Read Ulysses with Wandering Rocks, An Online Reading Group for Slobs!

[jerrygrit]

Hey all good people,

We started an online reading/social media experience/support group to take on James Joyce’s Ulysses that began on June 16th, 2009, to commemorate the single day Ulysses depicts, June 16th, 1904. Check us out here...http://wanderingrox.wordpress.com

Participation is open to all. Participation involves adopting a chapter by initiating the blog discussion for that chapter and setting the reading’s pacing, or it just may involve making snarky comments from the sidelines. Since Ulysses‘ density varies throughout, the adoptive parent will make the decisions in the field.

However, the goal is clear. We will read Ulysses. And we will do it awesomely, by sharing our own insights and befuddlements on the text. We will help each other understand or we will share in confusion. Either way, it will be a blast. As high-minded and esoteric as Ulysses is, it’s all the more profane and hilarious fun.

We're definitely the lowbrow types, so we'll be coming at it at that angle.

To get ready, some of us have tag-teamed up to write Odyssey Funmaries … fun summaries of Homer’s epic! … at the breakneck pace of one per day. If we’re able to keep to our ambitious production schedule, we’ll finish on June 15th. It’s our countdown to Bloomsday and the day we begin reading Ulysses!

Join the tag team!

This is your chance to read, enjoy, and marginally understand what is often considered THE GREATEST BOOK OF ALL TIME. This will be quite a feather in your cap, in a time when cap feathers are so very hard to come by.

Join the team by checking our blog (http://wanderingrox.wordpress.com), becoming a fan on Facebook (just search for the group "Wandering Rocks), or following our Twitter...http://twitter.com/wanderingrox

[buffcoat]

Spam is getting weirder. 

[jerrygrit]

It's weird buffcoat, but it's not spam. We just want to read Ulysses, which is best done in a group. There's a lot going on in the text that no one person can fully appreciate. In a group, everyone brings something unique to the table (noticing different details, getting an obscure reference) that deepens the reading for the whole.

Everyone also brings their confusions, which can also be comforting given how arcane and occasionally impenetrable Joyce can be.

We're not taking anything but attention, and returning camaraderie, insight, and joy. We would definitely benefit from your skepticism, buffcoat.

Let the BEST BOOK and the BEST SHOW collide!

[yesno]

Necessary:

[jerrygrit]

Uhg. Just finishing the Odyssey. Also read Ellman's zillion-page biography and the Joyce Cambridge companion. Got the book of annotations to go along with the reading.

Don't have this, though. Since you say its necessary, yesno, I will check it out.

And since it seems you've read the bad boy, we'd appreciate any guidance you could give us once we get started next week.

Thanks! 

[yesno]

It's a good book, and it is full of references and allusions that make critical apparatus useful.  But it's still just a book.

If you ever want to read Finnegan's Finnegans Wake, you might find this to be necessary:

[jerrygrit]

Nice ... but we won't be riding the rails anytime soon.

I just requested the Bloomsday book from the library. Thanks for the suggestion.

[buffcoat]

It's a good book, and it is full of references and allusions that make critical apparatus useful.  But it's still just a book.

If you ever want to read Finnegan's Wake, you might find this to be necessary:

50 euros, a razor and some flour?

[daveB from Oakland]

50 euros, a razor, some flour ...

... and thou, Buffcoat. And thou.

[emma]

I just finished Ulysses today. I started it a year and a half ago and figured slow and steady was the best way to go - if I'd tried to read the whole thing in giant passages I would have died/given up one chapter in.

I was going to go brag about finishing it in the Currently Reading thread, but I guess here is as good a place as any. (Though is it bragging if it took you a year to read a single book? Maybe this is more of a shame post.)

[Big Plastic Head]

We just want to read Ulysses, which is best done in a group. There's a lot going on in the text that no one person can fully appreciate...

I have read Ulysses. Twice. The second time, I read it in about a week. (I was working on a research ship and I had a lot of down time.) In my opinion, reading it in one big burst like that was WAY better than spending months pouring over every intonation in the text and discussing it in a group. That is not for me. As far as the sentiment that it is best read in a group and that, "no one person can fully appreciate" it..well, that is subjective. For SOME it is best read in a group. Not everyone.

But I hope it goes well for you and you pull some people in who were always afraid of it.

[Pastor Josh]

Are we all reading the same edition?  this is pretty cool.  I've tried to read this twice, once for a class in college, and I never could get my head around it.

[Keith Whitener]

I read it when I was 16. My review of it for Amazon was quoted around the world. Literally. By four people, yes, but around the world nonetheless.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/29196.html

"Joyce is blind in one eye because he read Ulysses and then the eye hung itself," writes nebber1214, "I'm contemplating traveling back in time and murdering James Joyce, in the face...For Ulysses to be any worse of a book, it would have to break into your house and defecate on your bed."

[hugman]

let me know when you guys tackle The Outsiders.

[jerrygrit]

Emma--

We're definitely going to go slow and steady. I wrote my undergrad thesis, so I'm coming at it with some experience. But it was a terrible thesis and it was 10 years ago, so I'm not convinced this is the best experience to have. Since you're fresh off your slow read, any encouragement/insight you can give along the way would be awesomepants.

Big Plastic Head--

Thanks for the comment. It may come down to going at it in a big burst (or a series of little bursts). We'll see. From my  experience, there were a lot of little moments throughout the book that really rewarded close scrutiny. Given your familiarity with the text, we would really your guidance, too...but I appreciate your apprehension nonetheless.

Pastor Josh--

I'm encouraging everyone pick up the Vintage edition (corrected in 1961). There's an edition that came out in the 80's edited (and "enhanced") by Hans Gabler. I would avoid this one. Gabler's a douche. (Pardon me, Pastor.) Here's my reason...http://wanderingrox.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/some-stuff-to-know-about-ulysses-before-reading-it-part-4-ulysses-and-love/

Keith Whitenar--

Thank you for the globetrotting quote. It may come in handy, if people get frustrated.

hugman--

You're at the top of the list.