Post-course....and thinking of another?

Six hours of Ulysses is a big ask, but the 25 attendees yesterday seemed to me to be holding up well and to go away very satisfied that they had a more secure handle on the big complicated novel. Lots of great exchanges and debates, and a sense that the enterprise of reading Joyce is more than worth the effort. Some had been reading the novel for 50+ years, but felt energised to keep reading and unfolding what is a deeply layered text with so much to give. Others were complete novices. One of the novice readers, there with a newer reader, generously reported:

That was great yesterday – it expanded our knowledge and it also inspired xxx  to make sure he reads it all.

I can’t believe how hard you work and your boundless enthusiasm. 

It would be great to hear from others who attended and to get your ideas on what worked for you, and what you took away from the course.  That will help shape the next iteration on 4 March.

Speaking personally, I so relish teaching Joyce, and certainly enjoyed excessively the privilege of inducting both new and old readers into the text. So, thanks for being so generous as contributors and discussants, and so eager to learn. And thanks too to our actor-readers, Juliette and Bill. Both demonstrated the subtlety of the text, its sense of fun, and in giving the text breath brought it to the ear with pizzaz and panache.

Bloomsday would very much like to hear from participants about whether an advanced course would be good, and when, and whether the format was a bit too rigorous yesterday. I could post here a proposed curriculum for scrutiny and feedback.

Please be aware too that the repeat of the Beginner's Ulysses course happens on 4 March, 10am-5pm at the Celtic Club. 10 places still available.

Re-Joycing is a blast!

The new Joyce children's book...The Cats of Copenhagen

Joyceans have been venting this week on the weird way in which a letter from Joyce for the pleasure of his grandson has come into very expensive print. We can only think that the grandson, who has been a jealous guardian of his copyright, will take legal action. To do so in respect of the novels is now beyond his control, but I wonder if he has rights in relation to a text that has been until now unpublished? My question is a genuinely open one. I'm no copyright lawyer.  Does anyone know?

As a potential buyer of this book, I'm outraged by the transparently commercial nature of the event. €300 for a short children's book is rich!  Nothing philanthropic about Ithys Press.

Also outraged are the James Joyce Foundation in Zurich, to whom the letter in which the story had appeared had been entrusted by Joyce's son's second wife 8 years ago. The Foundation is understandably annoyed that a researcher transcribed the letter and published it without seeking permission. Scholars need to be bound by codes of ethics and of course many do things and promise things that are on the dodgy side.  What were the motives of the academic, one wonders?  Were they altruistic, or opportunistic? Perhaps both? And why had the Foundation not sought to publish themselves?  And lept in as soon as the copyright lapsed on 1 January? It's a shame that a conversation about publication was not had between all the parties with a vested interest.

Unhappily, the underhand activities of the transcriber and overpriced goods are a direct outcome of copyright laws, and in this particular case, arise because Stephen James Joyce has been so energetic and intransigent about exercising his legal rights. Bloomsday in Melbourne had a slight brush with him in 2004 when we took a play which had some Joyce passages  in it to Dublin and had to replace them (but that's another story). I declare my hand because I do have an axe to grind.

It seems to me that Joyce and his immediate family no longer need the royalties and the grandson has done well from them, so why can't these works that so enrich our lives not be more readily available? Joyce belongs to the world, not just to those with very deep pockets. I'm also disappointed that the  superb digital edition of the Pola notebook is not available for buying from the National Library of Ireland. Same problem. I wish I knew what the answer to these copyright conundrums is. There is a c6 ancient Irish legal dispute about a monk's right to copy a manuscript which generated a wise saw in defence of the monk and against his abbot: 'To every cow its calf; to every manuscript its copy.'  It's a form of reasoning that is close to nature and the earth, and a world away from commercial imperatives. I find it an elegant resolution.

Let's know what you think, and if you know what copyright law dictates in the matter of unpublished manuscripts.

Preparing to teach Ulysses

Bloomsday embarks on something that has long been a twinkle in the eye, but just took a while to take form - a Beginner's course on Ulysses. It's that paradox, the novel that is deeply admired, but for many it's forbidding, intimidating and not user-friendly. We hope to challenge those mindsets.

Speaking as one who taught it to all levels of students for over 30 years, I do understand the difficulties. Indeed as a university teacher of Joyce, one of my assessment gambits was to ask students to log their reading impasses and to analyse how they overcame them. It was always fascinating and different for each student, and as a side benefit, plagiarism-proof.

Reading is a strange and wonderful occupation, and it always fascinates me that we who are readers can enter so many parallel universes through books. And usually, never be confused about where we are or why we are there.  A splendid feature of brain functioning that it allows this perverse multi-verse of experience to operate at all, and more so, when the parallel universes proliferate, as they do with committed readers.

There is no doubt that Joyce creates difficulties in the first three chapters of Ulysses: Stephen knows far too much, and do I really care about his intellectual (mainly ecclesiastical) baggage in Ch.1-3? As a reader it will take me a while to decide I do, and for the most human of reasons. If I don't know grief, guilt and regret, and I probably do have some experience of these disabling human conditions, then Stephen is a good guide to the
territory (and much else besides). And like him or not, I have at some stage to reckon with the unlikely scenarios that Bloom (whom I find easy to relate to, despite his obvious shortcomings) can find a way of passing hours pleasantly and productively (well, maybe not, in the end) with him, and that Molly can think of him, smelly and unkempt as he is, as a potential lover.

Preparing the materials for next Sunday's course, I'm struck too by the fact that the difficulties may be challenging and real, but also, and not contradictorily, that Joyce is engaged in a process of teaching one how to read the great baggy monster that is Ulysses. We'll spend some time familiarising ourselves with not only the big structural issues, the architecture, of the novel but also its varieties of inner speech. Our focus will be the easier chapters, the Bloom and Molly chapters. Hopefully, students will want to return for a more advanced course. Ulysses as a reading universe is rich, deep, multi-facetted. As anyone who has been around Bloomsday in Melbourne knows, one never stops learning. Let's hope we can adequately share the joy.

Very gratifying to have booked out on 19 Feb, and I'm pleased to think there are in the ranks of people coming some who have spent half a lifetime or more reading the novel. So, I hope we can expect some good craic about it.  Because of the quick and warm response, we're doing a second course on 4 March - same place, same timetable. Curriculum and Booking details on website.