Now I’m not saying there’s any rivalry between Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and France but the news this week is all about the French cheating on the Irish and spoiling the Emerald Isle’s World Cup dreams. I say if you want to know the real deal on that you’d better to speak to an Irishman – rather you than me frankly. Nothing to do with Ulysses of course, unless you’re wondering how many of the Republic of Ireland National football team have read it?
A helpful little romp around the statues and busts of the great and not-so-great that populate Dublin City streets is given in this piece from the Irish Times: An Irishman’s Diary – much more informative on our subject than Roy Keane. And if that wasn’t enough the same blogger reports on a certain chemist – a seller of particular soaps by the name of Sweny’s!
Librivox defends their recording of Ulysses (not to everyone’s taste apparently) in a post that makes me think about the practicality of a reading aloud. Something which is so difficult to read in book form strikes me as more difficult to appreciate in the spoken word. I may be completely wrong. What do you think? Are all books meant to be read or read aloud, or just some.
Here’s a fun little blog post in which Mom 101 takes on Joyce in the form of Gabriel Byrne. It is a battle royale, but I don’t think I’ll be giving much away to say I’m glad that Mom won out in the end! Many comments follow the post and it is all in the best possible taste!
Shakespeare & Co has a NEW MURAL for their reading room. Click on the other links within that short news piece to read further about its creation and some background on the artist, Joanna Walsh.
Here’s a review by Alexander Theroux on the Wall Street Journal site of Poisoned Pens by Gary Dexter – a collection of literary invective. Great fun to read the review, so I’m sure it must be more fun to read the book! But if you know me you’ll know I like that kind of thing! It’s not like I’m hinting at possible Chrimbo pressies!
Some days it seems like Joyce can be the butt of every joke but at least blogger Terminal Alienation spreads it around. He starts at the top though so we’ll cut him some slack. That IS a rare photo after all.
“What you need to finish with” I say to myself “are some really cute pictures of a puppy!” But how to tie that in with James Joyce and Ulysses? Voila! Oousacutiwiddlepuppyden?
Good to hear about the chemists’ shop. I’d heard that they’d done a photo archive of the place (something I’ve been planning to work from when we do “Lotus Eaters”), but knowing it’s turned into some kind of public spot and not been stripped out of the city is good news. Sounds a bit ‘gift-shop”, though.
Also, the Librivox article is good. I hadn’t read all their criteria for recording the novel. Wish I would’ve known about them at the time. I’d have loved to do a chapter.
As for reading the novel aloud, well, it’s not a job for the meek. Public readings of the novel can be invariably really exciting or really dull. It’s a lot like Shakespeare aloud; easy enough to ham up the soliloquies, but it takes a gifted actor to really make the sonnets sing.
-Rob