Ulysses Reading Group 2023

[ValentineGreen]

Hi all, on the back of a thread currently in Chat 'have you read Ulysses' it seemed like it would be a good idea to form a Ulysses Read-a-long group here.

No experience required, this thread is open to anyone who fancies reading it for the first time or the 100th time!

I don't know yet the best way to structure it, as in how many pages we all agree to read given that some 'chapters' are far denser than others. I'm totally open to anyone who has set up something like this before and knows what will work well?

For some context, I did not study English Literature but have always been an avid reader. I read Ulysses once, many years ago and while I say 'read' I mean my eyes read each word but I cannot say my brain decoded them all whatsoever.

Now, nearly 30 years later, and after a lifetime of reading, including Portrait and Dubliners as well as a lot of reading around the meaning of Ulysses, I wish to re-read it. But I would love to read it with others where we can share our thoughts and interpretations and knowledge as we go.

I find myself growing ever more fascinated by Joyce and his life and I really want to 'know' this great masterpiece and understand it (if I can!)

Please don't be shy! Come and join me...

Between us we can work out the best way to structure this undertaking.

I'm also still here. Been seriously sidelined - but by some other interesting modernist projects! I'll read Lestrygonians with you (I might not get through all of it - I have a 40-minute conference presentation to have ready within 2 weeks!

PS - Happy to see you back.

Hello to you both! I'm so happy to see you're both still here!

@SerafinasGoose I'm v curious to know a little more about your modernists projects if you're ok to share anything about them?

@BaronMunchausen what have you been reading in the past year? Anything you'd recommend?

Since finishing Ulysses in June 24 I went to the summer school in Trieste & spent a week immersed in all things Joyce which was fab. Don't know if either of you have been before but I really enjoyed it

Since then I've read a lot of contextual books & I'm.really enjoying diving deeper & deeper down that rabbit hole.

I've read

Ellman's Joyce (had started & abandoned in 23 in favour of reading the text itself)

My Brother's Keeper Stanislaus Joyce

Here comes everybody Anthony Burgess

The Years of Bloom John McCourt

James Joyce Chester Anderson

The Monto Terry Fagan

Joyce in Art

Araby House Michael Quinn

James Joyce Edna O'Brien

James Joyce in Ostend Xavier Tricot

I'm currently reading Sylvia Beach & The Lost Generation Noel Riley Fitch

Along with the Gabler edition of Ulysses for the Course & I'm also reading the penguin annotated student edition & I'm enjoying the notes in this one

Always happy to have more recommendations though!

We've been considering the theme of 'from the cave of the cyclops: ideas of self & nationhood' in this years reading..

I'm picking up so many more parallels between Stephen & Bloom this time round.

I love that in Protues Stephen is wrestling with ideas of becoming- conception, the vastness of what went before we 'are' & the umbilical cord telephone all the way back to Eve, connecting everyone with the past

In Hades Meanwhile at the same time, 11am Bloom is grabbing with what happens after we die - & imagine the telephones in coffins, connecting the dead with the present. They're bookending our short human existence in a v pleasing way which I hasn't noticed before.

We had a guest presenter last week for Hades & he spoke about the references to the sculptures of famous people referenced along the cortege route to glasnevin & how they give a history of the emergency of irish nationalism & the key figures who played a role

Where as Stephen is stuck with Deasy who is a loyalist & proud representative of the empire - lots of references of a different national identity for ireland / dublin in this episode.

Stephen says history is a nightmare from which he is trying to waken

Both Stephen have misascribed nationalities or identities given to them that they don't feel themselves.

Deasy says he supposes Stephen is a fenian

The other men are v aware of Bloom's 'jewishness '

These are some of the things I've been thinking about in the past week

@ValentineGreen I'm very happy to do that, and can send you links once PM is back up and running again. If I say too much on an open forum I'm afraid I will be instantly identifiable by name. Whilst I haven't posted anything on this site I'd be afraid to let others see, I have divulged some very private details from time to time so would rather keep this screen handle separate from my own! I don't tend to change MN name too often (maybe I should).

Brilliant 👏 thank you i would greatly appreciate that & also understand the privacy issue!

I haven’t read so much as dipped in for bits and pieces - after reading Nora from cover to cover, into My Brother’s Keeper, Silent Years, Ellmann, the Selected Letters. And one of my many copies of Stephen Hero. The book I’m reading atm is unrelated - Ronan Fanning’s biography of de Valera. It’s curious that Joyce and de Valera don’t seem to have even remarked on each other given their many intersections in time and place, as well as their fundamental differences.

I’ve read some from your list in the past - Burgess and Anderson a long time ago, and most recently the Edna O’Brien (I thought it very poor TBH). I’d really love to go to Trieste! My son went recently and brought me back a little statue of Joyce. Idolatry!

Good morning!
So we've completed Lestrygonians & had a really interesting discussion led by a guest lecturer.

He followed the map of the route & showed lots of old photos of Dublin back in early 1900s

It's such a fabulous episode with so much going on, so layered. In the very first paragraph we have a reference to the church (Christian brother buying sweets) & the crown (king Edward sucking jujubes) Ireland's two oppressors.

