For the first time, Bloomsday is going to be a truly international event with readings from Ulysses going on all over the world, connected via the Internet. On Wednesday night there was a reception in the old Jameson Distellery to announce and indeed explain the concept, and there was much talk of how much Joyce himself would have liked the idea - Ulysses contains the first reference to the telephone in literature.
The speakers were Richard Bur- rows, chairman of Irish Distillers, which is sponsoring the Global Bloomsday in association with the James Joyce Centre and The Irish Times on the Web; Martin Cullen, Minister for State at the Department of the Taoiseach who laughed that he used to work with Irish Distillers and "look what happens to people who don't make the cut"; David Norris, who gave an unusually short speech as he had to dash back to the Dail, and William Hederman from this paper, who explained the nuts and bolts of the Web site.
Highlights of Global Bloomsday, which is going to kick off with Australian actor Beverley Dunn in Melbourne, Australia, and travel through cities such as Tokyo, Capetown, Prague and Buenos Aires, will include readings by Frank and Malachy McCourt from Ireland House, New York and by David Norris and Ken Monaghan, Joyce's nephew, in Dublin.
Joyce fans who came along to Wednesday night's reception included actor Stephen Rea, who arrived with Gerry O'Hare of Travel Extra; Frank McGee of Dublin Tourism; architect Sam Stephen- son and Marie-Claire Sweeney of the St Patrick's Festival, who are both on the board of the James Joyce Centre.