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Something more pleasant… — 47 Comments

  1. Lovely fall day in Tucson, which means no rain to day and high temp low 80s. It will get cold in December, I have seen 14 degrees, but this is the tourist/snowbird weather.

  2. I envy you the time out in nature with the sound and smell and sense of the power of the ocean. No, not envy. I’m happy for you. Glad you’re able to, hopefully, abstract yourself from the epiphenomena.

  3. Spindrift. TOSS in a seal and you got….

    “Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
    O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
    Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
    Is answered in the vortex of our grave
    The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.”

  4. Looks nice!

    The weather in the Pacific NW this summer was horrible. Worst I can remember and now we’ve skipped from crappy summer to cold fall in a snap of the fingers.

  5. We had two of our grand children over night last night. Their parents were celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary. After they picked them up we took a nap: little kids are way more work than you might remember! Later we went to Gloucester, gorgeous, warm, and windy, then met up with some friends for a fabulous Azorean dinner.

    Impeachment? Never heard of it…

  6. Impeachment? Never heard of it…

    I spent the day watching the SC Washington game. Worse than impeachment.

    Two interceptions on the goal line.

  7. Thalatta! Thalatta!

    [24] so he mounted a horse, took with him Lycius and the cavalry, and pushed ahead to lend aid; and in a moment they heard the soldiers shouting, “The Sea! The Sea!” and passing the word along. Then all the troops of the rearguard likewise broke into a run, and the pack animals began racing ahead and the horses.

    [25] And when all had reached the summit, then indeed they fell to embracing one another, and generals and captains as well, with tears in their eyes. And on a sudden, at the bidding of some one or other, the soldiers began to bring stones and to build a great cairn.

  8. [Buck Mulligan] mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.

    —God! he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet
    mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton.
    Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and
    look.

    Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he
    looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth
    of Kingstown.

    —Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.

    He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephen’s
    face.

    –James Joyce, “Ulysses” Chapter 1.

  9. I’m rereading “Ulysses.” In my desultory fashion I’ve read 20% with the help of “The Bloomsday Book” (my favorite guide to “Ulysses” because no one should read “Ulysses” alone).

    It’s OK. I know how it ends.

  10. I’ve long been captivated by the line “hising up their petticoats” huxley.

    “Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered; vainly then released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters.”

  11. huxley –

    Good for you, rereading ULYSSES. If I can make myself reread anything ambitious it will probably be Anthony Powell’s A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME.

  12. sdferr: That’s the Proteus chapter, which is entirely an interior monologue of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce himself, really). Toughest chapter in the book for me. That’s where I learned the word, “ineluctable,” not that it ever did me any good.

    Ineluctable modality of the visible : at least that if no more, thought through
    my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack,
    the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust : coloured signs.
    Limits of the diaphane. But he adds : in bodies. Then he was aware of them
    bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them,
    sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.
    Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can
    put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes
    and see.

    –“Ulysses”, beginning of Chapter 3

    I wouldn’t recommend “Ulysses” to a non-literary person. I don’t think it’s worth the effort. But I swear on St. Joan of Arc, “Ulysses” is worth the effort if you care about words and exceptional writers.
    __________________________________
    A Fonzie “Ayyyy!” to comment edit for returning.

  13. Huxley,

    Mr. Edit is like an alcoholic parent. Best not to depend on him being there because he lets you down more times than not.

  14. If I can make myself reread anything ambitious it will probably be Anthony Powell’s A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME.

    miklos000rosza: That’s a pilgrimage I’ve tried and failed, but I did watch the UK TV4 mini-series and recommend it wholeheartedly, with the bare exception that the male stars all were good-looking, brown-haired, skinny guys I couldn’t tell apart.

    I hope to get to ADTTMOT after Ulysses.
    _______________________________
    Dear Comment Edit, I thought you had left us for good again. I hate being codependent.

  15. I once read an interview with Anthony Powell. He was an unassuming sort. He freely admitted the books were loosely based upon his life and the people he knew because he lacked the ability to create fiction from whole cloth.

    I loved that! It took me years of reading to realize writers wrote what they could because they could, not because it was necessarily the best writing they could imagine.

    In his younger years Stephen King was asked many times why he chose to write horror. His response: “What makes you think I have a choice?”

    BTW, Anthony Powell’s last name is pronounced “Pole” (or close to).

    https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/pronunciation/english/anthony-powell
    ______________________________
    Oh, dear Comment Edit, you still love me!

  16. huxley —

    Oh, I know how to pronounce Powell’s name but I realize this can be irresistible to share. The Dance has some unforgettable, all-time great characters, including Widmerpool, Pamela Flitton the femme fatale, and X. Trapnel, the doomed great writer based closely on someone Powell knew very well, someone who actually did write one very good short novel set at the end of 1930s. I’ve read all of Powell’s fiction, his notebooks and so on, but his best work is the Dance.

    For sheer reading pleasure, just that, this is probably the best work by anyone for me, not least because it continues and things change. But Anthony Powell also just writes beautiful prose, sentence by sentence, line by line.

