Poem of the Day

Night, street, lamp, and pharmacy,
A meaningless and misty light.
Live on a quarter century—
The same. There is no hope of flight.

You will die, rise from where you fell,
All be repeated, cold and damp:
The night, the wavering canal,
The pharmacy, the street, the lamp.

-- Alexander Bloc (1888 - 1921)
Trans. Leo Yankevich

Another Day, Another Year

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember.

-- Mr. Bernstein in Citizen Kane (1941)

The summer between my fourth and fifth grade years my family moved from Philadelphia to Cambridge, Massachusetts. So when I went to school for the first time that September -- I think it was September, not August -- I was new, and didn't know a single soul.

I therefore have no idea what the name of the student was (if I knew him later, I didn't then). I'm fairly certain he was in my grade. But I vividly remember that I was walking directly behind him -- through the school yard, up to the school door -- when I saw him greet a fellow student, presumably for the first time since school let out the previous June, and say, with a world-weary voice, "Another day, another year."

We were just boys. But it struck me at the time as filled with meaning beyond the simplicity of the words themselves. I heard in them a profundity with echoes of Ecclesiastes -- a venerable wisdom that today I would laugh should anyone think it present in a statement by a twenty-year-old, let alone a nine- or ten-year-old, as those boys were then.

And yet, in truth, I don't think there's been a school year that's started since in which I haven't thought at some point on or about the first day of school about that sentence, and the profound, sorrowful wisdom that I still (despite all) hear in it.

Every Day Another of the Great Ones Slips Into the Past

Frank Kermode, RIP.

We All Live in Omelas

Fred Clark did a magnificent drash on Ursula K. LeGuin's classic short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" (text file) in a series of three blog posts, put up on (and between) the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I recommend you read LeGuin's story if you haven't previously done so -- it's fabulous anyway, and I'd recommend it regardless of the commentary -- and then read Clark's series:

YNATKC*
Greetings from Omelas
August 9

There's also a postscript, "Sez Who", here, which is not as central to the rest of the series.

Go, read.

________________
*"YNATKC" is an acronym -- of Clark's devising, so far as I know -- for "You're not allowed to kill civilians", and point he's made repeatedly (although, as I suspect he'd agree, it's a point that can never be made sufficiently here in Omelas).

Ithaca-Focused Post

To any Ithacans who happen to be reading this blog: this fall, our local bookstore Buffalo Street Books is organizing a series of reading groups, and I'm offering one called "Literature of Constraint", about four novels written either by members of the French literary group the Oulipo, or (in one case) done by an American working on parallel lines. Follow the second link for more information. (There's also a facebook page here.) Any readers of this blog are invited to come!

Update (Sunday, December 12): Sadly, even before our final discussion on Wednesday, Buffalo Street Books has taken down the above-linked page about the group. So, more for my own reference than anything else, I'm going to list the four books that we discussed, and the dates (all dates from 2010).

September 15: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
October 20: Georges Perec, A Void
November 17: Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa
December 15: Harry Mathews, Cigarettes

Incidentally, my rereading of Perec's A Void and my reading of Abish's Alphabetical Africa each produced two blog posts, and my reading of Mathews's Cigarettes produced one, all linked in this selfsame sentence.

Tony Judt

The internets are saying that the great historian and essayist Tony Judt has died. If so, it is a great loss, if not a surprising one, since he has been suffering from ALS for some years now. Nevertheless, the loss is keenly felt, as he was a fabulous writer -- Postwar is a terrific book, and his essays (collected in this volume) are very good as well. And, of course, he was a brave and pioneering voice on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as well.

RIP.

Update: This is now being confirmed by mainstream news sources, e.g. the NY Times, the LA Times and the Associated Press. So far as I can tell, though, both were scooped by Monoweiss here.

Today in Unintentional Irony

Dennis Prager, in a column called "A Speech Every American High School Principal Should Give":

I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda.

Dennis Prager, later in the very same paragraph:

We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately lucky -- to be alive and to be an American.

No politics or propaganda here, nosiree. (But "global warming" is on Prager's list of exemplars of what would count as politics and propaganda. Oi vey.)

The very next (and final) paragraph reads, in full:

Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.

Good thing that pledging allegiance to "the flag of our country" has nothing to do with either propaganda or politics.*

Better conservative commentators, please.

