Thread: James Joyce on nocturnal shaving

Great stuff, thanks. I originally read Ulysses way before I ever discovered wet shaving, so this passage slipped right by me at the time.

In fact, come to think of it, many passages of Ulysses slipped right past me...

Right, that reminds me why I gave up on Ulysses after a few pages.

Originally Posted by matt321

Right, that reminds me why I gave up on Ulysses after a few pages.

Funny - I was just thinking that it was one of the more comprehensible bits of Joyce I've read! Which is not saying much, of course...

Fred

Great passage indeed! Ulysses is best read with its accompaniment Ulysses Annotated. It's difficult to truly understand or interpret a work that Joyce himself intended to keep critics and writers trying to figure out for years.
The way he writes each chapter not just in sync with the events of Odysseus, but also that each chapter is written in an entirely different style of writing, from stream of consciousness to epic prose, etc...

Don't forget the opening scene of Buck Mulligan mocking the Catholic mass "Introbio ad altar dei" and shaving at at the same time.


I totally get it too, shaving is my altar too

This was my undergraduate thesis work in English.


cheers
D

Originally Posted by matt321

Right, that reminds me why I gave up on Ulysses after a few pages.

Haha, I downloaded the book from gutenberg.org and loaded it into a typing tutor program as a way of practising to improve my speed. I thought it was sufficiently modern that it wouldn't be that different to today's English, at least compared to works from Shakespeare, or many others that are old enough to be copyright-free. I thought it would be an interesting experience, typing it, in much the same way as James Joyce did.

I was ill-prepared for the odd writing style and frequent bouts of latin that were to follow. And Buck Mulligan. Always "Buck Mulligan" over and over. Never just "Buck", or just "Mulligan" at least early on in the book. Always Buck Bloody Mulligan. How I grew to hate typing that name in full. Why did he do this? I don't know if anyone else ever noticed it, but I started to feel I was missing out on an inside joke, he did it that often. You would have thought that someone using an old manual typewriter would try to minimize unnecessary typing, but not James Joyce, oh no.

The first part of the book is remarkably devoid of context, I thought it was about soldiers in a watch tower or something, I got it completely wrong. It does start making some sense and becomes entertaining eventually, however. I still need to finish it.

Originally Posted by Roadkill

a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from shave to shave in its agglutinated lather

So he's actually recommending leaving the brush filled with lather overnight?

More accessible than Ulysses is Dubliners, a really lovely read.

My favorite book! A story that's very complex in it's written style that there's always a new way to analyze it's syntax and meanings.