The Hypertext Chapbook (i)
Someone somewhere is reading about Ulysses, talking about Ulysses and more to the point here, blogging about Ulysses. The ways people find to draw this novel into casual conversation over the internet are numerous and always inventive. Witness exhibit A the trail runner – my foos won’t moos! In this weekly spot I’ll highlight some of the most interesting blog entries, conversations and news articles from around the internet. Most of them will directly relate to Ulysses, some to Joyce in general, and even a few maybe to the workings of literature, graphic novels and even webcomics.
I’ll try and keep them as relevant as possible, but there might be strange alleyways to duck into or dark corners to investigate along the way. Bear with me.
Firstly I already have Declan Kiberd’s book Ulysses and Us and when I’ve gone through the novel I’ll have a crack at this to see what light it might shed. The reviews I’m hearing are not glowing however. This short post from the New York Times blog Paper Cuts. Has anyone out there read Kiberd’s book yet? Useful or not? Do let me know.
Studying Ulysses itself seems a popular subject for a group discussion (too much for one person to completely reconcile alone perhaps). And as an antidote to crusty old folks waxing lyrical – here are some bright young things chewing the Joycean cud. Read here the latest post from Prairie Bloom the group blog of the 2009 Ulysses seminar at Grinnell College (where the students in English 346, an intensive study of James Joyce’s Ulysses, will be posting throughout the Fall 2009 semester. They will each be responsible for a theme or subject of their choice–an obsession, as we call it–and will also post about sources and criticism of the novel) – Grinnell, as Wikipedia reliably informs me, is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, USA.
For some reason, and you might or might not agree, but I’ve never been in the slightest bit interested in authors reading their own work. To my mind authors are there to deal with the written word, not to practice the subtleties of the performing arts. An actor is required every time for me, unless on that rare occasion the author can double up, but that is sadly less often the case than we might hope. I realise that for poetry there at least seems some excuse, but Ulysses is a novel – not a poem (please start your arguments here). Anyhow, this animation, long to be found on Youtube, though technically interesting, seems wholly inappropriate on just so many levels. If anything hearing Joyce read Ulysses is more painful than reading it, so I’ll keep with the imaginary voice in my head if I may!
For the more technically minded among you my search this week for all thing Joycean threw up this post on commentpress for those of you who like to scribble in the margins. Try as I might I can never bring myself to deface a book on purpose for any reason, but electronic text cries out for this attitude – witness the notations applied to any Wiki entry.
For anyone interested in paper and paint as a way of expressing interest in the written words of James Joyce you may begin with Rob’s comic right here, but also my attention this week is brought to watercolourist Roger Commiskey and the extraordinary Russian illustrator Alexey Kurbatov. Entirely different approaches – both a pleasure in their own way.
We end on a comical note. One wonders what humorists Joyce might have enjoyed had he lived into the modern era of television and internet based comedy. I cannot imagine this news would provide any answer!
More next week!
Tags: Alexey Kurbatov, Chapbook, Dame Edna, Declan Kiberd, Grinnell College, Joycean, New York Times, Paper Cuts, Roger Commiskey
I read about a third of the Kiberd book and set it aside. He mas a few insights but doesn’t really give good bang for the bucks. Particularly irritating was his putdowns of other critics. Maybe someday I’ll pick it up again, but I doubt it.