Plus! Extra! Bonus self-contradiction within a single paragraph -- from the very same column! From early in the paragraph [emphasis added]:

My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible.

Shortly followed by:

We will learn other languages here -- it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English...

I say again, in the American English vernacular: oi fucking vey.

______________
* Yeah, I know I just lost a few of you here. But I have long thought that pledging allegiance in a public school is kind of creepy. And even if you support it -- and I am well aware that most Americans probably do -- you can't deny that it's propaganda, albeit propaganda you believe in. (Just causes can have propaganda too.)

Politics Today

I was busy, so I didn't read the news yesterday. I come back this morning, and the top three stories people are talking about seem to be:

1. Equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, which a California court just declared a constitutional necessity yesterday (appeal pending);
2. Conservatives who want to change the constitution to alter the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for everyone born in the U.S. (John Stewart's brilliant take here (h/t))
   
3. Whether people should be allowed to build a religious center on private land -- controversial because it's Islam, a mosque and it's a couple blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks.

In other words, it's all identity politics, all the time. It's the question of whether we're going to be an inclusive society, or not. Whether we are a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, or a nation of white, straight Christians -- of scared white, straight Christians.

On one very important level, this is utterly, thoroughly ridiculous. Our country and world face some really !@#$%ing serious problems -- global warming above all, but a horrible economy, two wars and the bipartisan eroding of basic civil liberties also -- and we're fighting about silly little identity politics? People are up in arms, not about politicians fiddling as the world burns, or blocking stimulus bills that would actually create some !@#$%ing jobs, or our country's occupying and fighting in countries with (at this point) only a fairly tenuous connection to national security (and an equally tenuous moral justification).... but about people getting married, having babies and building places to worship? You've gotta be kidding me.

But I guess that's where we are. Do we believe in the proposition that all are created equal, or not? Are the children of illegal immigrants, Muslims and gays and lesbians to be included in that consensus... or are they to be excluded, just as African Americans, women and so many others were when our nations creed was written?

It's a crazy fight. But if it's what we're fighting about, I know which side I'm on.

And, of course, it's ultimately deeply connected to the other fights, too. I find it hard to believe that, if not for the fear of other religions and other ethnicities, we would currently be fighting in Afghanistan and (certainly) Iraq.* Without the fears of those who want America to be Christian, and to be white, and to be straight, we would not fear that government money would go to "them" and not to "us"... and could digest the straightforward Keynesian argument that we need to let the government spend when no one else will to dig ourselves out of a recession. And without those fears, we could let the government tax the carbon that's going to roast us all, and keep the government from throwing civil liberties overboard on us out of the fear that "us" might be "them".

So I guess that, yeah, we need to have this fight -- this fight over who were are as a people (and as people) -- before we can deal with the rest. But I worry. Because people are dying in our wars, being held without trial in our jails, and suffering for lack of jobs now. Above all, the world will not wait for us to solve our cultural problems before it heats to unsustainable levels.

Fear of those not "us" -- not in the (false) image of those who "us" are -- is causing problems that will not wait for that fear to resolve itself. And what good will a tolerant, decent society be if we create it on the ashes of a livable world?

If there's a solution to this problem, I don't know it. But it's the problem we face in politics today.

__________________
* Iraq, a war based on errors, arrogence and lies, is obvious. But I think it applies to Afghanistan too. We didn't invade anywhere after the Oklahoma City bombing; we treated it as a crime, not an act of war.

Activist Court Overturns Popularly-Supported Laws Restricting Marriage Rights to Certain Couples

I assume that anyone appalled by yesterday's monumental and heroic opinion is equally appalled by this decision, on a form of marriage far more unpopular in its day than same-sex marriage is today.

If I Had a Twitter Account, I'd Twitter This

It's worth remembering that in his first substantial* passage on the notion that "God is Dead" (The Gay Science, Book 3, Sect. 125), Nietzsche attributes the notion to a "madman" who is addressing not people who believe in God, but people who do not.

(...which just goes to show why I'm not made for Twitter, or at any rate not ready for it, since that comes to 207 characters not counting the link (or the footnote), half again as many as are permitted on that site.)

___________________

* It's mentioned in passing in the first section of Book 3 of the same work, but section 125 is the first one in which it is the central subject.

9 of the 10 Hottest Years on Record Occurred in 2001 - 2009

The tenth was 1998. And 2010 is on course to be the hottest year on record so far.

