HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JAMES JOYCE! His works got me hooked in my teens when I really related to his character Stephen Dedalus as he rejected his religion and indulged what I call his «young and pretentious side» in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I wore out my copy of Joyce’s novel Ulysses and continue to mark Bloom’s Day to this very day.

Over the years Finnegans Wake replaced Ulysses as my favorite Joyce novel and I’m fonder than many people are of his play Exiles.