Respects to Mr. Joyce

There’s a thread over at LISNews about Bloomsbury and James Joyce and Ulysses and the whole hundred-year mark thing. I’m greatly enjoying the history. It’s a nice break from non-stop Reagan worship and electioneering news. But I have to say that, although I had a brief moment a week or so ago when I thought I might be brave and studious and librarian-ish and perhaps more than a little pretentious and try to tackle the vast Joycean behemoth, I stopped in front the shelves on the third floor of Hatcher where all the multifarious Joyce editions and critical commentaries and facsimiles of the original manuscripts reside, and I knelt in front of all those overwhelming books, and I lost heart almost immediately. Too much, too much, there is such a thing as too much of a thing. And such it was. My praises and respects to you, Mr. Joyce, but tackling your masterpiece will have to await another day.