Once more my weekly round-up of links, articles, conversations and general stuff pertaining to Ulysses and James Joyce himself – and sometimes even not. Here’s an old article from Newsweek that explores the idea and purpose of re-reading novels, something I’ll no doubt have to do myself after I finish my first go through the great book.
And what book can’t be improved by pleasant surroundings and an flagon of ale. There is an aspect to this novel which is more social than academic – something which is hinted at by this post from Chuck Boyd’s blog Chuckography. Must try that tour myself one day.
Although taking this tour through Las Vegas might be more exciting – Davy’s Locker where neither James Joyce nor Frank Sinatra ever drank.
I’m sitting back on my first chapter and it’s good to make a start. Legend has it that this novels has many levels and more than a few nooks and crannies to explore – that might be the understatement of the year, but I’ll let you who have been there already be the judge of that. I’m thinking that this first chapter may be lulling me into a false sense of security as in itself it didn’t seem terribly difficult to read. I’m fairly sure I’m not picking up everything but it began and ended and made some familiar narrative sense, so I’m grateful for that at least.
There are many different ways to enter the labyrinth of Joyce’s text and, challenging bastard that he was, Joyce often left many well-intended but ultimately false breadcrumb trails for us to foolishly follow while he sat safely in the the shade of a forest elm laughing at our academic and misguided assurances of correct navigation. He was, at the end of the day, a genius-prankster, a terribly devious minister of his own sense of modernism, who never missed out on the opportunity to lead pilgrims astray. Hell, he longed for that opportunity and set about finding more and more ways to reach it in the new and uncharted waters of “a fully modern novel.”