This is what emergency looks like.

Poem of the Day: Aubade

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

-- Philip Larkin

H/t to Sully. An "aubade", by the way, is "a song or poem greeting the dawn".

Stray Thought

If he'd made his name a little earlier, Jeet Heer might have had a chapter of Christan Bök's Eunoia dedicated to him.

Harvey Pekar (1939 - 2010)

In the long run, we're all dead anyway.

-- Harvey Pekar, The Quitter

I just found out that Harvey Pekar, the amazing comics writer who specialized in small, autobiographical anecdotes about his daily life as a file clerk, died today.

A fabulous movie based on his comics (and, hence, about his life), called by the title of his ongoing comics series, American Splendor, came out in 2003.

Some of you may know that for some years now (far too many) I've been working on a graphic novel (illustrating my own script). I'd long harbored a fantasy of sending him a copy once it was done and (FSM willing) published, and saying I'd love to do a story with him if he had any interest in it.

I should have worked faster.

If you've never read his work, the best place to start is probably the collection of (most of) his collaborations with artist Robert Crumb, American Splendor Presents: Bob & Harv's Comics (1994), which was for me the best work either of them ever did.

Some links:

• David Ulin has a nice appreciation in the LA Times. Since I'm away from my collection of Pekar comics at the moment, and can't go through them looking for a good epitaphial epigraph of my own, I filched one from his piece.

• Tom Spurgeon has yet to post his full obituary, but his 382 word (2,226-character) Twitter (!) response -- serialized, natch, but thankfully collated at the link -- is probably better than most of the full-scale obituaries by other people will be. [Update: Spurgeon has one of his massive "collective memory" link collections on Pekar here.]

• Journalista has posted Gary Groth's 1993 interview with Pekar from The Comics Journal.

• As of now, Wikipedia has a thorough article on Pekar's comics series American Splendor; hopefully the publicity of his death won't draw enough attention to it that the powers-that-be at Wikipedia decide to ruin it.

Maybe more links later.

Harvey Pekar, RIP.

(Irrelevant and slightly irreverent footnote: am I the only person who sees six kinds of irony in the fact that the Coroner in Cuyahoga County, where Pekar died, was named "Frank Miller"?)

Update, July 16: More Pekar links:

• Tom Spurgeon's full-length obituary is here.

• Jeet Heer has an obituary here.

• Alan David Duane's 2005 interview with Pekar is here.

• This blog post by John Glenn Taylor has a nice sampling of random panels from Pekar comics.

Why Political Satire Doesn't Work Anymore

Satire as a literary device depends on a comprehending and homogeneous audience with commonly understood standards of rightness and reasonableness. Since the satirist can expose to instantaneous contempt only what is readily condemned by the opinion of his readers, he must necessarily be on intimate terms with them and count on their sharing his tastes and viewpoint. If this intimacy should break down, if the satirist's audiences should become heterogeneous and the once-shared values become confused and doubtful, if the satirist has to explain what his ridicule means, then the satire is rendered ineffectual.

-- Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters (2006), p. 251

Words Hard to Take Seriously Enough, However Seriously You Take Them

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

--The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

They're hard words to live by. Jefferson, who wrote them (with some later editing by committee), had trouble living by them, seeing his role in personally denying hundreds of people their inalienable right to liberty. Indeed, many of those who signed the declaration, people who took them very seriously indeed (the pledge of their lives, fortunes and sacred honors was not simply a rhetorical flourish, since they could have been hung if they'd lost the war), had trouble taking them seriously enough.

But it was hardly the only time. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton repeated those words, adding only a few self-evident edits ("all men and women are created equal"), it took decades for her to be taken seriously enough. When Ho Chi Min said those words (in Vietnamese) in saying that his colonized people also wanted to "dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", we did not take him seriously enough, and sent troops to aid his colonizers (who had, ironically, themselves aided us when we were the colonized).

And today, our government is threatening the life and liberty and pursuits of happiness of its citizens (not to mention its non-citizens: and after all those inalienable rights are due to all men and all women, not simply to American citizens), but somehow, we don't take those rights seriously, or the idea that governments derive just powers only from consent of the governed, and only to protect those rights, seriously enough.

