Brain Pain discussion
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Ulysses - Spine 2012
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The effort alone in this is substantial Jim; Thanks alot. I'm starting to feel the pressure of this mammoth months before i even read it haha.
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The more I look at Ulysses, the more I understand why people don't make it through. However, with some pre-planning - and a few engineers - I see no reason why we can't take the bastard down! Hmm... sounds like we're preparing to lay siege to a walled city, or something. Maybe we are...
And one of the great questions of the Trojan War is whether it was worth a ten-year siege or, in retrospect, cheaper, simpler, and less dangerous just to have let Helen remain.The struggle with modernism is always whether the game is worth the candle. It's not for almost everybody. That's why the books are largely unread. That's why Jim called this reading group devoted to them Brain Pain, which would not be the case if we were studying other writers, even better writers -- Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Sophocles, the English Romantic Poets, Cervantes. :-)
Modernism is so unattractive that it effectively displaced -- or strongly contributed to the displacement -- of poetry, painting, classical music and serious fiction as a necessity for an educated person.
To make matters worse, in the last 50 years people became attracted to various critical approaches, some as obscure as quantum physics, but not half so amusing. (Footnote: Rudolph Bing, former GM of the Metropolitan Opera on Pelléas et Mellisande -- "Twice as long as Gotterdammerung and not half so amusing.")
I was reading a book on post-structuralism in the hospital a few years ago and a resident who frustrated that his girlfriend wouldn't just tell what it was all about -- quickly. He wanted me to give him the low-down -- I seemed reasonable -- while he removed a chest tube from my back. (I've been all better for years -- just some pneumonia. Thanks for asking.)
As philosophy Derrida might be forgiven -- it's not as though it's a sensuous pleasure trying to read Kant. But to impose it on literature because academics were bored with the old ways or wanted to claim for critics the status of creators?
So for brain pain, we need to find a way when we speak of these books to focus on the quid pro quo, the good stuff we get for the pain.
I think we need to find the pleasures and their are not always easily disinterred from the corpus/corpse of the literature. They're more apparent to me in some writers than others -- although I'm not really sure the obscurities are always necessary. I'm less convinced about the relentless allusiveness in Joyce than in Eliot.
Have a nice day. :-)
Jim wrote:The more I look at Ulysses, the more I understand why people don't make it through. However, with some pre-planning - and a few engineers - I see no reason why we can't take the bastard down!... Definitely, I think that the outlet of this group should give us plenty of motivation to take it down together, and find the pleasure in it that Bill spoke of.
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Hopefully, the version you have is somewhere near either of these two page lengths. If not, do a little algebra to help locate where the Episodes begin and end in your edition. The page numbers in parentheses are my best guess about where the chapters begin in the shorter “old version”. Go through your copy and make an Episode/page list to correspond with this schedule. The version I have has a simple graphic to separate the episodes that is basically just a thick horizontal line. Hopefully your version has something similar. The episode names (like ‘Telemachus’) are taken from Homer’s The Odyssey. It is unlikely you will find these episode headings in the version you own, but if you do, lucky you!
This is a hassle, I know, so be sure to spit on Joyce’s grave, should the opportunity arise. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the sentiment!
Week One – Jan. 30, 2012
Episode 1, Telemachus – pp 1- 28 new (page 1 old)
Episode 2, Nestor – pp 28 – 45 new (page 21 old)
Episode 3, Proteus – pp 45 – 64 new (page 35 old)
Week Two – Feb. 6
Episode 4, Calypso – pp 65 – 85 new (page 48 old)
Episode 5, Lotus Eaters – pp 85 – 107 new (page 63 old)
Episode 6, Hades – pp 107 – 147 new (page 80 old)
Week Three – Feb. 13
Episode 7, Aeolus – pp 147 – 189 new (page 108 old)
Episode 8, Lestrygonians – pp 190 – 234 new (page 140 old)
Week Four – Feb. 20
Episode 9, Scylla and Charybdis – pp 235 – 280 new (page 174 old)
Episode 10, Wandering Rocks – pp 280 – 328 new (page 208 old)
Week Five – Feb. 27
Episode 11, Sirens – pp 328 – 376 new (page 241 old)
Episode 12, Cyclops – pp 376 – 449 new (page 277 old)
Week Six – March 5
Episode 13, Nausicca – pp 449 – 499 new (page 328 old)
Episode 14, Oxen of the Sun – pp 499 – 561 new (page 366 old)
Week Seven – March 12
Episode 15, Circe – pp 561 – 703 new (page 409 old)
Episode 16, Eumaeus – pp 704 – 776 new (page 575 old)
Week Eight – March 19
Episode 17, Ithaca – pp 776 – 871 new (page 627 old)
Week Nine – March 26
Episode 18, Penelope – pp 871 – 933 new (page 699 old)
Week Ten – April 2
Discussion of the book as a whole, conclusions, etc…
IMPORTANT: These discussion threads will remain open indefinitely. If you find yourself behind in the reading or if you have joined the group after the dates listed above, go ahead and read at your own pace and discuss when you want. The moderator and other members will gladly join in!