Joyce and Nora Barnacle took a walk around Dublin. You didn’t “date” in those days, and you certainly didn’t “date” in priest-ridden Catholic Ireland. Typically, there would be a formal courtship period, with parents sitting in as chaperones. So there wasn’t anywhere for James and Nora to go. Nowhere to hang out. So they walked. And on that walk, they probably talked, but maybe they didn’t. All we know is that at some point during that walk, Nora gave him a handjob. They both reference it in their later letters. So beautiful wild Nora, an uneducated woman from Galway, working as a waitress in a hotel, encountered the nearly-blind blue-eyed Irishman, an intellectual, struggling against the imprisonment of his culture (church/country/family), and she somehow understood that, understood him. And the way she handled it, was (sorry) to handle him. She put her hands down his pants, and remember, they’re out in public, hiding in an alley or something, and jerked him off. ^___^

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