James Joyce and Zurich’s Fair City: And Other Historical Reflections on Switzerland

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This book offers you a series of anecdotal historical essays that will enhance your stay in Switzerland's beautiful city of Zurich. Read more Read less. Product description Product Description This book offers you a series of anecdotal historical essays that will enhance your stay in Switzerland's beautiful city of Zurich. Kindle Edition File Size: Paul Doolan; 1 edition 18 August Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a product review. Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon. I had the very good fortune of recently going on a Zurich tour led by Paul.

As evidenced in the book, Paul's historic knowledge of the city is extraordinary. Paul has the rare ability of connecting the dots of what may appear to be disparate events into a rich, humorous story about this amazing Swiss city and the many characters that have visited. Well worth the read! I live in Zurich, and after a short while my wife and I thought that we figured this city out and could start exploring the rest of Switzerland.

Paul Doolan's book opened up a gateway to a Zurich that we didn't know existed! I have his book on my smartphone and kindle and it makes travels in and around Zurich an adventure and his writing makes the story come alive. The first tentative steps into the public domain!

He kindly brought along today the Factory Christmas card for consisting of a flick-book animation from a New Order video and his FAC51 card for the Hacienda. There was an auld fella swimming just round the corner this very afternoon — January 15th, full on winter, albeit a beautiful sunlit afternoon.

In the meantime, here are some images from the Sandycove adventure…. Took a moment to explore the set of their long-running soap, Fair City. The match was good — only one point was missing which I inserted as a short paragraph. I then worked on a distinctive feature of the book. I worked on the order and wording of the captions until I had a logical, flowing set of six. I took a break at one point to check out the tea room and stumbled across a simple exhibition about Ulysses which the NLI had put together for the centenary Bloomsday nine years ago which I actually flew over for.

Back at the hotel I read some more of The Beat Hotel and, once re-immersed in that world, searched for the photos for my patented picture summary. I found what I wanted, it was important to select carefully to convey the meaning accurately, and inserted them into the chapter creating a totally finished chapter for the first time. You could call it bathos, you could call it homage, but it felt like a good idea plugging into the Joyce vibe whilst in Dublin, channelling some of that energy into When Sparks Fly.

That librarian over there with the Victorian beard and red tie looks like he could turn nasty.

Paul Doolan

I finished my second draft of Chapter 1 on Allen Ginsberg after a whole week, longer than I expected but at least it reads well and I finally have a polished draft to use as my model chapter. I picked up my copy at Shakespeare and Company in Paris on Day 53 and visited its location on Rue Git-le-Coeur the same afternoon, another enjoyable literary pilgrimage.

Once I got to the hotel, with the winter late afternoon light fast fading, before settling down to writing I headed down the Sandymount Road opposite the hotel to get some air. A block down I came, unexpectedly, to an urban cottage on a corner which a brass plaque indicates to be the birthplace of WB Yeats.

I carried on down to the coast, beyond the DART railway, and through a slice of Dublin 4 where I came out at Sandymount Strand, the sun now down and an almost full moon now out, reflected in the wet sand of the broad beach at low tide. I walked up to the Martello Tower, not The Martello Tower but a Martello Tower in the same coastal chain as the famous one in which the opening scene of Ulysses is set. I went down onto the Strand in the silvery light. A few dog walkers and joggers provided occasional punctuation but largely I was alone with my lunatic self.

This electronic copy is the vehicle for my slow 4 th reading, running in parallel to my further advanced 3 rd reading of my trusty hardback copy.

I leafed forwards a few pages to get Stephen Daedalus out of the stiffling school he teaches in and onto his walk into Dublin down Sandymount Strand. Opposite the beach, in the distance, is Howth Head where the book climaxes. Chat and food and a little drink was partaken of. Who does that librarian remind me of?

James Joyce and Zurich’s Fair City: And Other Historical Reflections o | www.newyorkethnicfood.com

I came home, did a little more writing, read a bit more of The Beat Hotel in a hotel room far removed from Room 32 of M. Hot and burning in your nostrils Pouring down your gaping mouth Your molten bodies blanket of cinders Caught in the throes. Powell and Cardiff were perfectly attuned in their neo-Romantic outlook. On the plane back from Dublin this evening I read he spent two years developing a script for my beloved Ulysses in the early 60s but it never came to anything.

Powell was born 30th September, Lewin on the 23rd and Madeline Kahn on the 29th, significant clustering vibe here. Those red crosses of St George all over the pubs were just an unsettling embarrassment.

In the words of Lili von Shtupp , with her distanced Teutonic view across the water: A wed wose, how womantic! Limited of Middle Abbey-Street. This big red volume is the reference book Joyce used to recreate the detail of Dublin from exile here in Zurich.

Archive for the ‘ulysses’ Tag

Joyce came to the city on leaving Dublin in hence the choice of date for the novel — it is Dublin as fixed at the point of exile accompanied by his other half, Nora Barnacle. Much of Ulysses was written here in Zurich. Joyce left occupied France in for Zurich where he died in aged 59 and is buried.

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Another key character is a refugee to Switzerland. Just the kind of ad Leopold Bloom would have dealt in. Mrs Grace at No. A draper at No. My wife has now lived in London — many miles away from the cemetry at Kilbroney, Co. I often wonder what similarities and differences there are between the Irish neutrality and the Swiss. Joyce spent most of the First World War July to October in Zurich, as well as getting the permit for entry from occupied France in late A few weeks ago there was a big art robbery just outside Zurich from another Foundation — the Emil Buhrle Foundation.

Buhrle was a Zurich-based, German born industrialist who sold arms to the Third Reich. After the war 13 paintings in the collection, which was raided in February by armed masked men, appeared on a list of art looted by Nazis from Jews and eventually he handed them over, getting some compensation from the Swiss government. The provenance of other works in the collection remains shady. So one has limited sympathy for the Emil Buhrle Foundation as whose work the masked raiders with the Slavic accents actually stole is a moot point.

I recently came across this quotation by the writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner and man behind another foundation, this one a Foundation for Humanity, which bears his name Elie Wiesel through A. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Warum bin ich ich und warum nicht du?

Warum bin ich hier und warum nicht dort? Enter your email address to follow Simple Pleasures and receive notifications of new posts by email. Antrim , coincidence , coincidences , james baldwin , james joyce , Luton , rte , soap , ulysses Comments 1. Asterix Chez les Bretagnes. Time for Tea a fatal weakness. Caught in Session Posted 8 April, Filed under: Here are two of my own recent Northern Line encounters: How about a dear little whiskey sour?

Then I went for a run back to Sandymount Strand where a Godsky was illuminating the beach.