Agenbite of Inwit

The odyssey is finally over.

The sheer comedy of the first chapter,
The confidence I felt after reading the second chapter that I could read this book after all,
The mist and mud that I footslogged during the third chapter, which after finishing taught me the pleasure of going into the mind of the characters,
Meeting the deeply satisfied Mr. Bloom and walking with him during his not-so-exciting morning routine, which ends with him defecating delightfully in the fourth chapter,
Walking through Dublin during a jolly summer day and feeling every bit of it in the fifth chapter,
Reflecting about death and life in the sixth chapter,
Feeling the rush and the pace of modern publishing in the seventh chapter,
Tasting that gorgonzola sandwich with Bloom in the eighth chapter,
Listening to the exciting Shakespeare theory of Stephen in the ninth chapter,
Feeling like the holy ghost and visiting the minds of the people of Dublin in the tenth chapter,
Listening to the music and sounds of a full restaurant in the eleventh chapter,
Understanding sources of Bloom's feeling of rejection in the twelfth chapter,
Wandering cautiously into the female mind and the naughty parts of the male mind in the thirteenth chapter,
Trying to make progress in the linguistic puzzle of the fourteenth chapter,
Getting my mind literally blown of in the best chapter of the book, the fifteenth,
Getting a rest in the sixteenth chapter,
Laughing as loud as I can in the seventeenth chapter,
And falling asleep with Penelope and affirming all sides of life with a yes and yes and yesin the eighteenth chapter,

are experiences that I will never forget. I haven't had this kind of experience since Martin Eden in my high school years, The Island of the Day Before in my university years, Kafka and Dostoyevsky of PHD years.

I am planning to read the book again with the annotations:

http://www.amazon.de/Ulysses-Annotated-Notes-James-Joyces/dp/0520253973

and recommend everyone not to be intimidated by what they read about Ulysses and read this magnificent book with the help of this accompaniment:

http://www.amazon.de/The-New-Bloomsday-Book-International/dp/0415138582

Finally, I will let Stephen Fry do the rest of the convincing for me:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Balik Hafizali Millet ve Onun Oyunbaz Yöneticileri

Spor'u yakindan takip etmeyenleriniz olabilir. Onun icin olanlari kisaca size özetleyeyim. Galatasaray Basketbol Takimi sezon öncesi Avrupa'ya özel bir turnuvaya gidiyor. Cemal Nalga adli bir oyuncusu 5 mac cezali. Bu turnuvada sahada yer aliyor, ama takim arkadasinin formasiyla oynuyor. Türkiye Basketbol Federasyonuna ise macta oynamamis gibi gosteriliyor. Boylece Cemal Nalga sezona hem hazir giriyor, hem de cezasini cekmekten kurtuluyor. Asagilik bir kurnazlik örnegi. Türkiye'nin en büyük camialarindan birine, kendini Galatasaray Lisesi gelenegine adamis bir camiaya yakismayan, bu yuzden beni cok uzen bir kurnazlik hem de. Galatasaray Klübü kendi icinde hemen cezalari veriyor. Sira Basketbol Federasyonuna geliyor. Disiplin talimatnamesinde ACIK ACIK yaziyor: Basketbol Federasyonunu kandiran takim lig dusurulur. Su an linki bulamiyorum, ama acik acik yaziyor bu. Eyyamci Federasyon ne yapiyor? Lig dusurmuyor, ama lig dusurmeye es deger bir ceza veriyor. Cemal Nalga'nin ...
Read more

Brain in love...

Functional MRI is one of the coolest scientific devices ever developed. With it the scientists are able to monitor which parts of the brain are activated, when individuals are involved in different activities. From dancing to taking decisions the functional MRI has revolutionized our understanding of many fundamental human activities. As Helen Fisher put it, the most passionate human activity, the romantic love is one of the latest to be investigated in functional MRI. According to their results, love activates the reward/punishment mechanisms, along with risk taking and strategic game playing parts of the brain. Unlike people who can leave in a split second, the activity in those areas continue even 15 months after separation. Also, people who claim to be in love after 25 years still have those regions active! Lastly, the same reward region is activated in a cocaine high! Here is a 15 minute video of Helen Fisher's talk, which is definitely worth watching! Helen Fisher: The Brain ...
Read more

Joy of rediscovering a Bob Dylan discovery

I guess I won't be wrong if I say that Bob Dylan's artistic output is perhaps one of the largest in the contemporary music history. Thus one shouldn't be surprised to find interesting Dylan selections such as "Favorite Dylan Songs Starting with C" in the Internet. His website ( link to the website ), which has an incredible list of his songs, might give you an idea of about the sheer volume of his output. So from time to time I discover new favorites out of this collection. The song Series of Dreams is a voyage through well you know what, in which Dylan has no intention of telling anything specific, but just wants to paint the walls of a long and winding cave with the images. This beautiful song did not make it to any albums. I first heard it on his Greatest Hits collection a month or so ago, and was struck by it. Recently I came across an alternate version in his latest Bootleg Series Releases Tell Tale Signs. I have to say the alternate version is even be...
Read more