Chris McCabe: Dedalus

The latest addition to my website is Chris McCabe‘s Dedalus. McCabe is a modern poet but he has written a novel which is a homage to James Joyce, a sequel to Joyce’s Ulysses and a fascinating work in its own right. This post is being written on 16 June, Bloomsday, the day on which (in 1904) Ulysses is set. McCabe sets his novel on the next day but still follows, to a certain degree, Joyce’s structure and story, while throwing in a host of postmodern elements and his own version of events. As a poet, McCabe is adept at writing in Joycean language but can also bring in a lot of modern features, from hyperlinks (in the ebook version) to references to modern Ireland (Bono and Ryanair) as well as an interview with himself, particularly about father-son relationships, a key theme of Ulysses. It works very well as we get reJoyce as well as McCabe’s own original work blending admirably. Happy Bloomsday!

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