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I cannot say exactly what possessed me to take up Ulysses as the sale prada tote fall project. It would be too easy to claim simply that sale prada tote this is a book I feel I should read, or would like to sale prada tote have read, at any rate, though there is something to that. Maybe foolish pride and sale prada tote inner need push me to such books as a way to sale prada tote cling to the belief that I continue to pursue the intellectual adventure and sale prada tote life of the spirit, however much circumstances may suggest that is sale prada tote just another illusion with which I stubbornly refuse to part.
I have picked up Ulysses on a sale prada tote number of occasions, several anyway, over the years without ever making much headway, invariably finding myself soon lost, appreciative of this sale prada tote soaring passage or that bon mot, but too often unsure who sale prada tote said what, or where, or what exactly is happening here, there, or sale prada tote when, in what must be the longest day in the sale prada tote history of the world. The impulse to take another crack at Joyce’s grand work was just that, impulse, whim, and sale prada tote perhaps symptomatic of a trend to aimlessness and lack of focus that sale prada tote marks the past few years, a kind of entropy of intellect and sale prada tote spirit.
The curiosity that sale prada tote served me in good stead from my first discovery of books and sale prada tote reading is still with me. The discipline to follow through is sale prada tote what has eroded. Thus my reading bounces from a bit of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics to fascinating chapters about Proudhon the anarchist and John Stuart Mill in Alexander Herzen’s great memoir My Past and Thoughts to sale prada tote yet another perfunctory stab at Hegel for maybe no better reason than sale prada tote because he’s there and I’ve made little more headway with him than sale prada tote with Joyce, all of this highfalutin fare punctuated by a slew of contemporary novels, among them The Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell, The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Tragedy of Arthur and Prague by Arthur Phillips. Sylvia loaned the Mankell. The redoubtable Neil Anderson’s recommendation of The Tragedy of Arthur led to Phillips. I happened on The Club Dumas while searching for vacation reading, having previously enjoyed several other Pérez-Reverte novels. This is sale prada tote typical of how one comes on books: recommendations, reviews, one book leads to sale prada tote another, all well and good, except another among my illusions is sale prada tote that I might yet make something of my life, late in the sale prada tote day as it is for that, and that calls for a sale prada tote bit more discipline, a bit less of being easily diverted from sale prada tote serious projects by books and escapades even when they offer their own rewards.
That Ulysses has its rewards is evident from the beginning in Joyce’s wonderful capacity to sale prada tote describe the most ordinary things and everyday events with grace, elegance, and sale prada tote assurance, even at his most wildly, wordmadly inventive, in language that sale prada tote is never, ever pedestrian, however commonplace that which is being described. The novel’s opening—”Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from sale prada tote the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather, on which a mirror and sale prada tote a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the sale prada tote mild morning air”—may not be up there with “Call me Ishmael”; “All happy families are sale prada tote alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”; or “I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now. I don’t know how I got there. Perhaps an sale prada tote ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I’d never go there alone”; but there is sale prada tote something of it caught in my mind on first reading and sale prada tote remains.
Harold Bloom avers that “Ulysses is sale prada tote a pleasure, difficult but available, for the common reader of intelligence and sale prada tote goodwill.” I buy that sale prada tote it is available for the reader of intelligence and goodwill but balk at the sale prada tote unalloyed claim to pleasure. There are moments of pleasure, to be sale prada tote sure, passing at times almost to sublimity, when after a long slog one comes to sale prada tote a passage that is just special, as when old Leo Bloom waxes rhapsodic on the sale prada tote topic of Gerty McDowell’s undergarments espied from sale prada tote a distance as she, provocatively posed, leans back for a sale prada tote better view of fireworks, full aware of the view on offer, her face “suffused with a sale prada tote divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the sale prada tote fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the sale prada tote green, four and eleven, on account of being white and sale prada tote she let him and she saw that he saw and sale prada tote then it went so high it went out of sight a sale prada tote moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back that sale prada tote he had a full view high up above her knee where sale prada tote no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and sale prada tote she wasn’t ashamed and he wasn’t either to sale prada tote look in that immodest way like that because he couldn’t resist the sale prada tote sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and sale prada tote he kept on looking, looking. . . .” Such wonders are sale prada tote worth hacking through the wordy undergrowth for, half lost half the sale prada tote time, more than half, fighting the impulse to skim whole pages for sale prada tote a passage that might tender intimations of some sublime, even settle for sale prada tote lower pleasures but pleasures still, born of Joyce’s genius to sale prada tote let fly great tsunamis of words that in lesser hands would soon degenerate into sophomoric excess, show-offy twaddle to sale prada tote no good end.
The experience of reading Ulysses is akin to that of reading poems such as Keats’ “The Fall of Hyperion” or Wordsworth’s “The Prelude,” where sale prada tote the challenge is to focus through lengthy stretches that may not enchant in and sale prada tote of themselves but are nonetheless integral to the whole, for sale prada tote a good poem’s meaning comes to sale prada tote more than just those special passages that lift us up out of ourselves and sale prada tote linger in our minds even when we do not formally commit them to sale prada tote memory. At present, barely halfway through Ulysses, I face the sale prada tote prospect of giving myself an incomplete if I do not go at it sale prada tote like a fury for the next few weeks. Yet there is sale prada tote the daunting but undeniable conviction that I would do well to sale prada tote go back to page one and begin anew with stately, plump Buck Milligan making the sale prada tote scene, yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, sustained gently behind him by the morning air, and sale prada tote take it up again with all the patience I can muster, enriched by the sale prada tote experience of what was absorbed on the first go around, having learned for sale prada tote instance that for me Joyce is best read aloud, at least moving my lips as I read, and sale prada tote in this sense too Ulysses is sale prada tote akin to those poems that mean most to me. This is sale prada tote where I stand with it for the nonce, with more, much more, to sale prada tote come.
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I have never been ambitious enough to attempt the whole thing. I content myself with skipping to sale prada tote the last fifty pages and reading Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. I find it so musical.