Ireland and James Joyce: A dysfunctional relationship  June 16,
2004|By Ron Grossman, Tribune staff reporter.  To mark the
centennial of Bloomsday, there will be public readings world-
wide from "Ulysses," the novel that made June 16 the most
celebrated date on the literary calendar -- but none in Ireland,
which is nicely fitting.  Dublin's streets are the setting for
the book, greeted as a masterpiece and reviled as a gargantuan
bore. Yet to write it, James Joyce felt obliged to leave his
native land, with which he had a love-hate relationship.
"Ulysses" was quickly praised by British and American critics
and writers. The poet T.S. Eliot compared Joyce's achievement
with "the importance of a scientific discovery."  But the Dublin
Review panned "Ulysses" for uniting "the spiritually offensive
and the physically unclean." When Joyce died in Zurich in 1941,
a representative of the British government spoke at the funeral,
but the Irish consul was conspicuously a no-show.  The snub
poisoned relations between the