Oh man, I can’t WAIT to see this! Bet it doesn’t come here though.
On the topic of Ulysses, can anyone recommend an English dictionary to buy that will get me past page 5? I want to start reading it but not without a nice fat dictionary that is going to cover every word in the book. Do I go for one of those Oxford encylcopaedias of the English language or a Collins that has pictures in it? 
It’s better to get a guide to the book itself. It will explain his allusions as well, which are more baffling than the vocabulary he uses.
I agree bababa, but be aware gretel, most guides to Ulysses are larger and longer than the novel and most dictionaries!
I’m afraid that the bulk is unavoidable. At least read “Portrait of the Artist” and Homer’s “Odyssey” again before you take the plunge, that’ll save some head-scratching.
Happy Bloomsday everybody!
Are we all having kidney pie for breakfast?
(insert ribald joke here) 
NY Times had an article this morning on how many Dubliners are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the setting of the novel (but not the date on which it was written, which was 20 years later), but that most celebrants have never read it. I confess I haven’t, though when I learned of the book as an English major it sounded important and I thought about attempting it. But it sounds as though it would be best read as the subject of a semester long course with a good teacher.
I just love Joyce. She’s my favorite author.
James Joyce, richardm smart alec, was actually Samuel Beckett masquerading as Eugene Ionesco who was somehow related to Leopold and Molly but am not sure how. or why? But if nothing else, it was Joyce who gave us the long interior monologue so beloved by stand up and sit down comedians today, from David Letterman’s and Jay Leno’s opening interior monologue to Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern on radio.
Full disclosure: Loved “Ully Seas.” Never actually read it.
It takes an Irishman to write a book no one has read but everyone loves.
[quote]But if nothing else, it was Joyce who gave us the long interior monologue so beloved by stand up and sit down comedians today, from David Letterman’s and Jay Leno’s opening interior monologue to Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern on radio.
[/quote]
Well, no, Joyce was not the originator of stream of consciousness. He just over-developed it to the point that no one could ever use it again without being plagued by thoughts of plagiarism.
I’ve gotten halfway through Ulysses twice before the law of diminishing returns kicked in. Not enough gain for the pain, so to speak.
An anthropologist has taken modernism to task for it’s underlying assumption that consciousness, or the mind in general, is a blank slate. There is no such thing as a stream of consciousness, in the sense of a jumble of unrelated, irrational or pre-rational impressions. The mind is a sorting machine and imposes order and sense upon everything brought to its experience. Hence the modernist attempt to portray the mind as it really is was a false start for literature since the mind does not in fact operate in the way the moderists’ thought. Joyce’s greatness lies in the energy and ambition he brought to his work not in the truth of anything he said.
I opened my eyes and woke up and turned my head there’s my glass of water where I left it last night what’s that noise outside sure it’s only that ould dog from next door where’s my teeth oh crap I’ve pished meself in the night and the sheets are all wet I’ll have to be careful getting out of bed here I go off to the bathroom put on my slippers am I awake at all I wondered to myself as I stood up first the left leg and then the right now both feet are on the floor and it’s a lovely floor God bless it and sure it’s great for standing on
(and so on for a thousand pages)
My favorite monologue, which may be equally indecipherable, begins:
Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast heaven to hell so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labours of men that as a result of the labours unfinished of Testew and Cunard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labours of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation is seen to waste and pine waste and pine and concurrently simultaneously . . .
Joyce alert: it has come to this!
Yes I will: googling unveils cyber world Bloomsday cult
James Joyce’s mammoth “Ulysses” may be catalogued
as one of those books that people buy but rarely read in
their entirety, but out there in the cyber world gestates a
budding “Bloomsday” cult giving Joyce a resounding
“Yes”
booktrade.info/index.php?cat … sitem=4164
Yes I said Yes I will Yes" go the last words of the 80 pages of unpunctuated stream-of-consciousness monologue that conclude one of the most highly acclaimed but notoriously difficult to read literary works of the last century.
James Joyce’s mammoth “Ulysses” may be catalogued as one of those books that people buy but rarely read in their entirety, but out there in the cyber world gestates a budding “Bloomsday” cult giving Joyce a resounding “Yes”.
As afficionados of the 700-page novel celebrate the 100th anniversary of the day on which it is set – June 16, 1904, the date now known as ‘‘Bloomsday’’ – sites devoted either to its explanation or its exploitation multiply across the Internet.
OK. I read it. And I loved it. (but, I read it during a PhD English class when i wan undergrad with a great professor and blah, blah, blah)
I don’t remember much, however i remember that i really enjoyed it. and that’s good for me as i read like 5 books a week for escapism only.
If anyone wants to try that big fucker again and discuss, I’m open for a book club on it. Anyone up for it???
Yea, well I never read Ulysses, but I re-read War and Peace on the bus the other day and, while it is fairly long, Tolstoy’s philosophy is so gripping that I found it hard to put down. A longer book that’s equally hard to put down is Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, a 1500 page tale of the attempted seduction of a young woman who stands by her virtue against almost insurmountable odds. I read that before work the other day and almost missed my bus, so enthralled was I. Of course the aforementioned are mere novellas beside Proust’s 3400 page Remembrance of Things Past , but I read that last weekend and found it can almost be read in one sitting (if one takes a piss first). What a beautiful story of love, life and the role of time in the human experience. On the other hand, despite all the positive reviews, I was less smitten by Dostoyevski’s Brothers Karamazov, another fairly lengthy book at 1000 pages or so, but perhaps if I’d read it in English rather than the original Russian I might’ve enjoyed it more. Anyway, thanks for the inspiration. I picked up a copy of Ulysses and look forward to reading it this afternoon.
As far as I’m concerned a book that’s ‘difficult’ and ‘painful’ to read is a crap book.
Brian
Yeah, actually that’s a good idea. Dostoyevski’s Russian prose style isn’t considered to be very good; when you read his books in a competent English translation, they always seem better.