December Daily: Ulysses

[resonant]

teigh_corvus asked, "Your thoughts on James Joyce and Ulysses."

Haha. Well. I reported this to the spouse, and he said, "I think we don't like it."

We read one chapter, and then we went and looked at the SparkNotes (which are brilliant, by the way) about that chapter, and then we looked at each other and said, "What?"

Ulysses:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:

—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

SparkNotes:

It is around 8:00 in the morning, and Buck Mulligan, performing a mock mass with his shaving bowl, calls Stephen Dedalus up to the roof of the Martello tower overlooking Dublin bay.

Res and Spouse: "What?"

We do a lot of reading out loud, and generally my opinion is that it improves the experience of the book. A Christmas Carol is an annual tradition, to the point that the three of us can recite paragraphs of it from memory, which is appropriate for Christmas. Maurice has this marvelous moment when the text makes you say "fuck" and suddenly you're in the 20th Century. Moby Dick read out loud is glorious -- it falls into iambic pentameter sometimes, just for the sheer joy of it.

I'm thinking, though, that Ulysses is not improved by being read out loud. I actually had an easier time making out those lines above when I read them than when I listened to them. So possibly this was a bad choice? Possibly we should read the SparkNotes aloud and then read the text itself silently?

In fairness, another difficulty has been that with illness, travel, and other barriers, we haven't gone back to it, and now the spouse has lost his Kindle.






1 -- goss, "VENOM! Why do you think it's been such an instant hit with Fandom, and what are some of your favourite fanworks so far?" and nestra, "Any Venom recs?"
2 -- anitac588, "How do you relate to different fandoms? Do you revisit them? Sometimes I find it difficult to go back to reading stories in 'old' fandoms after discovering new OTP."
3 -- marginaliana, "what is your favorite physical non-living thing? Not a person or a pet, but it could be something you own or a piece of art, etc."
4 -- cesperanza, "I'll ask an HP question, actually, because I wasn't really ever in it and I'm interested in the reactions of people who were. It seems to me from the outside so spectacularly meh now; like, it was the fictional equiv of Lost (which I also didn't watch) where it was fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination. Am I wrong?"
5 -- teigh_corvus, "Your thoughts on James Joyce and Ulysses."
6 -- kass, "If the you of 10 years ago could see you now, what would surprise her most?"
7 -- jjhunter, "What do you carry with you?"
8 -- mific, "Sounds like you commute to and fro still. How do you pass the time traveling? Music? Audiobooks? Something else? Any reccs? :)"
9 -- torch, "favorite advent songs!"
10 -- princessofgeeks, "How did you go about changing fandoms? Was it, historically, something you did or something that just happened? Did friends lure you? Did you find new shows to watch?"
11 -- reginagiraffe, "(It's MrGiraffe's birthday so...) Have you ever written a birthday themed story? If not, what couple would have the best/funnest/easiest birthday story to write and why?"
12 -- laurenthemself, "What are your thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok? I know ya boy Steve wasn't in it but did you have any shippy feelings?"
13 -- allheadybooks, "13. What's your least favorite thing about splitting your time between two houses? (My wife and I are also in a commuter marriage at the moment, and I get so frustrated every weekend when I have to go grocery shopping AGAIN because I thought I had eggs but that was at the other apartment!"
14 -- schneefink, "how about your field of study/work/specialization/hobby and how a book/movie/series/canon got it terribly/hilariously wrong?"
15 -- china_shop, "What hooks you into a fanfic? Is it banter, characterisation, tropes, or...? Is it different from what hooks you into original fic?"
16 -- muccamukk, "Describe a long fic you always wanted to write, but never have and likely never will."
17 -- ride_4ever, "rec two due South fanworks: a favorite that you created and a favorite that someone else created. (Anything! Triggers and squicks not a concern for me.)"
18 -- kass, "What have you read recently that you've enjoyed?
19 -- jjhunter, "What are five words you like or find especially meaningful + 1 word you despise? Why?"
20 --
21 --
22 -- mekare, What would Ben Fraser do in 2018?
23 -- marina, "What was the last book you read that wasn't fanfic and that you intensely loved, and why."
24 -- wychwood, "Something about SGA! What's the one fic you're sorry you never wrote? What was your favourite episode? Do you still love John/Rodney? How gay WAS John Sheppard? Where in Atlantis would you live if you could pick any room you liked? Pick one or a topic of your choice."
25 --
26 --
27 --destina, "how has your relationship to fandom changed over the years? By which I mean not just participation in it, but your level of tolerance/interest for the cyclical things about it, the way old arguments never really stop or die, etc, but also the ways fandom changes and new ways of doing fandom evolve. (And old ways evolve out, and terms evolve, etc.)"
28 -- kass, "What do you like best about where you live?"
29 --
30 -- china_shop, "Your favourite book you read this year."
31 -- wolfshark, "what is your favorite story to reread of your own stuff? what was your favorite story to write?"

Comments

[teigh_corvus]

*laughs*
I can't say I'm surprised. That book is pretty ridiculous. But I still held out hope that you had a different experience.

I used to read books aloud with my ex-husband. We leaned towards children's books. The Phantom Tollbooth and The BFG were big favorites. I miss that.

And now I want to read Maurice!

[resonant]

And I kind of want to read it again! About that same time, we were on vacation in northern California and we came to a spot where you could smell some sort of flower, and evergreen needles, and cedarwood, and, far away, the ocean. I said to the spouse, "It smells like a really amazing men's cologne right here." He said, "It smells like a gamekeeper!"

[allheadybooks]

I took a semester-long class on Ulysses in my MFA, and the only thing that got me through each chapter was the knowledge that I could come in to class and look at my fellow students and we would all say “What??” in unison.

[resonant]

Can't wait to tell the spouse we're not the only ones.

[brancher]

Ulysses is GREAT, and it's best read while somewhat drunk. If you read it aloud, which you should, do it in an Irish accent.

ps: do not, under any circumstances, check the Sparknotes. They will only confuse you.

[resonant]

Well, it's worth a try.

[anelith]

I love that you and spouse read aloud to each other! The bit of Ulysses and accompanying note is so funny -- and a bit puzzling. Is that all Sparknotes had to say about that part? Did they not offer a translation of the Latin? It seems like there's more that could be said!

[resonant]

Oh, there was lots more -- I just wanted to grab the two openings and compare them.

[laurenthemself]

...I'm going to give Ulysses a missies.

[resonant]

Well, on the basis of brancher's recommendation, we're going to stick with it for a bit and try to disconnect ourselves from the need for things to make literal sense. That is, if we can find the spouse's Kindle.