Ulysses (1922)

Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
shiels said:
Who does the annotations @Corpsey? Do you think it’s having any effect on you. Are you learning anything or is just about it being an impressive feat, to write and to have read
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It's this version


I'm constantly wrestling with my feelings re: the annotations tbh. Without them I think great swathes of it would be completely incomprehensible.

But then, I also think that Joyce can't possibly have expected most people who read it to understand it—unless they were conversant with Irish history, with Dublin circa 1904, had recently read 'Dubliners' and 'A Portrait', could speak/read several languages, etc etc.

I also notice, when I'm going sans annotations, that a lot of times there'll be something incomprehensible which either you suddenly twig onto or he outright 'solves' for you a few paragraphs or pages later. And there's a lot of satisfaction in that. Whereas with annotations, you'll know straight away that e.g. Mermaids was a popular type of tobacco.

I've tried various set ups — reading it from the kindle and flitting back and forth from notes to text, reading it from the book with the annotations ready to read on a kindle/laptop nearby, and reading it from the book without any notes whatsoever.

The upside of reading notes is that it makes you study the text and so I'm noticing a lot of parallels (e.g.) I think I'd completely miss otherwise. The downside is that you're studying stuff sometimes when you should just be letting it flow through you.

Now up to 'Cyclops', having finished 'Sirens' last night in a single session. It's consuming my evenings, my thoughts and perceptions. It feels like a slog at times, it's definitely not something I could read in a week or fortnight. I'm 21 days in and I've read less than half of it.

But it's worth it. It's absolutely miraculous. I think if it was just about Joyce being clever it wouldn't be worth it, as impressive as it is as a technical feat. But it's also a very kind, compassionate, funny book. I keep thinking about how much of a cunt Eliot was compared to Joyce. (Genius though he was.)
 
V

version

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
It's this version


I'm constantly wrestling with my feelings re: the annotations tbh. Without them I think great swathes of it would be completely incomprehensible.

But then, I also think that Joyce can't possibly have expected most people who read it to understand it—unless they were conversant with Irish history, with Dublin circa 1904, had recently read 'Dubliners' and 'A Portrait', could speak/read several languages, etc etc.

I also notice, when I'm going sans annotations, that a lot of times there'll be something incomprehensible which either you suddenly twig onto or he outright 'solves' for you a few paragraphs or pages later. And there's a lot of satisfaction in that. Whereas with annotations, you'll know straight away that e.g. Mermaids was a popular type of tobacco.

I've tried various set ups — reading it from the kindle and flitting back and forth from notes to text, reading it from the book with the annotations ready to read on a kindle/laptop nearby, and reading it from the book without any notes whatsoever.

The upside of reading notes is that it makes you study the text and so I'm noticing a lot of parallels (e.g.) I think I'd completely miss otherwise. The downside is that you're studying stuff sometimes when you should just be letting it flow through you.

Now up to 'Cyclops', having finished 'Sirens' last night in a single session. It's consuming my evenings, my thoughts and perceptions. It feels like a slog at times, it's definitely not something I could read in a week or fortnight. I'm 21 days in and I've read less than half of it.

But it's worth it. It's absolutely miraculous. I think if it was just about Joyce being clever it wouldn't be worth it, as impressive as it is as a technical feat. But it's also a very kind, compassionate, funny book. I keep thinking about how much of a cunt Eliot was compared to Joyce. (Genius though he was.)
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Do you have a favourite episode, or episodes, thus far?
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Perhaps because they're the most recent I've read, but both 'Wandering Rocks' and 'Sirens' bowled me over—although in both cases, I reached a certain point and checked how much was left of the section and felt distinctly crestfallen.

It really does feel like an epic, despite it being a single day, a single city, a relatively small cast of characters, etc. It's an epic for the reader.

I feel like that's part of the point of 'wandering rocks', e.g., that you're having to navigate this incredibly confusing, fast moving territory to come out the other side. Ditto 'Scylla and Charybdis', which is incredibly dense and again I doubt anyone not armed with footnotes could possibly understand.
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
I loved in the latter half of ulysses when the evening begins and you feel viscerally that you yourself are in night as well.
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
bravo-applause.gif
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've not read much Beckett but stuff like this from Sirens seems quite redolent of what I have read of him, to me

"Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat."

Violently ludic, involuted prose that draws attention to the artificiality of everything while simultaneously depicting, conjuring an uncompromisingly naturalistic world. I'm not sure anyone was writing stuff remotely like this before 'Ulysses'? I suppose there are precursors like 'Tristam Shandy'. Even so it must have been a complete headfuck for anyone reading it back in in the 1920s.

Anyway, I'm getting tempted here to just write about it on dissensus rather than reading it, so I'll retreat back into hermetic seclusion.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

The Joyce Project : Ulysses : Don Quixote

An interactive companion to James Joyce's Ulysses
m.joyceproject.com
Two male protagonists who are polar opposites in most obvious ways, but whose minds somehow mesh, undertake a series of episodic adventures that highlight both their differences and their similarities. (One example that rivals Cervantes' stories for length and readability are the twenty sea novels of Patrick O'Brian.)
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master-and-commander.jpg
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
lets read all of those as a special luka and jack shared camaraderie project to bring us closer together
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've read the first one so you can read that first and perhaps by the time you've finished it I'll have finished two more sections of Ulysses
 
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