About Reading "Ulysses"

My own stream of consciousness:

This guy takes dental floss out of his pocket and cleans his filthy teach.  I didn't know they had dental floss back in 1904.   Dental floss seems typically American, but I guess I'm wrong.  If the English and Irish had dental floss why such bad teeth.  It's funny that they would use dental floss but not brush their teeth.  By Joyce's writing, I can't tell who it was who was cleaning their teeth in front of other men, but I think it was professor MacHugh because he was the last name mentioned.  Newsboys were so poor in the Ireland of 1904, they didn't wear shoes.  Speaking of not wearing shoes.  That reminds me of a family photo of my ancestors that I found on the Internet.  This seems like a good place to ad a photo for interest.  I digress.

George Washington Vaughan (my 1st cousin 4x removed) with Grandchildren
GWV born 1820 in Hawkins, TN, died 1901 in Tishomingo, MS
the kids look dressed up but they don't have shoes.


September 28, 2011

I was reading a little more of Ulysses today and I was reminded of  e-mail talk.  When Joyce  shows that the person is screaming, he put the words in all caps.  Just like in email.  Other writers usually write something like "Oh shut up!"  Arnold screamed at his mother.  But Joyce, using his Ulysses style, would write OH SHUT UP, and he doesn't even say who is saying it.  The reader is just suppose to know, if he's paying attention.   In Ulysses, Joyce threw away the convention of "he said, she said."  


Joyce also abbreviates words and writes how they sound like rather than using conventional spelling.  It's as if he discovered computer language abt 100 years before computers, and everyone called him a literary genius for writing like that--breaking new ground as they say.  LOL    I rather enjoyed reading Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, but I'm not enjoying Ulysses as much.  I'm not interested in reading about it when anyone sneezes or takes a crap.  I'm only on page 130 so maybe I will feel different about this book by the end.  Joyce uses lots of Latin phrases in it, all of which seem to have to do with Catholicism, which shows one advantage of a Catholic school education--you get to learn Latin. 



I have another post called "Ineluctible Modality of the Visible" on another blog of mine that you might find interesting.  In it I try to explain what I think that phrase means.

Notes on Writing

A Young Ezra Pound

At the library today I bought from the for-sale rack, a little gem of a book about reading but it's equally about writing.  I don't know how you can really separate the two.  It seems to me if you really are a good reader, you should be able to write.  The book is called ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound.  First published in 1934.

When I opened the book, this was the first thing I read.

It is said that Flaubert taught De Maupassant to write.  When De Maupassant returned from a walk Flaubert would ask him to describe someone, say a concierge when they would both pass in their next walk, and to describe the person so that Flaubert would recognize, say, the concierge and not mistake her for some other concierge and not the one De Maupassant had described.


Without reading another word, I took the book over to the desk and bought it for $.50.  What a bargain!