James Joyce was fond of remarking that if Dublin were somehow destroyed it could be rebuilt completely from the account of it given in his' novel, Ulysses. The hundreds of scholars and students that come here for the summer of his centenary year will be walking through a city they already know in their imagination. As they pass under Merchant's Arch they will be aware of the book barrow from which Leopold Bloom purchased The Sweets of Sin, as they pass by Tom Moore's 'roguish finger' they will recall a typical Joycean joke about 'the meeting of the waters'. The sea off Sandycove will be 'snot green' and it will also recall Homer's 'wine dark sea' over which that wily balddheaded seaman Odysseus sailed in his tali ship. To read Ulysses and then walk round Dublin is a weird experience. The inner reveries of Bloom and Stephen tend to infiltrate the mind, the novel's pedestrian rhythms take possession of the feet. If art is the imitation of life - and Joyce, steeled in the school of old Aquinas believed it is - then Ulysses is the supreme work of modern fiction. But its greatness is much more complex than that.
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The announcement that the Rolling Stones are indeed going to play Slane next month comes at half past eight this morning (June 10) at a press conference in Dublin's Gresham Hotel. Tickets go on sale ninety minutes later - just enough time for the pirate radios to flash the news to a thrilled city and for the evening papers to send photographers round to picture the queues and maybe chaos outside ticket outlets.
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A Doll's House, Ibsen's play about the liberation of one middle class housewife, is now playing at the Abbey Add a comment

Gene Kerrigan reviews Maeve Binchy's latest book, DUBLIN4.

Dublin 4, by Maeve Binchy, is pubblished by Ward River Press at £2.50.

Maeve Binchy's new book of short stories, Dublin 4, used to cost £2,87 1/2p - until Ray McSharry turned nice guy and took V A T off books - and now it costs £2.50. With four stories, this works out at 62 1/2p a shot - not a bad deal. Perrsonally, I'd go up a quid each for two of the stories, the other two would then work out at 25p a piece, which is about right. Add a comment

Yank comes into O'Donoghue's at lunchtime. "A Paddy and a Carlssberg Special." Stands about two feet back from the bar. "Eh, make that a cold Carlsberg Special, huh?" Ike jacket, check shirt, levis, moustache, thinning blonde hair. A big man, hard, mid-thirties, face like a map of Saigon.  By Gene Kerrigan
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School's out early today. It's five to three on a Wednesday afternoon in the National Concert Hall. The RTESO has just finished rehearsing Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." As the wind and percussion players gather together their instruments and prepare to leave, the string players sit patiently waiting to finish the day's work. The last programme piece to be rehearsed, "Divertmento For Strings" by Irish composer Seoirse Bodley, is, as the title would suggest, for string only. By Paddy Agnew
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A new genre of humour, more vivid, cynical and even cruel has been slouching onto the Irish stage. By Gene Kerrigan

Timing has a lot to do with whether stand up comedy is good - and tonight the timing is dreadful. Eight, they said, then half past, and nine is long gone and it's half past nine before Billy Magra goes on stage and starts with the humour. The reason for the bad timing was more bad timing - the show was set for Monday night, and that's when Not The Nine O'Clock News is on BBC 2. And a lot of the folks who might go to a gig like this are Not fans. Add a comment

MARTIN GALE'S RURAL PAINTINGS BY AIDAN DUNNE

*Aidan Dunne is art critic for In Dublin magazine
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