READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 15 included contributions by Steve Carey, Sian Cartwright, Frances Devlin Glass, Marie-Chantal Douine, Ben Frayle, Rebecca Morton, Emma O’Brien, and Maireid Sullivan, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. Wow. That was amazing. Very trippy. Big fan. (EO) Joyce notes the Technique for Circe is Hallucination. This big set-piece episode is at many levels experimental by nature, declaring itself from the page to this day. It is a phantasmagorical melding into and out of the real. It really does seem that’s what Joyce wanted to be the effect, both for character and reader. What’s critical here is that he goes about creating Hallucination in a systematic creati...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 9 included contributions by Steve Carey, Sian Cartwright, Sue Collins, Frances Devlin Glass, Ben Frayle, Sabia Mac Aodha, and Margaret Newman, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. We have plenty of Homer all day, but here is where Shakespeare gets the treatment. The contrast is apt, between an artist who was a community engaged in inventive transmission over generations (Homer) and an artist who emblematises the great solitary genius, reliant on his singular talents (Shakespeare). Our society upholds both these ideals as models of the storyteller-poet, yet they are not mutually exclusive. For example, Joyce is the first progenitor (Shakespeare) of Ulysse...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 18 included contributions by Bruce Beswick, Steve Carey, Sian Cartwright, Marie-Chantal Douine, Frances Devlin Glass, Elle Rasink, and Janet Strachan, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. Molly Bloom speaks to us, but past us with her desires, dreams, and memories. Every episode of Ulysses has background noise, foreground noise, other voices. Only the end episode of the opening, i.e. Stephen’s walk on Sandymount Strand, and the end of the whole story, i.e. Molly’s hyper-languid thought patterns, are personal testimonies, made in glorious isolation, about the world they know so well. They own their own noise and voices, but their lively existence is i...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 4 included contributions by Steve Carey, Michael Cooney, Frances Devlin Glass, Tony Guyot, Susan Lever, and Andy Whyte, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta.     Metempsychosis, a running gag through the whole novel, makes its grand entrance here from the mouth of Molly Bloom. Yes, the exchange with Bloom reveals why Molly might be wanting to seek extra-curricula extension (FDG), his earnest explanation of metempsychosis having all the hallmarks of mansplaining, and yet it is she who asks and he who is there to try and give an answer. Tell us in plain words. (MC) Metempsychosis marks the start of our understanding that there is a block betwee...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 10 included contributions by Steve Carey, Sian Cartwright, Frances Devlin Glass, Ben Frayle, Rebecca Morton, and Claire Pedersen, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. During the pandemic the streets are noticeably different, alive with the unprecedented, the noticeable, the different. Speechless behind masks, pedestrians negotiate the quotidian, when not going about their daily lives. Just imagine if we saw the life of the city like that every day, the extraordinary in the ordinary, a small matter of survival, or just getting through the day, people going about their quote unquote quotidian. Quiet as. There is such economy of language and variety of ...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 16 included contributions by Sian Cartwright, Frances Devlin Glass, Claire Pedersen, and Elle Rasink, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. “Time to practise literature.” (CP) Stephen, after a tumult of a day, seems less inebriated than enervated. Nonetheless, he is intellectually sharp, and emotionally depleted and cynical. Instead of a climax, everything seems to be anticlimax. (FDG) And yet he is seriously smashed from drinking and having to slow down. A person in that state is not going to say much. The blithe banter and wry inference in which the whole episode is written slows everything down. The long sentences slow the reader, while the livel...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 11 included contributions by Steve Carey, Sian Cartwright, Carly Ellis, Frances Devlin Glass, Sabia Mac Aodha, Margaret Newman, and Carol O’Connor, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. In the beginning, or very soon after, there was a sound poem. We are still listening to the flow and fragment and feel of that sound poem. These particles of sentences and words and letters are but the compression of the sound poem into our present. We hear them in the city, in some crowded space, or anywhere like a woodland, an iso-bar, and can hardly believe our ears. Joyce signals in unusual ways things that will be described more fully later. Buck’s send-up of Step...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 3 included contributions by Lyall Burton, Frances Devlin Glass, Matt Glen, Rebecca Morton, and Janet Strachan, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. The sounds of the sea sound like Ulysses: seesoo hrss rsseeiss ooos. On Sandymount Strand the mindful words play out, or is that fast forward, Dedalus’s progress in poetry, what’s going on in his head linguistically. “They are coming, waves,” he starts, “The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan,” which is nice, but also bad Yeats. It’s the poetry we meet in Chamber Music, whereas once he starts listening to his own internal voices they take him in powerful directions t...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 14 included contributions by Sian Cartwright, Michael Cooney, Jennifer Sarah Dean, Frances Devlin Glass, and Ben Frayle, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. The more slowly we read Ulysses, and it’s more so in the Wake, we realise Joyce is conducting an orchestra of wildly different voices, discourses, registers in his novels. (FDG) Furthermore, this and other later episodes are already inventing the language of Wakese. What is language at all, Joyce asks, that it is so protean and transitory? There are not many writers in English who can do what Joyce does. The main one is Shakespeare. It’s the ability to choose the form, technique, style that suit...

This year’s online Bloomsday seminar via Facebook was a global conversation in the privacy of our own screens. Each of the eighteen short films, released online by Bloomsday in Melbourne at the hour set for each episode, were treated as the ‘papers’ to prompt online discussion. Episode 7 included contributions by Steve Carey, Sian Cartwright, Frances Devlin Glass, Ben Frayle, Tony Guyot, Susan Lever, Rebecca Morton, Margaret Newman, and Claire Pedersen, whose initials appear where their thoughts are represented in these analecta. This is the first of Joyce’s workplaces, where he seems to be the only person doing any work. (FDG) We have to ask, what are the main preoccupations of the denizens of the newspaper office? They don’t seem especially hard-pressed, in fact it could be said the only thing that’s hard-pressed about those boyos is the seat of their pants. Contributors to the newspaper are, rightly, accused of being inflated windbags, but the editors themselves can be...