Classics and the Western Canon discussion

The program is here is any one wants to listen again (UK listeners only, I believe): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050xh3d The Joyce song was the second item on the programme, about 6 minutes in, after a piece conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, who also celebrates his 71st birthday today

Just a note on episode 15 scheduled for next week:

Now that I've started re-reading the Circe episode I'm sure that I rated it as more difficult to read than it deserves. It is certainly easier to read than Oxen of the Sun. But it is fairly long (and very bizarre) so reading it over two weeks still seems like a good idea.

There is no natural division or half-way point. Just approximate. And have fun. This is a wild one.

Thank you for breaking it up over two weeks! I will never keep up otherwise, and it appears I'm not the only one!

I agree, I fully intend to use the extra week to get a bit caught up in the readings!

me too!

Though, Circe is probably twice the length of the longest episode we've read so far. The audio is nearing 5 hours. I think even two weeks will be hectic (and probably nauseous, considering the subject matter) *laugh*.

Think Circe is a long read, so it was appropriate (absolutely) to divide it up into two.
The following is neither here not there but a bit of trivia/fun: I was researching "Camelot" (the musical) online (having seen the musical recently) and during such, I read by chance how Richard Burton read "Ulysses" several times and read it in three days. I can barely believe that. He would state one day that James Joyce was the best author of the century and then another time say he was a phony or some such thing. So then as I searched that a bit further, I found this about Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses:

http://starsandletters.blogspot.com/2...

Sue wrote: "So then as I searched that a bit further, I found this about Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses:

http://starsandletters.blogspot.com/2...... ..."

Thx! That was fun, Sue. My TBR has long included two views of MM that I still have not read, the one by Joyce Carol Oates: Blonde and the other by Gloria Steinem: Marilyn. I do remember Steinem's Ms. Magazine feature on MM. An interesting woman, to say the least.

'Tis amazing what one can learn when reading Ulysses. A while back I reached out, on another board that discusses new words, for a word that described the kind of new word construction Joyce does. I received some suggestions, one of which I used at the time for our discussion here. But, today Feliks added this one to our vocabulary discussion:

"A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning.

"Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to clearly hear a lyric, substitutes words that sound similar, and make some kind of sense.' American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay 'The Death of Lady Mondegreen', published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954. The term was inspired by '...and Lady Mondegreen,' a misinterpretation of the line 'and laid him on the green,' from the Scottish ballad 'The Bonnie Earl o Moray.' 'Mondegreen' was included in the 2000 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the word in 2008."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
(Article includes an example used by Joyce -- "If you see Kay...")

(Lyricosis -- urban slang with similar meaning.
https://everysensory.wordpress.com/20... )

P.S. (Also via Feliks.)

"... There was an eccentric French author once--a strange intellect who insisted on doing everything in the most complex fashion possible--who constructed an entire novel using mondegreens, as the basis of the plot. Plus several other complications thrown in. It is thus, one of the very few novels written by algorithm. When you pick up the book, you can not tell why on earth the story was written or what it is supposed to be: it contains all manner of strange phantasms. But this is the hidden secret.

"Usefulness? Very little, except to show off literary knowledge..."

Oooh. Interesting! Thank you.

That is interesting, Lily! Joyce does have fun with words (and how!). One I recall is when Bloom was "sherlockholmesing" the individual in front of him in the chapter Eumaeus. ha!