Recommended Television Programmes

[smittims]

I think the Losey film of Ulysses with TP McKenna and Maurice Roeves, is superb, even though I saw it after reading the novel. Nowadays I fear a film of Ulysses would ruin it with 21st century gimmicks.

[Bryn]

I think the Losey film of Ulysses with TP McKenna and Maurice Roeves, is superb, even though I saw it after reading the novel. Nowadays I fear a film of Ulysses would ruin it with 21st century gimmicks.

Directed by Joseph Strick, surely?

[smittims]

Yes, of course you're right, Bryn. Thanks for the correction. I didn't have me copy to hand and I'm not well-up on either director's work.

The 6-minute overture by Stanley Myers is a welsome bonus on the video.

[Bryn]

Yes, of course you're right, Bryn. Thanks for the correction. I didn't have me copy to hand and I'm not well-up on either director's work.

The 6-minute overture by Stanley Myers is a welsome bonus on the video.

Rather irksome that it is no longer generally available on optical disc and that the rights owners have had its Youtube upload taken down.

[smittims]

I'll hang on to my VHS tape, then!

Come up, Kinch, you fearful Jesuit...

[Mal]

I've never read Joyce's 'Ulysses', but I could be persuaded by this terrific documentary from the 'Arena' strand, though it might be a bit raunchy for an old soul like me. I really enjoyed the way the film was cut together. A fine cast of the talking heads assembled gave an excellent guide to the book. Great viewing, I thought.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...joyces-ulysses

Yes, I'm half way through that and it helped inspire me to make another attempt at reading the book. Previously, I haven't made it more than 100 pages, even with annotated versions by Oxford & Penguin. Not annotated enough! I was thinking of getting the Gabler edition & the massive book of annotations by Gifford, or maybe the latest Cambridge edition. But then I found the "Ulysses: Annotated Edition (Alma Classics Evergreens)" for £4.99 on Kindle - I found the inital annotations to be spot on, so it's looking good (they translate all the Latin, explain obscurities like "Kinch" and "Chrystostomus", etc.,...) The only complaint people have is the type size in paperback - of course, that isn't a problem on Kindle. With Kindle, I've found footnote references a problem in the past, so I bought with some trepidation (Look Inside doesn't allow reference selection...) I was really happy to find using the footnotes was a breeze! So I'm set fair for another attempt, just need to drum up sufficient courage....

[Mal]

Mrs C and I have been enjoying 'The Newsreader' on the Beeb's i-player. Set in Melbourne in 1986 it's been a very entertaining series with some very good characters and reminders of 'real-life' events.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...iesId=p0cgx57w

Yes, I enjoyed that as well. Interesting to go back to the 1980s and get an Australian spin on the news. Some of it expected (dingo stole my baby...), others not so much (terrorist bombing...)

[smittims]

I wonder if 'Ulysses' is already becoming antiquated , like Shakespeare, in needing help to read it. This would not have occurred to me when I first read it fifty years ago.

Yes, the many unexplained allusions, to Catholicism, for instance, are a puzzle. But solving them makes the reader feeel Joyce has paid you the compliment of assuming you can do some of the thinking for yourself, bringing you as it were into the creative process.

I remember Anthony Burgess re-writing the opening of 'Ulysses' in the style of pulp fiction where everything is explained in plodding detail. It made the point well.

[eighthobstruction]

I wonder if 'Ulysses' is already becoming antiquated , like Shakespeare, in needing help to read it. This would not have occurred to me when I first read it fifty years ago.

Yes, the many unexplained allusions, to Catholicism, for instance, are a puzzle. But solving them makes the reader feeel Joyce has paid you the compliment of assuming you can do some of the thinking for yourself, bringing you as it were into the creative process.

I remember Anthony Burgess re-writing the opening of 'Ulysses' in the style of pulp fiction where everything is explained in plodding detail. It made the point well.

....I have read Ulysses....my early nearest religion was Baptist [very quickly became atheist] ....I would have had no chance of understanding it excepting doing Portrait of an Artist a Comprehensive school...."paying the compliment" - I don't think that was in Joyces scheme....

[LHC]

I wonder if 'Ulysses' is already becoming antiquated , like Shakespeare, in needing help to read it. This would not have occurred to me when I first read it fifty years ago.

Yes, the many unexplained allusions, to Catholicism, for instance, are a puzzle. But solving them makes the reader feeel Joyce has paid you the compliment of assuming you can do some of the thinking for yourself, bringing you as it were into the creative process.

I remember Anthony Burgess re-writing the opening of 'Ulysses' in the style of pulp fiction where everything is explained in plodding detail. It made the point well.

When I read Ulysses some 40 years ago, I think it was already recognized that many readers would need a helping hand to understand all of Joyce’s allusions. I found it quite difficult to get into (I almost gave up when I came to the (in)famous sentence “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes”), but once I had found my way in, I thoroughly enjoyed and can remember that when I finished it, I wanted to go back to the beginning and read it all again.

I did find that Frank Delaney’s “James Joyce's Odyssey: Guide to the Dublin of "Ulysses"” was quite helpful in getting into it. It’s not an academic guide, but acts more like a helpful friend who can explain the more obscure allusions while showing you around the Dublin of Joyce’s time.

