Tag Archives: Ulysses

“I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not to be among the greatest.” –John Keats

I was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. – James Joyce, Ulysses Born in 1795 on this day, John Keats was orphaned at fifteen. Because his … Continue reading

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On This Day: August 7, 1934: “It must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.”

On December 6, 1933, the US Court of Appeals (Judge John Woolsey) judged Ulysses by James Joyce to be NOT obscene and declared that the book could be admitted into the United States. There were then appeals to this decision. … Continue reading

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“The rhythm is jazz.” — Hart Crane

“What I want to get is … an ‘interior’ form, a form that is so thorough and intense as to dye the words themselves with a pecularity of meaning, slightly different maybe from the ordinary definition of them separate from … Continue reading

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“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.” — William Faulkner

Happy Bloomsday to those who celebrate. I’ve been celebrating Bloomsday for 20 years, in the real world, and here on my site. If you’ve been visiting here for any length of time, you know this. There are too many posts … Continue reading

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“That is no country for old men.” — William Butler Yeats

“I thought we might bring the halves together if we had a national literature that made Ireland beautiful in the memory, and yet had been freed of provincialism by an exacting criticism, a European pose.” — W.B. Yeats William Butler … Continue reading

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“I couldn’t keep a dog and a James Joyce and a bookshop.” — Sylvia Beach

It’s her birthday today. Sylvia Beach is one of my heroes due to her influential bookshop in Paris (Shakespeare & Co.), and her nurturing of the writers of that time. You know, minor writers like James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and … Continue reading

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On This Day: February 2, 1882/1922

“I was on the platform, my heart going like the locomotive, as the train from Dijon came slowly to a standstill and I saw the conductor getting off, holding a parcel and looking around for someone — me. In a … Continue reading

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2023 Books Read

I think I might have read more books by non-American authors than American this year. Countries represented below: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Ireland, France, Russia, Colombia. I revisited some old favorites, which I will continue to do in … Continue reading

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This is what James Joyce has made me do.

A list of Molly’s so-called lovers (debatable), and where they are mentioned in the text, and what Bloom imagines, and then what Molly says about these men later … which reveals Bloom’s ratcheting paranoia – I mean, the organgrinder? Really? … Continue reading

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Kidney of Bloom, pray for us.

Bloomsday 2023 at Ulysses pub. The pub opened its doors on June 16, 2003. I have no idea how I heard about it back then (I just looked it up: Aedin told me.) – but I did. The pub opened … Continue reading

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