What to Read When You Want to Read an “Uncomfortable” Book
Authors whose works have been challenged or banned give recommendations on other “uncomfortable” books that will make you a better person for having read them.
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Posts Tagged: Ulysses
Echoes of Winter: Revisiting Inside Llewyn Davis
The tale of the self-made man is as much a myth as that of a cat having nine lives.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #60: Leah Kaminsky
Leah Kaminsky’s debut novel, The Waiting Room, depicts one fateful day in the life of an Australian doctor and mother, Dina, living in Haifa, Israel. Dina is trying to maintain normalcy as she goes about her work as a family doctor, cares for her son, and fights to preserve her faltering relationship with her husband, […]
...moreThis Year You Will Finally Read Ulysses
You don’t like to quit, but need a nudge to wade back into the novel’s overflowing streams of character consciousness, arcane references and shifting structure to follow those people going about life in Dublin on June 16, 1904. Yes, another Bloomsday has come and gone, and maybe you didn’t get around to finishing James Joyce’s […]
...moreProbing into the Space Between
At the New York Times, Karl Ove Knausgaard describes how Joyce’s Portrait included him in literature’s potential in a way that Ulysses didn’t: In “Portrait,” Joyce ventures inside that part of our identity for which no language yet exists, probing into the space between what belongs to the individual alone and what is ours together, exploring […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Jessa Crispin
Jessa Crispin talks about The Dead Ladies Project and The Creative Tarot, founding Bookslut, why she has an antagonistic relationship with the publishing industry, and her estrangement from modern feminism.
...moreWWLBD?
There’s always Stephen’s classic hangover cure, “The Cabman’s Kickstart.” Simply stare with weary ennui at a stale dinner roll while insulting a cup of coffee. Over at Melville House, resident Joyce expert and author of An Exaggerated Murder, Josh Cook, is impersonating Ulysses’s hero, Leopold Bloom, and answering your most distressing questions in a new monthly advice […]
...moreA Literary Scandal, Over 100 Years Later
The New York Review of Books looks at what makes James Joyce’s Uylsses just as scandalous today as it was when it was first published.
...moreDigitizing Reels of History
The British Library says it has a window of 15 years to preserve an invaluable cache of sound recordings, but unless fundraising can help pick up the pace, the archives could take as many as 48 to complete. The artifacts represent a range of obsolete formats, some of them long dead; from wax cylinders of […]
...moreFollowing Ulysses
To what extent am I reading Ulysses by following Ulysses Reader? What does “reading” even mean at this point, given our near-constant engagement with text? Over at Full Stop, Dustin Illingworth describes his relationship with Ulysses Reader, a Twitter account posting the entire text of James Joyce’s Ulysses, 140 characters at a time.
...moreUlysses: The Video Game
The game is currently in the development and crowdfunding stage, but it already looks pretty interesting, even psychedelic. Its title, In Ulysses: Proteus, comes from the chapter of the novel that it tackles. In it, Dedalus wanders across a desolate beach, closes his eyes, and ponders the shifting nature of reality and the disconnect between […]
...moreHow Many Words Are in Ulysses?
265,222. In Infinite Jest? 483,994. Curious how many words other famous works of literature contain? Take a look at this infographic over at Electric Literature, where you can learn about some of the longest stories, the shortest stories, and plenty in between.
...moreFamed Ulysses Pharmacy Faces Taxman
Sweny’s, the pharmacy made famous in Joyce’s Ulysses (when Leopold Bloom visits the Dublin shop to purchase lotion and soap for his wife Molly), opened more than 167 years ago and has remained more or less unchanged for most of that time. In more recent years, it has operated as a museum and a shrine to […]
...morePublic (Image) Domain
What happens when the reproduction rights of literary works and an author’s public image are taken out of their owner’s control, but without any law infringement? Over at the Paris Review, Evan Kindley tries to find out. He compares the case of the upcoming David Foster Wallace movie, adapted from David Lipsky’s memoir Although Of Course You […]
...moreWhere Betty Byrne Lived
Story is an integral part of the city of Dublin. Bronze statues of beloved writers roam the landscape, immortal: Wilde lounges “languidly on a crag in the park at Merrion Square,” while Joyce is “depicted rather more severely in bronze, leaning on his cane as he strolls down North Earl Street.” Ever wondered what the tower in the opening scene of […]
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Patrick Pineyro: The Last Book I Loved, Ulysses
The moment when a new book is begun it is a moment that vibrates, as potential energy (a writer’s wisdom distilled into a completed work, printed, bound, placed in your hands), converted slowly into kinetic energy (second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day) with each turn of the page.
...moreThe Search For Borges
Jorge Luis Borges’ writing is scattered among the annals of the University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, among rare, historically-significant literary gems like hand-corrected proofs of Ulysses and a Gutenberg Bible. The Borges papers, which are made up of unpublished letters and handwritten essays, have been uncatalogued. Eric Benson reflects on his personal […]
...moreHappy Bloomsday!
It’s the 107th anniversary of everybody’s favorite James Joycian holiday! That’s right—Bloomsday, the 24 hr period in which Leopold Bloom makes his way through Dublin in Ulysses. One way to appreciate those 265,000 words is through twitter or there’s always the NPR profile, and if that’s not enough—an ipad app!
...morePoetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
The deadline for entry into the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg poetry prizes is nearing. These are some of the most generous poetry prizes available, and they give a large number of them every year. The Rumpus interviewed Mary Rosenberg last March to discuss the prizes and how she approaches poetry in general. As someone who seems, […]
...moreA Remembrance of Frank McCourt
“Sit back. I’m going to tell you a story,” Frank said in his brogue, looking into the distance like a Homerian epic-teller. “Don’t you ever dare steal it.”
...moreHappy Bloomsday!
Today is the 105th anniversary of Leopold Bloom’s one-day passage through the ordinary streets of Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Dubliners and Joyce-lovers around the world are celebrating the author as well as the book, with readings, races, reenactments, and even Twitter (don’t worry, they only adapted the tenth chapter).
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