Lots of political references which we teased out a bit.

Some of the most extraordinary treatment of food & eating & consumption (in many meanings) that I've ever come across in a book..also v new scientific theories- the mixing of biomes on the utensils, the canabilistic properties of (mity) cheese.

I was reading around this episode & came across some research on the real Davy Byrne & a compelling suggestion that in real life he was gay & his pub was a gentle safe place in a time when it was incredibly difficult to be gay in ireland. He's buried in glasnevin cemetery with another man & inscription says his 'friend thomas Campbell'

There is a poet also called thomas Campbell & joyce includes references to him in the text which may be a nod to this real life situation

Perhaps this is why he called it a moral pub, preserving the reputation in writing against those who would consider it immoral. If joyce really did this - that just fills my heart.

Loads more but have to go to work now

There's some fascinating stuff in there. Joyce read a lot of Havelock Ellis, and I suspect would likely have been sympathetic to those outside the hegemonic sexuality and gendered roles. He'd also turned his back on Catholicism and the strictures imposed by the Church.

I haven't managed to reread this episode unfortunately as I have limited to to complete my paper for an event I'm presenting at in two weeks' time. One of the evenings there involves a band and a recital of music dating back to the 1920s - I'm so excited about this! (I'd take my 1920s piano shawl but have to drag everything there with me on the train so space is at a premium).

My 'audible' version of Ulysses has snippets from those old music hall tunes dividing the chapters - including 'Love's Old Sweet Song' which Molly periodically sings throughout the book.

The references to different foods, soaps and pharmaceutical purchases, music, and other basic paraphernalia of the day, has always fascinated me. This book really feels like visiting a museum at times - a real day in the life of the 1920s preserved in all its beauty and ugliness.

Thanks for that fascinating nugget about Davy Byrne and his shared headstone - hadn't known that. I remember going to Davy Byrnes (it's lost its apostrophe?) many years ago, at that time the door to 7 Eccles Street was on display inside the pub. I recall not being very taken with the establishment and spending more time at Mulligan's - which I only later realised also had a thin Joycean link via Counterparts.

I really need to get my behind over to Dublin and do one of the Joyce tours. I'd love to see these places.

I also read a fascinating study of the ide of sawdust or straw on the floors of pubs & restaurants back then - again it's in the joyce project website.

Burtons, next door to Davy Byrnes has just been restored as a restaurant (pretty nice looking one, not like the book!) It's not open yet but v soon I believe & they have lots of joyce photos etc

The Eccles St door is now in the James Joyce Centre, North Great George's St

If either of you are planning on coming over at all let me know!

When I'm in Dublin by myself I usually have a glass of wine in Davy Byrnes for joyce but also other favourite Irish writers - brendan behan & Patrick kavanagh etc

Another interesting line in this episode is 'the nuns invented barbed wire'
Fascinating!

I read a whole thing on the use of U.P. up & apparently one explanation is that it was commonly used then to mean similar to banjaxed/ over etc

And joyce used it in a personal letter himself to Frank budgen (i think) he wrote in relation to his eyesight 'I've been over working & if i don't get my sight sorted it's U.P. up for me' (paraphrase)

I find it amusing that so much energy has gone into deciphering what was probably a well used phrase that's simply fallen out of favour as opposed to some deep obscure reference
There was also a tradition of vinegar valentines & mean postcards in that era which he was probably referencing

We've been listening to a lot of the music too which I love ❤️
And in trieste we had a whole presentation on it with lots of listening to various songs both music hall & opera.

I totally agree with the museum analogy. For me it's the closest thing to time travel i think I will experience.

Would you describe what he did as holographic?

I'm fascinated by the complete world he built. In this episode we have references to Mrs Riordan (Dante), Julia Morkam (the dead ) & Bob Doran (dubliners)

The role of soap advertising is also fascinating! I literally could talk all day about this book 😍

Good luck with your presentation @SerafinasGoose

If anyone else from last year is following, please feel free to join right back in!

It's Scylla & Charybdis next week. I'm reading Hamlet again for the first time since I was 18...& I'm hoping this will help 🙏

Thanks for the lead on the cryptic "U.P." postcard @ValentineGreen, it always rather baffled me - and of course nobody in Ulysses ever explains anything! I looked up the Collected Letters and the U.P. mention is in a dictated letter to Valery Larbaud of 7/10/28. Joyce says he can’t see a single word of print, has as much strength as a kitten and “Apparently I have completely overworked myself and if I don’t get back sight to read it is all U-P up.". I assume he expected a Frenchman to understand solely from reading Ulysses. Interestingly he uses at least one phrase that ends up in Finnegans Wake (I’d put the spelling variation down to the dictation) - “my ho head hawls”. In full, "my ho head hawls and I feel as heavy as John McCormack" vs "My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone" in FW. Looks like there’s more FW material in the letter (perhaps he wrote in English rather than French in order to try it out), but that’s the one I specifically recognise.

