Much of America’s degraded public life is often compared to the film “Idiocracy,” but on Tuesday, an L Taraval train witnessed the reintroduction into the cultural bloodstream of one of the most fiendishly difficult novels ever written: James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

June 16 is celebrated as “Bloomsday,” in reference to the novel’s everyman hero, Leopold Bloom, who roams Dublin over the course of a single turbulent day, June 16, 1904. To commemorate the occasion, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency partnered with the San Francisco Public Library and the Irish Consulate to hand out free books by prominent Irish authors and poets and stage readings at stations of the Muni Metro, from Powell to West Portal. 

In other words, while BART is busy throwing proms (opens in new tab), Muni was out there combating society’s dumbing down one modernist masterpiece at a time.

“Bloomsday and Beyond” began on the steps of City Hall, where Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisors Alan Wong and Chyanne Chen noted the contributions of Irish Americans to the city’s history. Lurie held special regard for Michael O’Shaughnessy, the Limerick-born immigrant who became the city’s chief civil engineer, developing many of its rail tunnels (as well as the Hetch Hetchy water tunnels) and making it an easier place for wanderers to appreciate as Bloom does Dublin.

“More than a century later, San Franciscans still rely on the infrastructure O’Shaughnessy helped create,” Lurie said. “So let’s go, Ireland. And let’s go, San Francisco.”

Complex, allegorical, and written in a daunting stream-of-consciousness style, “Ulysses” is hardly light reading in an era of deteriorating attention spans. A loose retelling of Homer’s “Odyssey,” it includes heady thoughts on Shakespeare, long passages with no punctuation, and plenty of dirty jokes. It has also long attracted performative male types who open it for the cachet conferred by finishing all 700 pages, only to give up and move on to getting halfway through “Infinite Jest” instead. Even ardent bibliophiles struggle.

“I have started it enthusiastically many times,” SFMTA Director Julie Kirschbaum admitted. “But the message about the city as a space to think and explore makes me want to read it again.”

Irish Consul-General Micheál Smith confessed that he was on his third attempt. “I have yet to make it,” he said. “Well, I’ve made it two chapters. But this has inspired me to give it another go.”

The literary giveaway continued in the corridor connecting Powell Station with the Central Subway’s Union Square/Market Street Station. There, more foreign languages than usual could be heard, with so many visitors in town for the World Cup. Julie Morrissy, who had been named the National Library of Ireland’s inaugural poet in residence, kicked off that leg of Bloomsday by reading one of her own works. 

When it comes to Joyce, Morrissy urges readers to go easy on themselves. “The stream-of-consciousness style is maybe a little hard to get used to at first,” she said. “But I think people are really good readers.”

Some attendees spoke of “Ulysses” with a reverence befitting a prophecy written on a scroll. But for others, June 16 has grown into something bigger. “Bloomsday has become a global celebration,” Smith said. “Not of only one great book, but of literature itself.”