So now that I've wrapped up the Cohabitational Reading Challenge with RR, I'm ready to move on to the second big campaign I want to do this year: A Time to Re-Joyce. (Although I did manage to squeeze one other novel in between these two initiatives; review to come soon.) As you may recall from my original post about it, 2013 marks 10 years since I tackled for the first and only time James Joyce's monumental work Ulysses. This is a novel that has been on my mind a lot lately, on account of a recent BBC radio dramatization I listened to, various essays I've read, and a handful of intriguing videos about the phenomenon that is Ulysses that I've been spot-watching on YouTube. So I figured the time has come, in the paraphrased words of my main man Burgess, to indulge in a little Joysprick and partake in some Re-Joycing.
What's more, someone actually answered my call for others to play along. Fellow book blogger Brian Palmu, who also read Ulysses a few years back, has expressed interest in reading the novel along with me and posting various ruminations on his own blog. For those of you who don't know, Brian is a dedicated and wide-reading blogger who is known for his detailed, thought-provoking and occasionally confrontational reviews of books, with a focus on Canadian poetry. His writing has also appeared in CNQ and other publications. Welcome aboard, Brian! Looking forward to reading your thoughts on this tome.
So let the Re-Joycing begin. And to tide you over until the next post, allow me to leave you with this hilarious short film done a few years back of Joyce and Samuel Beckett playing golf together. Sure, it's historically inaccurate (Beckett would have been 16 in 1922), and sure, it presents the relatively genteel Joyce as a smash-mouth asshole, but hey - it's still worth watching. One either gets the humour this video or doesn't; but if you get it, you totally get it. Cheers.
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