Yet those words, written in haste by a slaveowner, derived from commonplaces of enlightened thought of his day, edited by a committee and passed hurriedly so they could return to the managing of a war, those words remain worthy of being taken seriously. The words were larger and better than he or they meant; larger and better than he or they knew; and larger and better than we have yet fully and truly grasped. Indeed, the question we should continually ask our government -- and ourselves -- is whether we are acting worthy of them.

Happy July 4, everyone.

Quote of the Day: Jim Henley on Standards for the High and Low Roads

Jim Henley, responsible for so many fine posts over the years, hits another home-run in this one:

...what we see over and over again is that we judge high-road approaches as failures unless they produce nigh-instant and complete favorable results, while we show nearly infinite patience for journeys down the low road.

Nine years into the invasion of Afghanistan we have to agree that pulling out after a decade is just too soon. Back in 2001, the Taliban’s failure to turn over Osama bin Laden within a couple of weeks showed the hopelessness of diplomacy. When torture “works” at all it takes weeks and months, just like more classic rapport-building methods of interrogation. And it involves more false positives. Plus, oh I forgot to mention, it is deeply evil. But even though classic interrogation methods produce statistically better results, we live in fear that there may be some time somewhere that torture might get an answer that classic interrogation missed, so of course we must continually torture for that possible moment’s sake. As Gene points out, O’Grady judges the European and Canadian liberation of travel to Cuba a failure because Cuba has not become a neoliberal paradise in the decade since, while leaving aside the fact that Cuba hasn’t become a neoliberal paradise after 50 years of American cold-war against the country.

Compare also the standard neocon “U SUCK LOL” directed against nonviolent resistance – Hitler would totally have just killed Gandhi hahaha! We accept that successful violent resistance might take years or decades to achieve victory – Mao, Castro – and that guerrilla movements might suffer casualties to ranks and leaders but keep on. But we can’t imagine that nonviolent resistances might achieve the same. The war on drugs will surely work at some point – we’ve only been at it for 90-odd years, trillions of dollars and countless deaths and humiliations. But should anyone anywhere decriminalize anything, a single death or inconvenience in the first week would condemn the entire effort....

The open question, to me, is who “we” are in the above. American culture, or the human race? I suspect the latter, and that relative power simply gives the US a greater opportunity to take low-road approaches. But I’m not sure.

-- Jim Henley

(I quoted most of it -- it was that sort of post -- but that link goes to the rest if you want it.)

In Sorrow

I've been trying to write this post for a few days now. I can't quite figure out how I want to say it. But I feel uneasy not having said it. So I'm going for plain, short and simple.

Last week, while my wife and I were away (she had a business trip, I went along) our beloved lovebird Boojum died.

He was with a bird sitter, and flew into an uncurtained window. He died instantly.

It's hard to know what to say about the death of a pet. The loss is real and powerful, even if those of us who have experienced both would never confuse it with the death of a human being. -- And yet grief about a pet is often scorned or dismissed or mocked -- or, even when this is not true, it is hectored for its triviality (hence the disclaimer in the previous sentence, which I felt compelled to add not because I think it wasn't obvious but despite this).

Hard, too, because so many of the consolations (and rationalizations and excuses and translucent veils of denial) we grasp at when a human being we love dies fail with an animal. Perhaps the only thing we can say about an animal, from among all of the various things that we say to console ourselves about the death of people we loved, is that they lived a happy life, and died without pain. (Yes, I am aware that there are people who believe animals end up in heaven. All I can say is that I don't, for either animals or people, and nothing you say will convince me, so please don't try, not now, not here.)

Lived happily and died without pain: thankfully, for Boojum, this is true. It's hard to know what "living a good life" would be for a bird (let alone a human (or is it the other way around?)), but he was happy, as happy as we could make him. He was a strong flier -- or became one: when he came to us, his wings were clipped; but he relearned to fly, and flew frequently around the room when, once or twice a day, we let him out to do so -- a brave little cosmonaut, we thought of him. He explored, and learned to fly in all sorts of complicated and strong ways (almost hovering at times, for instance). At other times he would just circle, for the sheer joy of it.

And it is a consolation, if a small one, that he went out flying.

Once we returned from our trip -- and brought our surviving lovebird, Snark, safely home again -- we claimed the body; and while our son was with a babysitter, we buried him under a tree, and said, yes, a few words.

