Moving Day

Annnnd, here we go! The brand new interface for ULYSSES "SEEN" is ready (well, mostly) to go. There's still other features we'll be building into it, and a lot more pages of new content to put up there but, finally, things are contained on the one site allowing you to move freely back and forth between the comic and easy-to-use Readers' Guide that helps people solve some of the novel's mysterious and ask direct question. Heck, no you can even help me get the damn thing done right by including links, suggesting casting for character and telling me just what Stephen's hat is supposed to look like (I really mean that last one, by the way. I haven't found a conclusive answer there yet...).

Make sure you check out the "How to Use This Comic" on the way in. There's some new features to how the comic is presented that we're all pretty proud of, but they're pretty unexpected at first. I'm not going to say any more here because, well, I want you to read it, don't I?

-Rob

http://www.ulyssesseen.com/ 

Making and managing the "Twitter Schema"

Everybody getting read for Bloomsday '09? Good. Because the changes start here tomorrow night.

We've got a brand-new web interface for following and interacting with the novel while reading the comic adaptation. There's a lot of bright, shiny new features there for people to play and, frankly, a lot of ways to help us get this thing done right.

But we can't show it to you yet. Not until tomorrow night.

To get people jazzed up for the new interface and get prepped for Bloomsday, we've been playing around with another nifty new application over on Twitter (to join us there just look for UlyssesSeen in your twitter search).

I've taken my general "schema" for how the novel's events and actions unfold, with some quotes, explanation of themes and links to historical figures, and created a "tweet-file" for getting your ULYSSES on 140 characters at a time. Starting on June 9th and running through the 15th, we'll be tweeting these tidbits for a few hours a day. Two or three chapters a day is a lot of Joyce of course, but hopefully this will help new readers get a little deeper into the novel before its celebration on the 16th. Reading ULYSSES for the first time is not an easy task, as anyone can tell you, but we hope this opens up some of the mysteries and cuts through to some of the reasons why this novel is so beautiful, funny, sad and really an experience you'll want to have again and again.

Then on Bloomsday itself, June 16th, an abbreviated and rather comical update of the day's events will come your way through twitter. Twenty hours of "what's Mr Bloom is doing now" in all its dirty detail. Pretty funny stuff when you break it all down.

So time to empty the cache on your browser, open yourself to the craziness of twitter and get ready for our new user interface tomorrow. Brand new ways to look at and enjoy a timeless and beautiful novel and some help getting through the harder bits of its earthiness to the gems of language and liveliness that form its center.

-Rob  

Yes, well, things do change you know...

Soon, very, very soon in fact, we are moving. Things are happening. The world is shifting and, somehow, when you least reason why, you are a part of that foot-stirring jag to the left.

But you can join us over there. It's an easy hop beneath the doorjam on a rickety California morning.

Got your Twitter going? If so, go to UlyssesSeen on Twitter and, definitely definitely same some storage space for Bloomsday.

No Twitter? Then find us on facebook for your latest updates and images.

Or stand by your subscription here for up-coming information (tease, tease....).

Something is coming for Bloomsday, Joyce fans, something that we've been planning for a long time. I really hope that those of you who've put their time in following this project are ready to take it to the next level. Otherwise Josh and I have been losing a lot of sleep over nothing...

-Rob

James Joyce's Ulysses, "Telemachus" episode, No. 29

[Cf. 1922 6:7-28; Gabler 1:112-134]

One thing that strikes me on reading this passage is Mulligan's none-too-subtle playing of "the class card" with Stephen. "Dogsbody" has all kinds of associations, and will gather even more in the "Proteus" episode, but at the very least it refers to an underling or a "gofer." Mulligan also teases Stephen for his "second leg" trousers, his improper etiquette, and even offers his own old clothes to him. We'll soon learn he's wearing Mulligan's boots already. ["Poxy Bowsy" is glossed in Gifford, but basically means vd-ridden lout.]

Stephen's insistence that he can't wear grey is pretty extreme. Gifford's gloss is very useful--like many other entries, it "reminds" us of things we don't yet know, that Stephen's mother died on June 23, 1903, and so it's been almost a full year... though we actually won't find out it's June 16, 2004 for a few hundred pages yet. Gifford observes that under the strictest standards of Victorian mourning, a son would wear only black for a full year after his mother's death, so Stephen's within that period. Mulligan catches the irony of Stephen's assiduous sartorial etiquette and his cruel treatment of his mother, but we don't necessarily feel better about Mulligan for this.

Point of trivia: if you're following along in your Gabler edition, you'll see that several of Mulligan's lines here end with exclamation points [Dogsbody! Insane! Bard!]. He's quite an exclaimer. The exclamation points appear in the Rosenbach manuscript, but not in the 1922. Because we're following the '22 here, they're not used. Write them in if you like.

