Odyssey Funmaries #3: Proteus (Book IV)

By JERRY GRIT Let me start this funmary by saying … and this probably doesn’t have much to do with our Ulysses reading (but a helluva more relevant than Ben’s Nestor, the Long-Eared Donkey reference) … that this Helen of Troy person is one piece of work. This lady…yeesh. Events proceed according to Athena’s most ridiculous plan [...]

Odyssey Funmaries #2: Nestor (Book III)

by BEN VORE First off, let’s dispel some misconceptions that have been passed down through the ages concerning King Nestor: Though described (in the Fagles translation) as a “breaker of horses,” Nestor was not — as has been widely rumored — the Greek equivalent of Luca Brasi. (Consider.) “Breaker of horses” can be roughly translated [...]

Odyssey Funmaries #1: Telemachus (Books I-II)

By JERRY GRIT So how does an epic poem begin? With an invocation to the muse, of course. The writer (or more properly, the singer) asks for the strength to tell the story of “the man of twists and turns”…i.e., Odysseus. I wonder how Ulysses will begin? The singer catches us up on how things [...]

Odyssey Funmaries…THE SCHEDULE!

By JERRY GRIT Tad’s comment yesterday made me realize that I needed to be clearer about what and when we’re funmarizing from the Odyssey. As I mentioned, Joyce plays it pretty loose with the events he uses from the Odyssey to structure Ulysses. The events Joyce uses in Ulysses do not occur in the same [...]

Odyssey Funmaries…THIS FRIDAY!

By JERRY GRIT Ben Vore and I are hard at work practicing our body slams and drilling our analytical skills, to get ready for our countdown to Bloomsday…The Tag-Team Odyssey Funmaries! Super fun summaries of each of Odyssey’s 18 books Joyce uses to structure Ulysses…culminating in day 1 of our reading of Ulysses, when we read page [...]

Some Stuff To Know About Ulysses Before Reading It, Part 4: Ulysses And Love

By JERRY GRIT This next post is kind of cribbed from my undergrad thesis, a confusing morass of sophomoric textual analysis having something to do with the “Circe” chapter, the thematic centrality of love, and the reasons why Hans Gabler is a douche. I called my thesis, seriously, “What’s Love Got Do With It.” I [...]

Some Stuff To Know About Ulysses Before Reading It, Part 3: Ulysses and Music

“Lord knows what my prose means. In a word, it is pleasing to the ear…That is enough it seems to me” –J.J. This post focuses not so much on what you could know to help you read Ulysses, but more on how you could read it. There will be a lot of seemingly impenetrable passages [...]

Announcing Odyssey Funmaries … BEGINNING MAY 29th!

By JERRY GRIT In order to get AMPED for day 1 of our Ulysses reading project (launching in 26 days!) Ben Vore and I thought it would be pretty rad to reread Homer’s Odyssey (specifically, the Fagles translation). And while we’re rereading, we’ll blog about it! Sound cool? Ben and I will tag-team write summaries, alternating authorship, [...]

Some Stuff To Know About Ulysses Before Reading It, Part 2: Ulysses and Exile

By JERRY GRIT “You have to be in exile to understand me” –J.J. For “Lost” fans, I’m posting my next set of bullets to the theme of exile in Ulysses. The theme of being home-but-not-at-home resonates with the show in many ways. I’ve saved my comments on the show and Ulysses for the end. Although [...]

A Word About Our Moderator

By BEN VORE As an active recruiter for (and humble participant in) Wandering Rocks, I have found myself answering the same question from would-be participants: Who is this jerrygrit? And would he be on my side in a bar fight? (Also, why does he hate Ayn Rand and like to key Mazda Miatas?)  While I [...]

Some Stuff To Know About Ulysses Before Reading It, Part 1: Ulysses and the Odyssey

By JERRY GRIT I may have oversystematized “Ulysses.” –J.J. to Samuel Beckett To help everyone who’s preparing to read Ulysses beginning on June 16th (and even for those few eager beavers who started early), I will tell you about stuff that might help. And I will do so with slick levity, utilizing my marketing career-honed bulletpoint [...]

Must Have: “Ulysses” Annotated

By JERRY GRIT Despite what the cold-sweating Vores would have you feel, there is really nothing to fear in reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Joyce famously said about writing Ulysses, “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries.” Suckers that professors are, they completely fell for it. (And [...]

Plan for Action, Suggested Reading List, Note on Editions

By JERRY GRIT PLAN FOR ACTION We’ll read the first page of Ulysses on June 16 (to commemorate the date upon which Ulysses takes place…June 16, 1904). I’ll lead the discussion with a post on that day. Then we’ll rotate…alphabetically? age-wise? arm-wrestling contest-wise?…and the next person will decide how much we read and what we’ll [...]

Wandering Rocks

By JERRY GRIT I chose “Wandering Rocks” to title our endeavor to collectively read Joyce’s Ulysses for both its multiple layers of significance and because it is a lame pun, which is all very Joycean. I was going to call it “Wandering Cephallenians” (don’t ask)…but I think this is a little snappier.  “The Wandering Rocks” [...]