We have been worrying about Snark -- yet another way we deal with death: fret on the survivors -- but he seems fine, although the day we picked him up he was, understandably, a bit agitated. We are hoping to find a new bird to serve as a companion for Snark, since it is not good for lovebirds to live alone (hence the name). But it's hard to believe he does not, in whatever way the mind of a bird does, miss Boojum.

As do we.

Rest in peace, Boojum. Thank you for enriching our lives.

Poem of the Day: Autopsychography

Autopsychography

The poet is a faker
Who's so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.

And those who read his words
Will feel in his writing
Neither of the pains he has
But just the one they're missing.

And so around its track
This thing called the heart winds,
A little clockwork train
To entertain our minds.

-- Fernando Pessoa
Trans. Richard Zenith

The link goes to a site where seventeen different versions of Pessoa's "Autopsicografia" (as well as the Portuguese original) are housed, including two separate translations by one translator, as well as a notable version by that redoubtable translator "Google Translate". The Zenith was my favorite, at least on a first read-through; but check out the others -- your taste may vary, after all. (Faithful readers will know how much I like comparing various translations of particular poems.)

Oh, and just in case you've never heard of him, I should mention that, while it may be true that all poets are fakers, Pessoa was more of a faker than most, a strange man who seems to have been a refugee from an unwritten Borges story.

A Third Connecting Link Between Them

Links and trivia for Bloomsday:

• The text of Ulysses, all 264,942 words of it. (It doesn't say, but presumably this is the original, 1922 edition, not the revised text put out in 1984.)

• Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses.

• The first ten spelling mistakes in Ulysses, according to the 2004 Microsoft Word dictionary working on the text linked above:

stairhead
dressinggown
ungirdled
Introibo
altare
Kinch
jesuit [should be capitalized]
gunrest
Dedalus
untonsured

But two of those are proper names, and two are part of a Latin sentence, so just for completeness's sake, here are four more:

ouns
Chrysostomos
woful
Scutter

And, yes, all 14 of those are flagged by blogger's spellcheck too. (As is "blogger's".)

• My first-ever post on this blog -- actually, my first three posts -- were five years ago today. So today is my five-year blogoversery. Happy blogoversery to me. (And yes, the third of those three posts was about the fact that it was Bloomsday -- actually, that's why I chose that day to finally start the blog I'd been contemplating.)

• Ulysses: the comic. Hey, the did it with Proust, why not Joyce?

...This sounds ridiculous, I admit, but it's actually well done. I somewhat doubt if it will hold up as an independent work of art which happens to be an adaptation of another work (as so many great films are, and some great comics are too). But it is an interesting interpretation of Ulysses, read in conjunction with the text. Above all, I can imagine it being used by readers and entrance into a great but very difficult novel. For example, this page makes very vivid the sheer basics of what is happening (i.e. how Stephen is thinking as Buck is talking):

Compare that to the original text this adapts:

Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.

—It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them.

Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steelpen.

—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it.

Cranly's arm. His arm.

—And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.

Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. I don't want to be debagged! Don't you play the giddy ox with me!

The comic, it seems to me, clarifies for the beginning reader (of a difficult novel, even if that reader is a very advanced reader indeed) the order of events.

I was able to find my way into Ulysses because of a high-school trip to Ireland that took us on a tour of the James Joyce Museum in the Martello tower where the first episode of Ulysses is set. Being able to picture the place, physically, as I worked my way through the text helped me greatly. (Of course, around episode 7 I surrendered and took a (quite fabulous) class to help me. But the tower helped me get to that point.) I can easily imagine this comic doing likewise for other readers. (Not that that's all it's good for -- it's also a fabulous midrash on a fabulous text -- but that purpose above all seems valuable to me.)

The comic also includes reader's guides which talk about the text of the pages they show (here, for instance, is the one for the page shown above) which should help farther. A fascinating and fabulous project (with, I think, quite wonderful art to boot).

Good thing it's not the 1920's anymore, and this project won't be censored by anyone (unlike, that is, Joyce's original novel).

• Ulysses censored again! Drat. So much for that. At least this time it's a 21st century censoring: not done by the Government, but by Apple... keeping it from the iPad and iPhone and iOtherstuff too presumably. This is the age of the free-market, folks: we outsource our censoring now.

So much for my getting an iPad.

• And yes, the title of this post is a quote from Ulysses. And yes, I'm lazy, and just searched the text for "link". Sue me.