Some Bloomsday humor.

Well, here you go. All y'all non-Ulysses readers can do so, a page at a time, over the next year.

Thanks, Katie and Jesse. (Though, glancing at melymbrosia's list, she's almost as historical-exclusive as I am.)

Some Bloomsday humor.

I love this part:

that virus - called Bloomsday - appears to have been developed by an international group specialising in creating literary viruses that try to "show illiterate technophiles the power of the written word."

Some Bloomsday humor.

Ha! I love it.

"I was really freaked out when I turned on my phone and found this convoluted narrative mess crawling across my screen," said Jack Clemson, a University of Washington student who owns one of the first known infected phones. ""Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed…" I was pretty sure that wasn't my girlfriend texting me about lunch."

I haven't read Ulysses, but I love Portrait of the Artist. And I don't get "Araby."

I avoid the Joyce hoopla, but I loved Ulysses, and I loved the short stories. This is an old, old conversation for me; I wasn't aware that American students were made to read him in school. I picked him up on my own while young - 14 or thereabouts - didn't understand a word of it the first time through, but got utterly and completely fucking stoned off the language. I was literally reeling around and giggling. I think I got trhe James Joyce chromosome in place of the Tolkein chromosome.

beth, isn't Hecht great? Masks is next on my list.

I like this:

"Ulysses may be the zenith of modernist writing in the novel form, but it's barely recognizable as a novel or as any other kind of writing," said Francis Harrod, of the anti-virus software developer F-Secure. "Of course the same can be said of text messaging"

That was hilarious, Maysa.

There is a whole new set of romances out there where there are no tricks. There are misunderstanding - even lies, but everything is understood - as in oh, you thought I was only in your life for three hours so when I missunderstood you you just sort of left it alone - and them it snowballed. In other words the characters invovled have enough brains to understand , without being dramatic - talking things out, briefly, leads to understanding ( and a good story for the grandkids) Also - there are heroines that are - 30 or even 40.

Jane heller- Princess Charming and Crystal Clear.-- both take our heroine to another place.

Jennifer Cruisie start With Welcome to temptation.

I'll comback with more tonight.

If there were a throwdown to determine the reigning monarch of Modernism, Virginia Woolf would whup James Joyce's ass so badly he'd be crying for his mommy all the way home to Dublin.