Yes I will Yes

Thoughts on beauty products after Bloomsday

Note: Now up on the Hollywood Superstar Review: an interview between myself and its pseudonymed editor that we started some time last year and ended recently, with a follow-up about my new book.

Monday was Bloomsday, or the day James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place, June 16th. I can’t think of a better way to spend a weekday afternoon than at a 19-person reading of the book’s last chapter, “Episode 18: Penelope,” or Molly Bloom’s punctuation-less, stream-of-conscious soliloquy, which famously ends (spoiler),

he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

At 192 Books on 10th Avenue, my hero Deborah Eisenberg appropriately started us off, giving some context as introduction. She was followed by her partner Wallace Shawn, then Enrique Enriquez, Marina Rustow, and Peter N. Miller. (So far that’s already three MacArthur Genius Grants in the room.)