@SerafinasGoose Brenda Maddox mentions in passing that Joyce telegrammed his family in Dublin to send one of his sisters over asap because Nora was going to leave him alone with their children for a week or two. I’m not sure he was that sympathetic to "those outside the hegemonic ..gendered roles"! Though on the feminism front in Laestrygonians we do have Bloom ruminating about public toilets inequality: "Ought to be places for women".

@ValentineGreen I’m occasionally in or near dear dirty Dublin (lived there for a while many years ago), will message you should i ever return 👍🏻

I think the point about U.P. up is that it was a vernacular phrase used at the time so perhaps more commonly understood then than now since it's fallen out of usage?

That's what I understood rather then joyce invented it in ulysses & then stated using it in his daily life (letters) & expected the recipients to understand it.

I think Bloom has lots of thoughts & ruminations on the gendered roles & rules of society. He seems uncommonly interested & sympathetic to the plight of women from lack of public toilets (& molly having to use the gents greenhouse on the way back from a party, to his unusual domestic arrangements of him shopping & cooking the breakfast, to pondering childbirth & a scheme to pay mothers & babies money every month (a precursor to children's allowance!)

I think against the restrictive societal backdrop of his own real life, himself & nora seem to have forged their own path there too a lot of of time. There was no expectation that nora would stay at home & cook dinners every night etc. They ate out a lot. I think due to the nature of his occupation he possibly spent more time with his children than would have been usual for men in that era?

That's outside the drinking in dublin & trieste! He seems to have been too ill & blind in the paris years to have caroused with such intensity

And of course the fact that they didn't marry for so many years. I think nora was a v extraordinary person too

It must be a vernacular phrase of some sort if he uses it as that in Ulysses. His letter though is to a French person who would presumably know it only from Ulysses rather than from Dublin idiom.

re gender, I do agree that Joyce clearly rejected conventional notions of femininity and masculinity along with the other Irish conventions of the time. I just get the impression that the idea didn't translate well into the reality of his own 'lived experience'! He was a man who needed a woman to look after his own children. Some of his comments to friends suggest he overegged Nora's supposed simplicity and seem to bear out his prickly remark to Mary Colum that he hated women who know anything.

I've always viewed that comment as prickly tongue in cheek as from what I've read Mary Colum was pressing her opinion that he was influenced by Freud & Jung, which he rejected & her reply was along the lines of 'no you don't, you love them' .

Sounds more like a throwaway comment than a pronouncement on his opinion of all educated women perhaps

I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about the dynamic between Joyce & Nora & i think she was the singular most important constant in his life. And that her importance to him & his writing was / is massively misunderstood by a lot of people even at the time.

I think Ellman's treatment of her is pretty paltry & as his biography has been the main source of contextual material for decades, this attitude or perception has been perpetuated.

I don't think Nora was simple at all. She had not had the education opportunities he'd had. Her standard of education was probably in keeping with the majority of Irish women of that era & the Mary Colum's / Hannah Sheehy Skeffingtons etc who attended UCD were in the minority.

I love what I've read of Nora & would love to have met her in real life. She had gumption to up sticks & move to Europe with him & remain unmarried etc. She was unconventional in her own way too.

I'm starting Scylla & Charybdris now!

Scylla is possibly my least favourite episode. I find the short asides from Stephen’s stream of self-consciousness more interesting than his often pretentious spoken blather about Hamlet:

- Smile. Smile Cranly’s smile.
- See this. Remember.
- Listen.
- Alarmed face asks me.
- Said that.

And Mulligan can be relied on for a bit of sacrilegious humour:

Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:
— Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!

How has the episode been covered on the course @ValentineGreen ?

https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0330/1504808-james-joyce-house/

Good morning all. I just saw this article this morning & really hope the government act now & buy this house!

I missed the reading group on Wednesday as I was away with work but i plan to catch up on the recording later this evening

I enjoy this episode for lots of reasons. I studied Hamlet in school so it's v familiar to me & I'm reading it again at the moment & finding it v interesting.

I really love some of the ideas explored- the proposition that our cells are continually renewing themselves so how do we remain the same person? Or do we?
Love when Stephen says 'other I owed the money' and i think A.E.I.O.U. is so funny & clever

I also like the thinking about what makes a father. Is it biology (a quick rut) or is is a will, a behavior, or both

And finally I adore the language play in this in the descriptions of the quaker librarian twicecreakingly corantoed off. And 'he came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather'

The discussion around whether an artists private life is for public consumption or not is still so relevant all these years later.

The literary references are dense & i spent quite a while reading about them in the notes. I like to try to understand as much as I can absorb but ultimately I tried not to get too lost in this aspect as there was so much else to think about in this episode

Stephen & Bloom are finally in the same place at same time & don't yet connect...

I'm reading David Collard's Multiple Joyce 100 short essays about James Joyce's Cultural Legacy & finding it fascinating

I'll add anything interesting that comes out of the recording once I get to listen to it.

Just checking in to see if anyone's still interested in this thread...I've completed S&C & wandering rocks now in the reading group & happy to share some of the discussions we had.

Onto sirens next- love this one!