Yesterday, a package arrived in the mail.
It was the Dover edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, a reproduction of the original 1922 printing by Sylvia Beach for Shakespeare & Company.
Like many people, I have started Ulysses. Like many people, I’ve never finished Ulysses.
I tweeted last night about the book’s arrival, and in the hours that followed I picked up two new Twitter followers.
One, 11ysses, intends, as explained on their website, to tweet Ulysses on June 16th (a significant date because it is Bloomsday), not in a literal sense but as Ulysses would be experienced on Twitter.
The other Twitter follower I picked up was the novelist Frank Delaney. I read Delaney’s novel Ireland, not long after I bought my Beetle come to think of it, when I still lived in North Carolina, and I remember liking it quite a bit. Delaney has a podcast series on Ulysses, “Re:Joyce,” and at work this afternoon I listened to the introductory episode. I added the podcast’s RSS feed to my RSS reader, and it’s also available through iTunes.
Thus armed — a new copy of the book and a podcast, too — I’m ready for Ulysses. It will be in my bag, and I will read it on the morning and evening train.
As I said, I’ve started and not-finished Ulysses before. I can’t guarantee I’ll finish it this time, either.
But Bloomsday is in less than a month, and I’m bloody well going to try. :cheers: