Patrick Walsh Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 June 16th, the day Leopold Bloom set out on his journey through Dublin. I never read Ulysses myself, but the ending of Dubliners gets me every time. I think I'll give that bigger fish a shot. I lived in Dublin for 6 months during college. I met my girlfriend there (an exchange student from France) and we've been together ever since. There's something about that country. I feel it most intensely along the western coast: it's as if you've found the edge of the world. You can feel completely lonely and content there. So, happy Bloomsday! Here's to good art! Support bacteria: they're the only culture some people have. - Steven Wright visit my website at patrickwalsh.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magpel Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 Well, P.P, yo should know that it is not a pure bred Bloomsday unless it is Thursday, June 16th. The 16th is still celebrated in NY and Dublin, I think, but when it's a Thursday, they pull out all the stops. Ulysses is a difficult but hugely rewarding novel. There's a world in there, to a degree that few other novels can match. Maybe Faulkners Yoknapatawpha novels come close. Now, Finnegan's Wake is another mater altogether. Happy Bloomsday! Check out the Sweet Clementines CD at bandcamp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bunny Knutson Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 I haven't read Joyce's Ulysses (yet), but I enjoyed reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man many years ago. I don't think too many folks around here know about Bloomsday, though. Artists like James Joyce, John Cage, and Marcel Duchamp are underappreciated here, to say the least. Happy Bloomsday! https://bunny.bandcamp.com/ https://theystolemycrayon.bandcamp.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funk Jazz Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 i was vaguely aware of bloomsday, joyce, etc but NPR sure cured that. every show on the air today mentioned it. i will definitely put that novel more towards the top of my list of "to reads". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theblue1 Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 Yes. I said, yes. Yes... bookmark these: news.google.com | m-w dictionary | wikipedia encyclopedia | Columbia Encyclopedia TK Major / one blue nine | myspace.com/onebluenine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord -B Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 I'm starting Ulysses tonight after watching a documentary on it. The T.V was damn good tonight there was: 1. A showing of Miles Davis recording Miles Ahead with Gill Evans. 2. There was a documentary on John Coltrane 3. A documentary on James Joyce and Ulysses Derek Smalls: It's like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water. http://www.myspace.com/gordonbache Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
20to20 Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 Ulysses is certainly proof that Joyce knew everything , and somehow managed to fit it all in one novel... ________________________________ Bunny, Between your recent post mentioning the Dada movement, and now Joyce, Cage and Rrose Selavy (Duchamp), it seems we have more in common than our muzak... BTW, I'm sure Duchamp would've had fun with the phrase: "Dada Movement"... Bob Phillips 20to20soundesign Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duddits Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 Originally posted by FunkJazz: i was vaguely aware of bloomsday, joyce, etc but NPR sure cured that. every show on the air today mentioned it. i will definitely put that novel more towards the top of my list of "to reads".No No No No No no no no no no Nononono nonono no no no . That will never work. If you put it "more towards the top of my list of 'to reads'" you will NEVER read it. NEVER. that's not how it works. You either read it out of obligation (literature 414b, etc.) or obsession. But never out of "more towards the top of my list." That will never ever work. I know I may be just a cat, and a cantankerous one at that as of late (happens to cats during the summer), but I found that reading Ulysses in the spirit Joyce wrote it -- a big fat juicy joke -- kept it moving right along. In my humble opinion, it's not so much about everything, as much as it's a parody of everything. Dooby Dooby Doo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funk Jazz Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 Originally posted by Duddits: No No No No No no no no no no Nononono nonono no no no . That will never work. If you put it "more towards the top of my list of 'to reads'" you will NEVER read it. NEVER. that's not how it works. You either read it out of obligation (literature 414b, etc.) or obsession. But never out of "more towards the top of my list." That will never ever work. whatever Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmstudio99 Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 Originally posted by Gord -B: 1. A showing of Miles Davis recording Miles Ahead with Gill Evans. Wait...where was this? I would have loved to have seen that! Gila Monster Studio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rog Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 I just finished Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintanence. I need something lighter to read now ... like Ulysses. "That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." - Banky Edwards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Flier Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 Originally posted by Rog: I just finished Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintanence. I need something lighter to read now ... like Ulysses.LOL!! Really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abnorm Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 I read "Dubliners" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and was dying to read "Ulysses." I was about 21, and made it through the first chapter. I tried again when I was about 33, and made it through the first chapter again! In the 2nd chapter, there was one sentence that I had to look up 3 words for. Finally, older and wiser and having read much great literature and philosophy, I tried again at about age 42 (I'm 51 now). I read every word! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magpel Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 (Joyce Rant...) There so many levels of difficulty in Ulysses, not least of which is the way that Joyce plays with our sentimental notions of "character." Leopold Bloom is arguably the most fully realized chartacter in all of English literature, and yet from the middle of the book on, he becomes unrecognizable to the reader amidst storms of stylistic and symbolic experimentation. It's Almost as if Joyce was calling us fools for getting attached to him in the first place. Then, of course, he appeases us at the end with Molly Bloom's monlogue, which is Joyce at his lyrical, sentimental best. But all the Modernists do that to their readers--feed us beautiful sentiments and characterizations and then castiagte us for falling for the same old trick. They were avant garde, you know, but they were also late victorians. The key to getting through the later Joyce ( Dubliners and Portrait are realtively easy reads) is to just accept that you're not going to understand much of it. Only someone with a precisely Joycean frame of reference is going to get it all, and that means no one except Joyce himself, Samuel Beckett (Joyce's personal secretary) and, probably, the late critic Hugh Kenner. Period. To get Joyce, you have to devote your life to Joyce, and even then you'll come up short because you're not as smart as he was. And BTW I have read Finnegan's Wake. It makes Ulysses sound like Mother Goose. Check out the Sweet Clementines CD at bandcamp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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