Ulysses (1922)

[catalog]

Don't worry, I've ordered it, inshallah I'll be picking it up tomorrow

 

[version]

That's a great distinction. Generative vs limiting frames. I just encountered Vico a couple months ago via Robert Pogue Harrison. What do you think? Did you know him before Joyce?

Nah, I found him via Joyce. I think Beckett's thing on The Wake - Dante… Bruno, Vico… Joyce - or a post of Grapejuice's. And I don't know enough about him to have an opinion yet.

 

[version]

Is history cyclical?

Well?

dissensus.com

The Linear and the Circular in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake - waggish

James Joyce made the superimposition of conflicting patterns one of the central principles of both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

www.waggish.org

 

[version]

This idea of the two conflicting schema as a deliberate ploy by Joyce to scramble the book further is intriguing. I'd assumed he was genuinely trying to help out his mates by giving them a rough map,

James Joyce made the superimposition of conflicting patterns one of the central principles of both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. (You can see it in Portrait as well, but nowhere near to the extent.) While he drew on Dante’s schematic cosmology as a model for organizing huge and diverse amounts of material, he drew from Shakespeare the notion that uncertainty, indeterminacy, and outright contradiction could give immense strength and depth to the effect of a work on readers.

Unlike Shakespeare, Joyce could not hide his life from his readers. People were now far more interested in the life of the artist, and documentation was too easily had. But rather than trying to mask his intentions, he could overload a work with as many conflicting and indeterminate moments, motifs, and significations as possible. Schemata that came to mind after the basic construction of a work, like the infamous Ulysses schema that Joyce gave to Stuart Gilbert that has held too much sway ever since, were just additional bricks to add to the consternating edifice. (Note the somewhat variable Linati schema.)

 

[version]

Interesting they say Joyce couldn't hide his life from the reader because of interest in the artist, documentation etc when Pynchon managed to do it pretty successfully in a much more heavily-documented period.

 

[version]

its deflating reading about this book i find. if i read a cliffnotes account of the section ive just read i am filled with despair and rancour.

This book in particular?

 

[luka]

This book in particular?

yep

 

[version]

How come?

 

[luka]

what do you mean?

 

[version]

Why are you filled with despair and rancor reading notes on Ulysses in particular and not, say, The Cantos?

 

[luka]

oh i see im not sure. i'll think about it.

 

[shiels]

Let's do a book club on it in about 2 months

I’m around page 350 with the lovely gerty with the pale skin and wavey hair. It’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m done

 

[luka]

I’m around page 350 with the lovely gerty with the pale skin and wavey hair. It’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m done

what book is this?

 

[version]

Ulysses. He's up to Nausicaa.

 

[luka]

im going to try and get to the end before him then im on about page 150

 

[luka]

what's been your experience of the book version, talk to me about your actual life experiences of reading it

 

[version]

Are you reading it properly or skipping bits again?

 

[luka]

properly

 

[version]

what's been your experience of the book version, talk to me about your actual life experiences of reading it

I've been reading it on and off since July. Some of it's a proper slog, "just turning the pages" as you put it earlier, and some of it's brilliant. There've been a few moments where I've seriously considered ditching it, but then I'll read it a bit more and fall in love with it again.

 

[version]

I got really fed up reading Circe recently as it went on for so long and gave me so little to work with I just wanted it to be over. That section alone's the length of a novel in its own right, 150 pages or something.