[Joseph K]

When I read Ulysses some 40 years ago, I think it was already recognized that many readers would need a helping hand to understand all of Joyce’s allusions. I found it quite difficult to get into (I almost gave up when I came to the (in)famous sentence “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes”), but once I had found my way in, I thoroughly enjoyed and can remember that when I finished it, I wanted to go back to the beginning and read it all again.

I did find that Frank Delaney’s “James Joyce's Odyssey: Guide to the Dublin of "Ulysses"” was quite helpful in getting into it. It’s not an academic guide, but acts more like a helpful friend who can explain the more obscure allusions while showing you around the Dublin of Joyce’s time.

I tried Ulysses in my first year at uni. I remember I told my mum what chapter I was on and she mentioned something about a funeral, to which I was either nonplussed or said "no, there has not been a funeral" and she assured me there had been. But I read the whole thing without any guide several years later. Personally, I love that infamous sentence you mention, LHC!

But I shall have to buy one of the guides mentioned here and read it again.

[LHC]

I tried Ulysses in my first year at uni. I remember I told my mum what chapter I was on and she mentioned something about a funeral, to which I was either nonplussed or said "no, there has not been a funeral" and she assured me there had been. But I read the whole thing without any guide several years later. Personally, I love that infamous sentence you mention, LHC!

But I shall have to buy one of the guides mentioned here and read it again.

I do too now (love that sentence I mean). It was just that at the time I thought what the bloody hell is this!

[Mal]

"Portrait of an Artist a Comprehensive school.".

Was that "a play for today"? Or did you miss out a full stop? Before my second attempt, I'd read Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, Ellman's biography, Hamlet, Homer's Odyssey, and most of the "top 100" classics of world literature. I used Oxford's heavily annotated edition... and still gave up in a fog of confusion!

[Mal]

... I almost gave up when I came to the (in)famous sentence “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes”...

That's hard.

With the help of a dictionary, and hard thinking, today, I translate it as: "The visible present themselves in different ways, or perhaps more, perhaps my way of thinking about them presents them in different ways."

But alma classics says it means something totally different:"that which is inevitably certain of being seen". Now I'm stuck with seeing how alma classics get to this translation! If I eventually work it out then I need to work out of if my translation or alma's is better.

Or are both wrong?

Is Joyce trying to show that Stephen is cleverer than you, cleverer than any critic, and these are thoughts specific to him, so you'll never work out what he means! If you were one of his unlearned mates you'd just let his words wash over you, not bothering to get the meaning, and then press on, with him, to the pub and wait for some lighter moments. So is that the approach a reader should take?

The next sentence is just as hard! And the next, and the next is in a foreign language (Italian?)... If I was an unlearned mate I'd be telling him to knock off the high falutin' stuff and ask him about the weather or political situation! But, unfortunately, we are stuck in Stephen's stream of consciousness.

In that one paragraph, less than a page long, alma has eight annotations, most longer than that paragraph! They themselves introduce perplexities... they reference Aristotle, Homer, Boehme, Johnson, Berkeley, Lessing... Do we need to master Aristotle's colour theory & biography, Greek myth, Boehme's mysticism, Johnson's biography, Dante's poetry, and Berkelian idealism to read this paragraph?

You could spend a lifetime unpacking that one paragraph!

In the rest of the chapter we get allusions to Lessings aesthetics, Shakespeare (Hamlet), Blake, pre-Homeric myths, lots of obscure specifics of Dublin geography, Scottish English, obscure French artists, complex poetics, more Italian, the lesser doxology Gloria Patri, obscure German vocab,...

I think what Joyce is doing is valid - giving us the raw, immediate thoughts & feelings of a first rate intellectual with a vast education, photographic memory, profound language skills, specific geographical knowledge... and that Joyce needn't provide translations, travel guides, & philosophical summaries...

But how should the average novel reader deal with this? I think I'll stick with alma classics, read the annotations and/or think very hard, until I get one reasonable take on the sentence, and then immediately press on - no diverging to read Aristotle etc. (!) Previously I got bogged down by endless analysis wondering if I'd *really* grasped a paragraph, stuck like the critics that Joyce mocked... and then gave up.

[Ein Heldenleben]

When I read Ulysses some 40 years ago, I think it was already recognized that many readers would need a helping hand to understand all of Joyce’s allusions. I found it quite difficult to get into (I almost gave up when I came to the (in)famous sentence “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes”), but once I had found my way in, I thoroughly enjoyed and can remember that when I finished it, I wanted to go back to the beginning and read it all again.

I did find that Frank Delaney’s “James Joyce's Odyssey: Guide to the Dublin of "Ulysses"” was quite helpful in getting into it. It’s not an academic guide, but acts more like a helpful friend who can explain the more obscure allusions while showing you around the Dublin of Joyce’s time.

I’ve read it twice . The first time in conjunction with Richard Ellmann’s Ulysses on the Liffey and Stuart Gilbert’s Ulysses A study .
Because Homer is no longer taught (and wasn’t taught in my 70’s Grammar school) it’s all most impossible to pick up on the Homeric parallels without these. It’s also pretty important to have read Hamlet , realise that Joyce has replaced speech marks with dashes, and know something of the geography of Dublin including features no longer there like Nelson’s Column . I have my Grandad’s copy which was one of the very first bought into Ireland. He knew quite a few of the thinly disguised originals behind some of the minor characters. It’s honestly not that hard a book really . Proust is harder because of the sentence construction.
Incidentally all that Bloomsday dressing up has always struck me as complete cobblers.