Elsewhere in Popular Culture
Writer-director Mel Brooks used the name "Leo Bloom" for the mousy accountant in his film/musical The Producers. Leo is a nervous accountant, prone to panic attacks, who keeps a security blanket to calm himself. Nevertheless it is Leo who has the idea of how to make money from a failed play.
Former Pink Floyd bandmate Roger Waters references Leopold Bloom in his song "Flickering Flame" as sitting with Molly Malone.
It has also been suggested by Jeffrey Meyer in "Orwell's Apocalypse: Coming Up For Air, Modern Fiction Studies" that George Orwell's primary character George Bowling in "Coming Up For Air" was modelled on Leopold Bloom.
In The Daily Show with Jon Stewart presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, a mock civics textbook, Leopold Bloom is mentioned in an example of a letter entitled "Writing your Congressman." The book suggests that if you have previously written to a Congressman, and you have not heard back, you should write one of the following combinations, "I live in your district and I vote/plan on registering to vote this time/will wake up on Election Day with every intention to vote but, like Joyce's Leopold Bloom, will find my day inexorably pulling me in every direction but that one toward which I intended to go."
Leopold Bloom also serves as archetype, due to his non-identity and political indifference, for the nihilistic and apathetic mass in contemporary society in the French radical fringe publication Tiqqun.
Leo Bloom King is the protagonist and narrator of Pat Conroy's 2009 novel South of Broad. His mother is a huge fan of Joyce.
Read more about this topic: Leopold Bloom
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