“Bloomsday in Victoria,” 15–16 June 2013

The proprietor of the James Joyce Bistro, David Peacock, called me as I was about to go to bed: “Drop everything. Come down to the Bistro right away.” It was unlike him to summon me. “Hans Walter Gabler is here,” he concluded. I dropped everything. On an island off the west coast of Canada, Joyceans are few, and to us Gabler is a rock star. After all, his name is on the cover of the definitive edition of Joyce’s Ulysses.

What was he doing here? Gabler and his wife Gisela were in Victoria, at the invitation of Stephen Ross, to deliver a lecture at the University of Victoria marking the completion of the year-long Modernist Versions Project, an initiative that posted online the first-edition facsimile of Ulysses (<mvp.uivc.ca>). Peacock and I, who are not associated with the university, had inexplicably ignored the publicity about his visit, but after the lecture Ross and his associate Jentery Sayers brought a crowd to the Bistro. Back at home, I changed out of my pajamas and headed downtown.

I suppose not every city has a James Joyce Bistro. Since 2006, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, has been home to a restaurant and bar created by two Joyce fans. It’s not a simple Irish pub with a bit of memorabilia. In fact, Peacock’s Bistro is a dining establishment appended to one of the finest pool halls in the world—see the Billiards Digest, America’s bible of the sport, which included the Bistro in its list “Best New Billiards Clubs of 2007.” The soft click of balls caroming around sixteen antique and designer tables provided background for the Joyce scholars from the University of Victoria who gathered around fifteen dining tables painted with motifs and quotations from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Five mural panels are inscribed with carefully chosen passages from Ulysses; paintings of Joyce and Nora alternate with calligraphy; the top of the bar, more than fourteen feet long, is written over with three-and-a-half pages of the episode known as “Bronze by Gold.”

The Gablers sat at the center of a long table bordered with Celtic knotwork copied from the Book of Kells. The students were deep into their beer and nacho chips, while Peacock (in a Bloomian bowler) hovered hospitably. He doffed his topper in welcome (exposing a worn label: “High Grade Ha”) and introduced me to the guests of honor. The usual quadrille of “getting to know you” was overleaped, for the Gablers had been told that the artwork surrounding us was my doing. I accepted the graciously offered chair, and we began our conversation by tracing the phrases there on the tabletop before us.

Gisela Gabler, herself a teacher of English and history in Germany, asked about the genesis of this literary bistro. I referred to a pamphlet explaining that Peacock and I had been delving into Ulysses and the Wake for many years. When his pool hall moved to a prominent location in 2006, he put his woodworking skills to good use, fashioning round tables, square tables, mural panels, and bar tops of Baltic birch plywood. He asked me to bring my brush to contribute to the artwork. Together we selected appropriate passages—the running-on lines from Ulysses for the wall panels (“Bloom, waterlover”) and Finnegans Wake for the circular tables (“aringarouma she pattered and swung”). All this can be seen at <http://peacockbilliards.com/jjbart.html>.

In all six of the sinfully comfortable, companionable booths, diners can easily follow the words running around the margin of the round table. The center of each holds a portrait. I believe that the characters of Finnegans Wake were perfectly captured by Rembrandt. His various self-portraits in fanciful costumes always show a trace of self-doubt that has made this burgher from the Low Countries the original modern man. He is the embodiment of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Rembrandt drew and painted his wife Saskia numerous times as characters from the Bible and classical mythology. She is the ideal Anna Livia Plurabelle.

Some years ago, the Bistro hosted an evening with...