James Joyce - Blog Posts

Hi!!

I bought 4 books recently, 2 of them arrived today:

• o mito de sísifo - camus;

• exílios e poemas - james joyce.

As you know, I already read the myth of sysifus, but it was on kindle and i wanted to have the physical one. And the Joyce's, I never even had heard about it, but found it online and it sounds interesting.

Be kind to yourselves, fellas! 🤍🌧

I think the framing of complex books as something people should read, in like a self betterment sense, is both deeply harmful to the people who do read it and view it as a chore (an enjoyable one at times, but still a chore) and those who don’t because they see it as too challenging. You should read complex things because challenging yourself is enjoyable, and the famous ones (Infinite Jest my beloved) tend to be quite good. Also it’s not like there’s an intelligence requirement to read things like some people believe (probably to make themselves feel smart), other than literacy in the language and willingness to look up words you don’t know.

"When I surprise myself in the depths of the mirror I get a fright. I can hardly believe that I have limits, that I am cut out and defined. I feel scattered in the air, thinking inside other beings, living in things beyond myself."

-Clarice Lispector, "Near to the Wild Heart" (1943)

the best guitarist of all time🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

Turkish female singer dancing and singing concert camera

007 James Bond❤️👋

A Love Letter to History

(if you could call it that)

On a cold January morning in 1914, James Joyce published the first part of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In that very part, on a similarly cold morning just after Christmas Break, Stephen Dedalus stood huddled with other Clongowes students and watched the snow moulding itself around their boots, wondering what made Simon Moonan and Tusker Boyle, in all their ordinariness, kiss in the square.

Napoleon Bonaparte was not born Napoleon Bonaparte. He was born Napoleon Buonaparte. Napoleon Buonaparte was not born in France, but he was born French enough. Of course, they’ve forgotten that by now. They often aren’t allowed to remind themselves, either.

There is very little to say about Fahrenheit 451 that it has not already said about itself. Any review of it is only ever a paraphrasing of some chapter or other, intentionally or otherwise. In the past twenty years, it has been banned at least ten times in the US alone. I imagine censoring a book about censorship gave many people the opportunity to pat themselves on the back. Unfortunately, their intentions, however malevolent, are misplaced. In the book, the people are on the side of banning books. There is no oppression, and no need for revolution. The bars caging a mind are not so easy to topple. The guillotine falls over an empty basket, and symbolism overflows from an empty cup. There is nothing to overthrow when the fault lies with time.

History. What a heavy word.

Christopher Marlow was excommunicated by the Church, and so was one of Shakespeare’s daughters. It is claimed that he based Ophelia off of his wife. I wonder why.

Five years after that day in the square, Stephen Dedalus refused to back down from his claim of Byron’s brilliance. Words like 'blasphemous' and 'irreligious' pooled around his feet. He cupped his hands in the water and lapped it up. Everything I write now contains some shred of Stephen’s name. I wonder why.

Why is a muse called a muse? To muse is to think, to think deeply. Is a muse’s job to be a conductor of thought? Must all thought be equivalent to love? Why does the word smell like the thickest honey? Why does it sit so heavily on my tongue?

Icarus never meant to fall. If he raced toward the sun, it was only to prove that he could. And he was never on fire. Oh, he burned, alright — the melting wax made sure of it. Did he grasp at the feathers as they came free from the harness? Did he watch them drifting towards the sea? Did he notice anything happening at all? For a moment, a brief, shining moment, the sun was neither hope nor doom, but triumph.

I never could write anything on either the 31st or the 1st. There is something about endings, and something about beginnings. The sun dawned the same on New Year’s Day, but at the stroke of midnight, my phone sang like I lived my whole life before the first light.

Fifteen years after that day in the square, Stephen Dedalus parted with Cranly, unafraid of being alone,

“— and not have any one person who would more than a friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.”

“Of whom are you speaking?” Stephen asked at length.

Cranly did not answer.

They met again, and sixteen years after Oscar’s death, James Joyce retraced his name in “Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name” in a book I have yet to read.

It’s funny how they ban books written centuries ago. Congratulations, Ronald, a pre-industrialization schoolmaster had a broader mind than yours. A clod of dirt shifts as Shakespeare turns in his grave.

History. What a heavy word. I used to think we owed it something.

Obviously the second part of this quote gets the most attention but I really love the first part because it's so true! Read a page of Finnegans Wake aloud and tell me you don't hear John.

“John spoke the way James Joyce wrote. To me, he was the Beatles. He was always the spark. In a late wee-hour-of-the-morning talk, he once told me, ‘I’m just like everybody else Harry, I fell for Paul’s looks.”

— Harry Nilsson speaking about John Lennon.