Uh, where were we?

It's been a few weeks since our meeting in which we went to see Tree of Life instead of discussing the book and a few more still since we actually engaged the text. Rather than dive in beforehand, I thought I'd just post a few things that pop to the surface of memory, rather than delve too deep.

When we chatted over dinner after our movie outing, A. had a lot to chime in with after tackling Lucia Joyce, the hefty volume by Carol Schloss detailing the relationship between Joyce and his troubled daughter. She concluded that this relationship may have stepped over some boundary, leading to the question of whether this matters in the question of Joyce's genius, and whether his personal history altered that.

T. brought up the idea at some point that Joyce basically swiped everything for the book. We would read it wrongly as original in some other sense than the way he managed to frame and structure everything.

L. mentioned the fact that she has been listening to Frank Delaney's podcasts on Ulysses, which inspired me to do the same, though frankly, I haven't gotten to them.

I have been noting Shem/Shaun relationships everywhere I look. My mind seems to be stuck on a little bit in the part we recently read a time or two ago, where Joyce acknowledges his own hopelessness as an upstanding citizen, noting that Shem did not even have the decency to drown himself in the Liffey when things got beyond the pale.

Very cursory I know. Hope to do better next time.