Some interim odds and ends

We still have another week or so before our next group meeting, and I thought I'd post some links to various things that have come up in the meantime.

First, hot on the heels of my last post, T. sent a  link  to this very interesting article on Giordano Bruno, Marshall McLuhan and their great mediator, Jimmy Joyce.

Then, C. sent out felicitations of the day of Mr. Joyce's birth, which frankly, I hadn't known the date of. This was followed by a post from our itinerant, intermittant correspondant, PQ, who also wanted to celebrate the day, but was stuck driving across that vast, barely comprehended territory known as Texas.

Within his post, you will find a link to the novelist Frank Delaney's blog(who I, rightly or wrongly, think of as the James Michener of Ireland) about Ulysses. This latest entry is a birthday rap about Joyce. It's maybe not a very good rap as raps go, but all the same it is a very nice tribute.

Finally, we have an aside, which is fellow blogger Kathleen Kirk's mention that while others were watching the Superbowl, she was in fact reading Shakespeare and Company, the memoir of Sylvia Beach. Says Kathleen:

I learned lots about book biz & publishing biz in this little book, and more about James Joyce, who seems a charming, shy, lovable, quirky guy afraid of dogs and bad about keeping track of money but good about spending it. Yes, I will probably have to go ahead and read his book Ulysses, that no one would publish (except Sylvia) and that kept getting banned, confiscated, and pirated, so that neither she nor he could benefit from the demand for it. Or maybe I won't. I'm glad it's out there, and that I have the choice.

Indeed.