Point of admiration: I love how Rob has Mulligan using the mirror here.

so, riddle me this:

1. We've been wondering what the mirror should look like. Anyone have a good sense of what the cracked lookingglass of a servant should look like? Please post a picture.

2. About that dogsbody. What difference does it make, given the trends and themes of this chapter, that Mulligan is talking about Stephen's body and his appearance?

3. Why is it important that Stephen is so hyper-observant of the etiquette of mourning? Can you answer this question by going through Hamlet or the Odyssey?

James Joyce's Ulysses, "Telemachus" Episode, No. 28

(cf. 1922, 5.31 - 6.6; Gabler, 1.100-11)

Stephen has just been accused by Mulligan of performing more than feeling his grief, of being the "loveliest mummer of them all" who prominently wears his mourning for his mother, but who refused to honor her final wish before she died.  Stephen doesn't rise to the bait, but continues acting the part.

This is one of the first pages where we see Stephen's internal monologue placed in the context of external events.  He remembers a dream he had shortly after his mother's death, in which she appears as a ghost (remember Hamlet? we finally have our ghost!). We will see this dream in different variations throughout the novel. For now, a few things jumped out at me... first, note the emphasis placed on smells. Joyce is one of the great smell writers... "wetted ashes" has always struck me as an amazingly precise and familiar smell.  Also the green of the bile and the green of the bay... just moments ago, Mulligan suggested that 'snotgreen' be a new color for Irish art.  We get a sense of what Stephen thinks of that idea here.

Finally, note how Rob has drawn Stephen's pose here.  Joyce writes that Stephen has his palm on his brow,  but Rob has focused on how Stephen is looking at the bay "beyond the threadbare cuffedge," a marvelous bit of framing.

hopes for further discussion from you, gentle reader:

--the color green

--parallax and visual framing

--ghosts

--motherhood

James Joyce's Ulysses, Telemachus Episode, No. 27

[cf. 1922, 5:26-30; Gabler 1:94-99]

Art?  Art Brockway?  Are you out there Art?  I will always think of you with this passage.  When Art and I were grad students at the University of Miami, he wrote what I'm sure is the definitive article on Joyce and mummery.  There is little else to say, or rather, there would be little else to say were your correspondent not writing from Philadelphia, mummery capital of the world.

(image from gophila.com, taken by R. Kennedy)

Again, I'm hoping Art will chip in at some point, but on the most basic level, when Mulligan calls Stephen a "mummer," he's saying that he's disguised, he's pretending to be something he's not.

The tradition of mumming came to Philadelphia from many places, but the strongest thread runs from Ireland & the other Celtic countries. By tradition, around the holidays, a gang of costumed men would go from house to house and basically trick or treat for booze.  There might be a play or a performance involved, but there's a costume and some kind of entertainment and probably "something sinister" in having them come into your home... as Mulligan suggests.

And as for sinister... here's another question for the masses.  Was Joyce left-handed?  Stephen, based on a number of references in this book, seems to be a leftie.  And Joyce's corresponding figure in Finnegans Wake, Shem the Penman, is left-handed.  Of course, even if Joyce were left-inclined, no school in Ireland would have let him actually write that way...

James Joyce's Ulysses, Telemachus No. 26

[Cf. 1922 5:20-27, Gabler 1:86-94]

We get an important glimpse of Stephen here, as we learn that he refused to pray for his mother at her deathbed. What kind of a**hole doesn't obey his dying mother's wish to pray with her? Discuss.

I mean, yes, Stephen is an Artist of Profound Integrity, who cannot compromise his belief in his unbelief. And yes, we are meant to think of him as kin with Hamlet, with Telemachus, with those who fight to leave behind their lives as boys to become men. And I even think that we are meant to pity Stephen more than a little, who has become so alienated through his extremism.

Mulligan refers to himself and Stephen as "hyperborean." What does this mean? Gifford gives us the basics--it's a classical allusion, to a kind of perfectly youthful master race who lived at the far ends of the earth. More specifically, Gifford pegs the reference to Nietzsche & a passage in The Will to Power, wherein the Ubermensch were described as hyperborean, as beyond the constraints of conventional morality, especially Christian morality.

Anyone out there have more to say about hyperborean? About Stephen's refusal to submit and what we're supposed to think about it?

I love the bottom panel here... Mulligan looking stately and plump indeed, beautifully framed and posed like he's about to start shooting lasers out of his hands. Which would make things interesting. His pose, his position, his framing, all speak together with the authority of Mulligan's perfectly reasonable criticism of Stephen. And Stephen knows it, but he doesn't care.