  17. Mike K, you mean that’s a shot of the Arizona beachfront? I thought that remark some years ago from that Milwaukee Congresswoman who was talking about the problems of those who enter the US by sneaking in via the Arizona coast, was just dottiness. I hang my head in shame. I should know be now that our Congressmen are absolutely trustworthy and reliable.

    .

    Neo, that’s a fabulous shot even if you did take it in Arizona. *cackle*

    Thanks!

  18. I read Ulysses for a class many years ago, also with the aid of The Bloomsday Book. It was one of the greatest literary experiences of my life but I’ve never repeated it. I’d like to but there are still so many books unread and not all that much time remaining in which to read them.

  19. Interesting to read what Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot thought about Ulysses. Eliot praised it highly, Woolf didn’t care much for it, to put it mildly. You can read about some of their back-and-forth on it here. I do like this that she wrote in a letter to another friend about binding herself to the book “like a martyr to a stake, and have thank God, now finished–-My martyrdom is over”.

  20. Ulysses has always had its critics like Virginia Woolf and (ahem) Aldous Huxley, yet during the middle of the 20th C. it became a sanctified as the ultimate novel as here:

    http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/

    However since then, the bloom is off the Ulysses rose and many feel free to ignore, dismiss or even savagely attack the book.

    I think that’s healthy. Ulysses is a problematic book. It barely has a plot and for the reader cast willy-nilly into the stream-of-consciousness of its three main characters it’s hard to sort out how it all fits together. Actually it’s impossible, if one is honest, on the first read without a guide.

    Nonetheless, I will defend Ulysses as a supreme literary achievement for its imagination, scope, subversiveness and above all for Joyce’s dexterity with the English language matched only by Shakespeare IMO. Without the last I would be counted as a detractor.

    Here’s a great back-and-forth on Ulysses by haters and lovers:

    https://lithub.com/ulysses-good-or-bad/

  21. Back in the 90s I bought a handsome green hardcover of the latest, greatest edition of “Ulysses” with 5000+ errors corrected … or so we were told.

    But it turns out that wasn’t as simple as it seemed. It’s not clear how many corrections are actually improvements and there is the dark suspicion the errors were padded to defeat the expiration of the “Ulysses” copyright. The controversy, to my amusement, was called the “Joyce Wars.”

    I don’t get the critics who say “Ulysses” is a book for everyone. It just isn’t. It’s a book about everyday people going through everyday things, yes, but that doesn’t mean everyone can read it and appreciate it. I get no elite thrill from saying that.

    I wish Joyce had put his magnificent talents to more accessible uses, as in “The Dubliners” and “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”

    With “Finnegans Wake” Joyce achieved escape velocity from homo sapiens. It may turn out he was writing for future transhumans with IQs of 180 and memory implants for all languages, history, literature and mythology.

  22. I return to the issue of Mike K’s Arizona beachfront digs. I have examined the photos and all I can see is desert flora and mountains, except for the pouring rain. The house, however, seems quite nice even though it lacks the spectacular ocean views I was expecting.

    I have to say that of the furnishings, my favorite item is an affair placed on the floor that seems to have a fabric covering of white with many tan spots, and longish ears. As is my wont I am going to put 2 and 2 together to arrive at a total of 27, which would in decimal be written as “Juliet, a dog,” for whose ease a blanket chest was reportedly placed at the foot of the king-sized bed in the master bedroom.

    If by some miracle this is correct, Mike, then please tell me what is her brand, and pet and scratch her thoroughly for me. :>)))

    You’ve done a nice job with your place — by the way, has Home Depot shown up yet? I hope you’re thoroughly enjoying it. And thanks for the photos. 😀

  23. Mike K, you worked as a Sailor with The Gray Funnel Line, didn’t you? Haze Gray, And Underway!

    Julie Near Chicago, Gwen M is a nasty piece of work.

  24. She sees with her phone camera, and chooses to seize the moment
    as the seas inexorably wash up against the rocky shore.

    Carpe Deim is more seize the moment, than seize the day.
    Seas create waves, which one sees.

    I like homonyms, but hadn’t quite realized this triple: seas, sees, seize.
    How pleasant — and much much faster than Ulysses .

    Funny that the water really does look cold, compared to most photos of So. Cal or Hawaii or the Caribbean.

    (perhaps Edit comes and goes with some relationship to memory or other work being done in the server space of the blog)

  25. huxley: “With “Finnegans Wake” Joyce achieved escape velocity from homo sapiens. ”

    Indeed. I tried to continue with it after Ulysses and felt like I was losing my mind. Never went back. Faulkner said Joyce was a genius who was electrocuted by the divine fire. I don’t know if he was referring to FW or U but if the former I certainly agree.

  26. This thread has been a treat. 🙂 Have never read Joyce, can’t say I plan to. I’m still puzzled about why he quotes the Greek for ‘sea’ as “thalatta”, but looking at my old Liddell-Scott, I see that’s the Attic form. That would explain it, since all my words are Koine.

  27. I used to know a Greek folk song called “Thalassa” with a very mournful, but compelling, tune.

  28. Julie Near Chicago. Gwendolyn Moore, Milwaukee’s Rep in the House. I thought that was who you were referring to.

  29. Ah! I’d completely forgotten her name. (But I do remember Hank Johnson’s, heh-heh-heh).

    Thanks, Scott.

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