James Joyce Died Today. Would anyone like to join me tonight at the Finnegans Wake Society of NYC's annual Death Day dinner?→[More:]There will be singing of Irish folksongs I do not know and there will be a short play performed in honor of a member who died this year, a play in which those performing will stick their heads into holes cut out of a large painted stretched canvas and read bits of text from FW strung together into a semblance of an introduction to the book. (I'm playing Shaun the Post, with his shammy mail sack and also maybe Shem, his sham of a twin brother. I say words like "fornicolopulation"). My friend who's been joining me at the FW reading group on an off for the past few years can't make it. (It costs $25 and that doesn't even include drinks and it's in midtown at 6pm and I can't really promise it will be fun and there's a good chance the food won't be that good and the play you might enjoy but less so if you haven't read [any of] the book).

Alternatively, come to the reading group some time. 6-8PM at the Gotham Book Shop on the 4th Wednesday of every month. The under-50yrsold contingent is really, really tiny. Here's the website. Each month we get through maybe a page or so of the text and we're currently toward the end of the nightlessons chapter.