Collected Works Joyce, James: Complete Works | v.12.0 | Update 8 Apr 2018

[pynch]

Great, Ithaca is already ahead by one vote. Should we set up a poll about this? I’m sure it would attract millions of new users to Mobileread.

[FlorenceArt]

Which one is Ithaca? My favorite chapters were the first and last one.

[pynch]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Which one is Ithaca? My favorite chapters were the first and last one.

The penultimate episode.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by pynch

The penultimate episode.

I'm ashamed to say I don't remember it. I'll have to check it when I get home, I don't think I have it on my iPad.

[doubleshuffle]

This is OT now, but I really had to chuckle at this little exchange from the Nabokov interview:

INTERVIEWER

E. M. Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command?

NABOKOV

My knowledge of Mr. Forster's works is limited to one novel, which I dislike; and anyway, it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or wherever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.

Oh, and the Paris Review site is a great find. Thanks for that, Prestidigitweeze!

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by pynch

I wasn’t familiar with this, thanks, Prestidigitweeze. Is it possible that he was a little bored by the interviewer’s questions and wanted to spice things up?

While I happen to worship his writing with steepled digits (which seems to upset my pastor), it was this interview (and a subsequent leer at the two Lectures on Literature volumes to which he alludes in my sedate little excerpt) that first apprised me of the two-by-four lodged permanently in Nabokov's colon. Even the conditions he imposed on that interview illustrate what looks like pathological misanthropy: In keeping with his famous mosaic method of writing Lolita, he insisted on answering the interviewer silently, in painstaking cursive, on a series of index cards, which he then arranged in concordance with some ultimate structure in his head.

Doubleshuffle and Pynch:

The Paris Review site is indeed an addictive resource (the interviews are even tabbed conveniently by decade), but so are the Review of Contemporary Literature interviews available on the Dalkey Archive site. Another fascinating site for interviews is BOMB Magazine, the physical version of which Betsy Sussler has been pumping out since the early '80s. BOMB interviews include not only writers but artists, architects, musicians and actors. The hook is that the interviewer is always a known practitioner of the same art as the interviewee, which gives the reader two chances per piece to ponder the words of someone they might admire.

You might also be interested in this archive of current experimental literature and art, which poet and critic Charles Bernstein made me aware of recently: Gammm. Charles's own riff on Duchamp is available here.

If I were not fully aware of having dragged everyone hopelessly OT, I'd complete the digression by linking to a story of mine that was just published in a magazine created and edited (until recently) by Beckett's editor and Joyce's publisher and legal defender. However, shame -- as opposed to the modesty I might have to visit Oz to acquire -- prevents me for the mome (wither, shudder, point).

Now, about that poll (and the hordes of fanboys it will lure away from Joyce Con 2013, with its Stephen Dedalus/Molly Bloom cosplay (if I see one more pimpled ectomorph squinting behind pince-nez))—

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Which one is Ithaca? My favorite chapters were the first and last one.

Originally Posted by pynch

The penultimate episode.

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I'm ashamed to say I don't remember it. I'll have to check it when I get home, I don't think I have it on my iPad.

I found it (turns out it was on my iPad since I downloaded the complete works in this post, silly me), and I think I'll stay with my first statement: the last chapter is my favorite, along with the first (ah, the scene with the dog on the beach...). I also liked Bloom's lunch, and the burial.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

If I were not fully aware of having dragged everyone hopelessly OT, I'd complete the digression by linking to a story of mine that was just published in a magazine created and edited (until recently) by Beckett's editor and Joyce's publisher and legal defender. However, shame -- as opposed to the modesty I might have to visit Oz to acquire -- prevents me for the mome (wither, shudder, point).

Now, about that poll (and the hordes of Joyce fanboys it will lure away from the convention, with its Stephen Dedalus/Molly Bloom cosplay (if I see one more pince-nez))—

Cheers for all those great links, and had we but world enough and time, mentioning but not posting that last one might be acceptable, which it most definitely isn't!!

I really like the idea of the convention (don't they do stuff similar to that in Dublin on Bloomsdays?). But what's your vote in the great Ulysses poll?

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Cheers for all those great links, and had we but world enough and time, mentioning but not posting that last one might be acceptable, which it most definitely isn't!!

PM me privately and I'll give you the link. I love Pynch's work too much to hijack this thread completely.

But what's your vote in the great Ulysses poll?

I really hate to pick just one, but if I had to, the musician (and contrapuntalist) inside me seems partial to Chapter 11.

[pynch]

Yep, we need that poll. Here it is.

@ Prestidigitweeze:
If you had only posted the Paris Review link? Dayenu! But that well of other fantastic sites in which I have to immerse myself now might seriously delay the proofreading of Woolf’s diaries, and you have only yourself to blame for that (I would have loved to add a link for Scott Walker’s “Only Myself to Blame” here, but I can’t find one that works (not in Germany, at least)).

BTW, I don’t mind the off-topicity (Is there such a word? There should be!).

[medard]

What’s the best chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses?

Free poll! Share your thoughts and experiences! Click here.

[doubleshuffle]

So you think that poll needs a bit of advertising? Hardly imaginable seeing it's such a breathtakingly close race...

[medard]

We have so many smart members here at MobileRead, busy typing their opinion into the internet all day, I'm quite sure most of them have an opinion about Ulysses, too.

It's just one click.. C'mon.. Click..

[pynch]

I’m still waiting, too, for those millions of new users I promised myself. How is this not trending on Twitter?

[medard]

I think the problem might be that Twitter doesn't know that we're here. Someone needs to go and tell them. I'll give Justin Bieber a call tomorrow..