{"id":9943,"date":"2010-03-22T08:04:16","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T12:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9943"},"modified":"2022-10-17T07:37:55","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T11:37:55","slug":"a-guide-through-june-16-1904","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9943","title":{"rendered":"A guide through June 16, 1904"},"content":{"rendered":"

A companion piece, I suppose, to my recent post about my Ulysses<\/i> playing cards<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I find posts like this to be very gratifying<\/a>. Blogger Deepan Joshi calls me his “guide” for Joyce’s Ulysses<\/i> and writes, after reading all of my posts about it:<\/p>\n

My guide has encouraged me with her simple explanation and after years I have finally mustered the courage to get past “\u0080\u0098Stately, plump Buck Mulligan”\u0080\u0099 and hopefully would reach the 40-page run-on sentence of Molly Bloom, lying in bed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My work here is done. When I wrote all of those essays about each chapter in Ulysses<\/i><\/a>, I did it for myself, certainly, because I enjoy talking about the book, and thinking about the book. I also, obviously, like to share what I’m thinking about things (hence: the blog). But I also hoped that my writing may remove some of the mystique surrounding Ulysses<\/i> (critics can be quite annoying about the book, making it seem like it is only for specialists<\/i>, and that could not be farther from the truth), and might encourage someone to pick up the book and give it a go.<\/p>\n

It can be opaque. Yes. I had a guide. My father. And Anthony Burgess, too, but mostly my father. I could call him up and say, “Dad. WTF?” and I would read him a passage and he would start explaining it. My favorite example is how my dad, in one comment, cracked open the Cyclops episode for me<\/a>. I could understand the LANGUAGE of the damn episode just fine (which is more than I can say for the Oxen of the Sun episode<\/a>), but I didn’t know WHY. I didn’t know what was going on, who was the new narrator, why why why why. Remember what Joyce said: “With me, the thought is always simple.” But sometimes to get to that thought is a bit of a journey (which is part of the fun of the book).<\/p>\n

I loved reading Joshi’s thoughts about Ulysses<\/i>, and so thrilled that my posts would have traveled out there into cyberspace, and encouraged someone to continue on.<\/p>\n

With a book like Ulysses<\/i>, it is worth it. Believe me. No other book like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A companion piece, I suppose, to my recent post about my Ulysses playing cards: I find posts like this to be very gratifying. Blogger Deepan Joshi calls me his “guide” for Joyce’s Ulysses and writes, after reading all of my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28],"tags":[1581,35,566],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182533,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9943\/revisions\/182533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}