They're like the blurbs you find on the back of the book, or that flash out at you during a TV ad for an upcoming movie, or that maybe you read in TIME magazine while you're bored and on the toilet.

Exempla gratia:

FRICKINAWESOME on Nov 25 '09
I don't know how you create such complete and detailed worlds that are so alien but at the same time completely lived-in and comforting.

I want entire feature length films based on almost every one of your designs, and this is no different. This design is my blockbuster summer movie!

5$


FRICKINAWESOME on Nov 23 '09
Biosam's love of science + endless amount of wit

x

Santo's love of bringing amazing drawings to life + endless amount of wit

=

5$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

That seems to be my professor's take on Ulysses for today. Except every class he's telling us that the episode(s) we're covering that day is (are) a radical departure from everything that has gone before. That may be true, but it's really starting to sound like not a big deal anymore. I love the book, and the course, and the teacher (dude bought me tea and biscuits, yo), but I swear it's like every week we're starting a whole new course and we're supposed to throw everything we learned before out the window. It's starting to get a bit frustrating, considering all the reading and work we've been doing--at least, that I know I've been doing.

Today's theme seemed to be, 'Nothing means anything and everything is an illusion (Michael--a trick is something a whore does for money). And that you can't really say anything.'

But

a) I don't believe that.

b) I doubt Joyce believed that.

c) I even doubt my professor believes that.

Also, it seems like a hell of a lot of work and pain for Joyce to go through (seven years and seven hundred pages of writing and research and revision, and then litigation and court cases in the US and charges of obsecenity, etc.) all to say that, really, it's impossible to say anything and all that malarky.

I am reminded of Gardner's remark that no one would bother to write a book if they thought writing a book was not worth the bother.

So, no, I don't think Ulysses is a book that eats itself alive or destroys itself and deconstructs itself, per se. Joyce had much too big an ego to undermine the fruits of that ego.

Also, how exactly would one write a novel 'without any characters'--that had 'abandoned characterization'? Hawkes tried it and got probably as close as anyone will ever get (someone will prove me wrong, mayhap, eventually): but even he ended up having characters in his novels. Because one of the quirks of the novel is that it requires characters. In order to be a novel.

So now I have to do what I did when I read The Confidence-Man and learn to see past all the apparent tricks and apparent deconstruction, etc.

Yeah. My thesis is on Thomism in Ulysses, essentially comparing the famous 'Yes' soliloquey of Molly Bloom and the other 'Yes' statements scattered throughout the book to Aquinas' dictum that being is convertible with the good.

I spend way too much time doing it. Everything is just so interesting. Of course, you gotta be careful not to take it all as definitive--I've found a lot of mistakes in Wikipedia articles.

Right now, I'm on this kick where I read about extinct animals, which are pretty damn fascinating.

I'll use this blog to post links to articles that interest me. Feel free to do so as well.

I love this album. I only have it on vinyl, though, so I actually haven't been able to listen to it for almost a year.

:(

Also, I can't find my favorite song off of it, 'Nobody Hurts You', online. (Although I haven't looked too hard.)

Anyone else like Graham Parker?

Also, I was bitten by a swan a while ago. I think this means the bird revolution is coming. I'm going to go get some Pop Rocks cause I heard they make birds explode.

I was talking to Malcolm today, and he was telling me about how you were discussing Moby-Dick. That's one of my favorite books, yo. (Everyone thinks it's strange that I love it, and Melville so much, given what would seem our completely different take on and reaction to the problems of life--but so what? He's one of my dudes, dude.) I've never heard you talk about literature, so I was a bit taken by surprise, I have to admit.

What other secrets are you hiding? What other awesome books have you read?

Let me nerd out wiff you, yo.

That is (other than yourself), whose blogs have you most marked to 'watch.'

For me, it's Lemonalle.

Wel, thei cloosid doun the stables in Hampton layt laste moonth.
Ralph wente out seekyng enploymente but he could nay finde noone.
He cam hoome to drunke from mixynge pots of smal ale and wyne;
He drew his knife and stabbid an apothecarie, now thei cleppe hem Jankin IC.

Doun yn the parte of toun which when ye wander through ye durst nat stoppe,
Jankin's wavyngge hys swerd around and eek threatenyng to blou hys toppe;
Whan a povre knyghte passynge bi snuck up on hem from behinde;
out yn fronte of the Inne of the Gryffin thei put the chayns on Jankin IC.

In throth the reaume supplide for hym a manne of lawe, but the sheriffe was Foul Johannus Broune.
He ycame ynto the courte room and ystared yonge Jankin doune.
'Wel the euidense beth cleere, Ich am goinge to lette the sentence, child, fit the crime:
The dungeoun for LXXXVIII and eek a yeere, wi shal cleppe hit euen Jankin IC.'

A grete battaile ybroke out yn the courte room, thei yhadde to dragge Jankin's maid awey.
Hys mothir ystode uppe and yshouted, 'Judgge, how canst thou trete mi child thys wey?'
'Wel, child, hast thou any statemente thou sholde lyk to make
Bifore the bailyff comes to take thou forevirre awey?'

'Now, Judge, Judge, ich haf debts no honeste manne coulde peye:
The reaume beth takynge mi mortgage and eek mi hous awey.
Now ich nam nat sayinge ich am an innocent manne,
but hit was moor thanne al thys that yputte that knife yn mi hand.

'Veraiment, yower honoure, ich beliefe ich wolde beth bettir off ydedde;
And if yow can take a manne's lyf bi cause of the thoughts that beth yn his hedde,
Wil yow nat sitten bak yn that chayre and thinke hit ouer oon more tyme,
And let hem bren mi lyk the hereticks who beth guilty ayainst the Hooly Goste of crime.'

Yo, man! There are times when, if you are talking about something, it doesn't even matter what that thing is or if I like it or dislike it or not, I will respond to what you're saying by exclaiming, "Yo, man! Fuck _____!"

_____ being whatever it is you're talking about.

I think everyone has some, even those who say they don't. But, at the moment, I can't think of any. (I was reading something earlier today--that made me think of this.) I've been thinking all day, and I can't really come up with any regrets that I care enough about now to actually regret. If that makes any sense.

It probably doesn't.

Ah, well. How are you?