Happy Lockdown Bloomsday!

Today is Lockdown Bloomsday.  Lisa suggested we re-enact the Nausicaa episode of Ulysses, so yesterday evening, we headed down to Brighton beach

THE SUMMER EVENING HAD BEGUN TO FOLD THE WORLD IN ITS mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay....

Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance, was in very truth as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see. She was pronounced beautiful by all who knew her though, as folks often said, she was more a Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her figure was slight and graceful, inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she had been taking of late had done her a world of good...

She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell, surging and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged glances of the most casual but now under the brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him....

....and the face that met her gaze there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had ever seen....

....she knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working and a tremor went over her. She leaned back far to look up where the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not to fall back looking up and there was no one to see only him and her when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew about the passion of men like that, hot-blooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead secret....

....and she leaned back ever so far to see the fireworks and something queer was flying about through the air, a soft thing to and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher...

...and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back...

...and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw 

....and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way.... 

...And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah!

....they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft! Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent....

Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt.

Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his waistcoat. Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah, no, that's the soap.
O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. Never went back and the soap not paid...

 Happy Lockdown Bloomsday!

The Frothy Freshener: James Joyce's Guinness Slogan

'When it came to writing slogans James Joyce proved himself no slouch.
He suggested replacing ‘Guinness is Good for You’ with ‘Guinness –The Free, The Flow, the Frothy Freshener!’

That's a claim made on a wonderful advert for Guinness printed in the Irish Times on Bloomsday in 1982,  Joyce's centenary.  I was one of hundreds of Joyceans in Dublin for the celebration, and I bought a copy of the paper.

1982 was the year that Dublin, at long last, embraced James Joyce. The Irish Times Bloomsday editorial said:

'When Joyce came to publish his books, the censorious Ireland of the 1920s and 30s looked away disappprovingly, insofar as it paid any attention at all. However amends are now being made, as is right. Joyce by his writings paid great honour to the city of his birth, and the compliment should be returned.'

One of the Dublin institutions making amends was the Guinness brewery. They put on a big Joyce exhibition, 'Wine of the Country', which took a 'James's gape at Guinness and Dublin'. The exhibition was named after a nickname for stout in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses. We're in Barney Kiernan's pub, where Joe Hynes is buying a round:

-- Give it a name, citizen, says Joe. 
-- Wine of the country, says he. 
– What's yours? says Joe.
-- Ditto MacAnaspey, says I...
-- Three pints, Terry, says Joe

Here's the narrator's first taste of the lovely pint:

-- Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form.
Ah! Owl! Don't be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click.

The Guinness advert has another quotation from the same episode. Terry the barman is bringing a 'pony' (a half pint) to Little Alf Bergan.

-- Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf. 
Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.

Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun are Edward Guinness, Lord Iveagh, who ran the brewery, and his older brother Arthur Guinness, Lord Ardilaun.
 
The exhibition, which I visited on Bloomsday, recreated a Dublin pub bar of Joyce's day (using bits of counters rescued from defunct pubs, like Barney Kiernan's) and an iron fireplace where the canvassers in 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room' set their bottles of stout, waiting for them to open with a 'Pok!' (Has anyone ever managed that trick?). There was also a fine performance of Joyce readings by the Dublin actor Dermot Lynskey.

Dermot Lynskey at the exhibition, from his website

 

JOYCE'S GUINNESS SLOGAN 

In 2011, Catherine Gubernatis Dannen investigated the background to Joyce's Guinness slogan in the brewery's archives. Here's her conclusion:

'After examining materials in the Guinness archive and talking with the archivist, I have concluded that there is no basis for Guinness's claim that Joyce wrote his own advertising slogan about Guinness stout....In a year of stagnant sales and bad public relations, Guinness took advantage of the publicity generated by Joyce's centenary to advertise its product to foreign customers and to repair its relationship with the public.'
 
Catherine Gubernatis Danne, 'The Facts and Fiction Behind "the Free, the Flow, the Frothy Freshener": The Guinness Company and the Story of Joyce's Lost Ad', JJQ, Vol. 48, No. 4, Joyce's Lives (Summer 2011), pp. 712

In fact, the proof that Joyce wrote this slogan is in Finnegans Wake. The 'frothy freshener' appears in the 'Haveth Childers Everwhere' episode, published as a book by Babou and Kahane in 1930 - just a year after the first 'Guinness is Good For You' ad came out.

In this speech of self-justification, HCE lists his great achievements as a city builder, all done out of love for his river-wife Anna Livia Plurabelle. One achievement is brewing Dublin stout:

'I brewed for my alpine plurabelle, wigwarming wench, (speakeasy!) my granvilled brandold Dublin lindub, the free, the froh, the frothy freshener, puss, puss, pussyfoot, to split the spleen of her maw'  553.25

Joyce wrote 'froh', which is German for merry, rather than the 'flow' in the Guinness version. HCE says 'free, froh...frothy' because he has a guilty stammer.

Dublin is paired with lindub because the Irish for stout is 'leann dubh' meaning 'black ale' (spelled 'lionn dubh' in the 1920s). Here's the entry from Dineen's 1927 dictionary (thanks to Eric Rosenbloom):

LIONN [Lin]
{genitive} LEANNA, {plural} {idem} -NTA, LEANNTAÍ and LEANNANNA {masculine} and {feminine}, liquid, liquor, any lisueous substance;
drink, ale, strong beer, wine (Wind,);
a humour of the body, lymph, phlegm, bile, choler; LIONN DUBH, porter, stout, {also, alias} black humour, melancholy (LIONNDUBH, {genitive} -UIBH, {plural} {idem}, and LEANNTA DUBHA)

The name Dublin itself comes from dubh linn 'black pool'. This was where the Poddle stream met the River Liffey to form a pool. So Dublin and Guinness Porter are related linguistically as well as geographically! 

Joyce liked his slogan so much he repeated it:

'his groundould diablen lionndub, the flay the flegm, the floedy fleshener (purse, purse, pursyfurse, I'll splish the splume of them all!)' 72.34

When Joyce was getting 'Haveth Childers Everywhere' ready for publication, he was helped by his old University College friend Padraic Colum, who remembers the time in Our Friend James Joyce:

 'What did my contribution to this production amount to? I typed pages. From time to time I was asked to suggest a word that would be more obscure than the word already there. Joyce would consider my offer, his eyes, their pupils enlarged behind glasses, expectant, his face intent, his figure upstanding. ' I can't use it,' was what he would say five times out of six...' 

Mary and Padraic Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 1958 p.158

Joyce thanked Colum by putting him in the episode:

   — The S. S. Paudraic's in the harbour.  (550.07)

Colum's book was probably the source for the 1982 Guinnesss ad slogan story:

'He actually believed that, on one level anyway, his later work had a public appeal. ''My brandold Dublin lindub, the free, the froh, the frothy freshener' - that really is a good slogan for the Dublin brew, Guinness', and Joyce was actually disappointed that Guinness did not use it instead of the commonplace 'Guinness is good for you.' But maybe they will appropriate it some time – 'the free, the froh, the frothy freshener.'  'Lindub', Dublin scrambled, is the Irish for black ale.' 

Mary and Padraic Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 1958, p.156

'Maybe they will appropriate it sometime' 

They did, Padraic, they did!
  
Joyce's disappointment that Guinness didn't use his slogan can only mean that he suggested it to them, or that he expected them to discover it for themselves when Haveth Childers Everywhere was published. Either way, Guinness didn't invent the story as a publicity stunt.
  

JOYCE AND ADVERTISING

It's easy to see why Joyce would have wanted to write an advert for Guinness. He was always fascinated by advertising, and he saw how it was shaping modern life. Joyce made his hero Leopold Bloom an advertising canvasser, a man who contemplates 'the infinite possibilities hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement' with its 'magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to convince, to decide.' (Ithaca)

Here's the most famous ad in Ulysses, from a recreation of the Evening Telegraph published by Split Pea Press in 1990. The slogan was invented by Joyce.

While writing the Wake, Joyce read the Irish and British papers daily, taking notes for his book. He was often more interested in the ads than the news stories. The very first notebook for the Wake includes newspaper ads for Bird’s Egg Substitute cake-meal (‘a tin with a purpose’), for Hustler soap and for the Colgate Shaving Stick (See Robbert-Jan Henkes great article on the Wake's origins here).

So Joyce would have been interested when Guinness launched their first ever advertising campaign in 1929, with the slogan 'Guinness is Good for You'. He might even have taken it as a challenge.

Soon after, John Gilroy's colour posters appeared.

 

This Guinness slogan makes three appearances in Finnegans Wake:

'Ghinees hies good fir yew.' 16.31 
('for you' in the published text is a misprint)
'Guinness’s, may I remind, were just agulp for you' 190.07
'We have highest gratifications in announcing to pewtewr publikumst of pratician pratyusers, genghis is ghoon for you.'  593.17

In 1936, John Gilroy launched a new campaign, inspired by watching a sea lion performing balancing tricks at a circus. The new slogan, created by Dorothy L Sayers, was 'My goodness, MY GUINNESS'

Joyce put that into the Wake too.

'O my goodmiss! O my greatmess!' 237.07
'another guidness, my good, to see' 345.22

 

 

WHEN GUINNESS WAS FROTHY

Here's a perfect pint of Guinness, from John Kavanagh's ('the Gravediggers') by Glasnevin cemetery. It has a creamy rather than a frothy head.

This thick creamy head was created in 1959, when Guinness brewer Michael Ash had the revolutionary idea of adding nitrogen to the draught beer. Nitrogen's tiny bubbles create a head so dense that bartenders can now draw a shamrock on top. After 1959, Guinness ads described the keg version as 'creamy'.

When Joyce wrote his slogan, Guinness had to be poured from two barrels, a method still used in the 1970s to pour plain porter, a weaker version of the stout (celebrated by Flann O'Brien's 'a pint of plain is your only man'). Here's a film showing the last pints of plain poured in Befast, in 1973. These have frothier heads, with bigger bubbles, than modern pints.

This froth could also be called foam, as in 'a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale' quoted above. Twice in the Wake, Joyce calls Dublin beer  'foamous'.

'Danu U’Dunnell’s foamous olde Dobbelin ayle.' 7.12
'Ser Artur Ghinis. Foamous homely brew, bebattled by bottle, gageure de guegerre.' 272.26

I learn from the James Joyce Digital Archive of Wake drafts that Joyce originally wrote 'the foamy freshener' before choosing the livelier 'frothy'. Maybe he should have thought of 'the foamous freshener'?

Anyway, Joyce was right to call Guinness 'frothy', and as for 'freshener', here's a 1937 Guinness poster.

Did someone remember Joyce's suggestion?

I think that Joyce's 'frothy freshener' was a very effective slogan. Since I started looking into this subject a couple of weeks ago, I've drunk nothing but Guinness; and every time I've ordered a pint, I've remembered the words 'the free, the froh, the frothy freshener'.

Slainte!

A pint in Davy Byrne's 13 June 2015

Marcia Farquhar reads 'Yes'

Here's a new film, by Tracy Drew, of the artist Marcia Farquhar reading the closing pages of Ulysses, the thoughts of Molly Bloom before she falls asleep. It was filmed at Tanya Peixoto's wonderful bookartbookshop in Pitfield Street, London. This is the place to go for artists' books and small press publications, especially books like these beauties from Atlas Press. 

The bookshop is also the headquarters of the London Institute of 'Pataphysics, Alfred Jarry's 'science of imaginary solutions' which is why you can see a painting of Jarry on the wall in the film's opening.

There's a tradition in the bookshop that Marcia performs the complete final chapter of Ulysses on Bloomsday. Tanya provides Banbury cakes (in honour of Bloom's gift to the seagulls by the Liffey).

Wait. Those poor birds.
He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently two, then all, from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel.
Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands. They never expected that.

Lisa and I have been fans of Marcia's work ever since 2005, when we came upon her performing her Punch and Judy show, 'The Cabinet of Horribly Violent Glove Puppets', at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill.
 

This gave us the idea to become Punch and Judy for our 2012 Christmas card. 

Marcia's work often involves story telling, which she is able to do spellbindingly and at epic length,.  For the 30th anniversary of the National Revew of Live Art, in Glasgow in 2010, we saw her give a 30 hour talk, 'ruminating about the events of the last 30 years'.

Here she is, 28 hours in, wearing an 'arte povera' homemade fur ball.  

She played records on a dansette, including 'Puppet on a String', illustrating a story about trying to get Sandie Shaw's autograph. Later, she put on the Pistols 'God save the Queen' while talking about Stuart Brisley who would play the National Anthem repeatedly at the ICA, to annoy audiences who were then expected to stand for it.  

'There are hours of anecdotes, spattered with a thousand quotable lines ('I was accused unfalrly of being a shaman and went into a lavatory and cried', and, referring to Stuart Brisley, 'He's the one who sat in offal and vomited from the top of a tower')'

Dorothy Max Prior, Total Theatre, Summer 2010

Someone brought in a load of balloons from another performance and gave them to her.  

Lisa suggested, 'We could stamp on them!'
Marcia replied, 'Or we could suck them!'

Which she then did....

She didn't think it was working and said, 'Perhaps it's not helium!' - which came out in a squeaky voice.

At the very end,  she played 'God save the Queen' again, and we all stood and cheered.

'Farquhar's stage presence is difficult to pin down. Her performances aren't about stories or props, but a magical charisma that radiates between the past she describes and the audience in the here and now.'  Mary Patterson

Here's a photo I took at another performance, 'Recalibrating Hope', at the Chelsea Theatre in 2015, which Lisa reviewed here. 

Until the end of this month, CGP London is celebrating Marcia with Difficuλt, the first 'non survey of her work.' Tracy Drew's Yes film is part of The Dog's Bolex, a group of videos made in collaboration with artist film-makers, which are being shown in the gallery.

'Works from Farquhar’s extensive ‘repertoire’ from the 1980s to now will be re-imagined, nestled alongside recent and new work created for the occasion. Actions and performances will occur throughout the show, the artist will most certainly be present; appearing to show and tell as the tour guide of her own relics via spontaneous actions, situations, interruptions and habitations on Fridays and Sundays throughout the exhibition.'

We saw one of Marcia's performances at CGP yesterday, when we found her resurrecting the disused fountain of the park lido for an audience of pataphysicians and passers by.

  
Here she is in an ascension pose 

'Fountain' was inspired by the old knitted doll toilet roll covers, by Winnie in Samel Backett's Happy Days, and the fact that she likes to spout.

 A high wind was blowing, and Marcia hates heights.

She said, as a young woman, she didn't understand Happy Days until her mother told her, 'I do - I'm up to my waist already!'

 
Read all about Difficuλt here.