NP: A spontaneous exhortation to read a new great book just published in the US. But available in Europe earlier.

[Erik T. Burns]

Koincidentally 2/2/22 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of
*Ulysses*.

To celebrate one hundred years since Sylvia Beach, publisher and
bookseller, published James Joyce’s ULYSSES, Hay Festival is partnering the
iconic bookshop Shakespeare and Company, Paris, on a global read-along of
the complete text to be released as a free podcast between the 100th
anniversary of the publication on 2 February 2022 and Bloomsday on 16 June
2022. https://www.hayfestival.com/ulysses100


On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 12:35 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> On The Books of Jacob on pub day, in which Ulysses plays a role
>
> That great modern, modernist, novel Ulysses created and rode a change of
>
> human awareness in a myriad of ways. A humanly felt single day in Dublin
>
> full of cooking smells and shitting and female desire and all kinds of
> thoughts, high and low
>
> it contains wonders precisely but over-the-toply, newly, expressed.
>
> Every time I hear the kids at the Montessori school two doors away play
> noisily in their playground,
>
> I think of a famous line. Those who know, know (and it loses almost
> everything just being flatly repeated here)
>
> "Round about 1910 human nature changed", wrote Virginia Woolf,
>
> no fan of Ulysses but another artist who worked the change of consciousness
> in the culture and in her work fully.
>
> Art can do that. Art does that. (He says pretentiously. Swaggering
> Swaggadocia, as a friend said of this streak. Or was it Staggering
> Swaggadocia? )
>
> Ever since I learned of Ulysses and its publication, my fantasy life
> contained the fantasy of being
>
> part of the publishing, the whole Surround, someway,  as it happened.
> Stuart Gilbert's pony* for reading it was
>
> being written while Joyce was writing and publishing parts of it. There was
> a circle; there were
>
> thousands of waiting interested outsiders to the circle game.
>
> Today, Feb 2, it seems that another writer of genius (with her translator
> as they are getting more recognition
>
> in recent years; as partial co-authors in some sense)  with, maybe, the
> planning of her American publisher has had
>
> another masterpiece purposely published on Ulysses' birthday.  That rumor
> is circulating; I haven't confirmed
>
> that that is why Feb 2 was chosen but….. The rumor has circumstantial
> plausibility since this work, The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk,
> Nobelist,
> was published in English in England late last fall. I almost ordered one
> from England but indie store concerns in this country took over. That no
> longer matters, the book is out in this country.
>
> The opening teems with Joycean, Bosch-Bruegel-like life
>
> in a small village and its market in Poland in 1759: all the sights and
> smells, all levels of society; themes and characters brought forth to
> capture our attention thematically. With viscerality. "Nerves and endless
> intrigues. Politics."
>
> Books themselves permeate the opening; the worlds they open; a lousy
> translator scene makes one laugh ...there is this line amidst that talk:
> "Perhaps it also has to do with the alphabet---that there isn't only one,
> that there are lots of them; each produces its own type of
> thinking.".....The Tower of Babel is invoked as are the Tigris and
> Euphrates. Ms. Tokarczuk is fearlessly ambitious, yes?; who can't love
> that? ....of a character, "people say ..she has the soul of a man".  But
> another woman "doesn't see that supposed masculinity. All she sees is a
> woman who likes to be in charge." A woman punctures the gender stereotype,
> quietly fine, no?
>
> And for one of Ms Tokarczuk's grand important subjects, the meanings of
> women (I know an earlier-published novel) there is THIS:...."the science of
> coaxing out bloodstains [women helping a woman during a heavy
> menstruation]. For centuries it has been taught to future wives and
> mothers. If a university for women ever came about, it would be the most
> important subject. Childbirth, menstruation, war, fights, forays, pogroms,
> raids---all of it sheds blood, ever at the ready, just beneath the skin."
>
> Another book as rich as life itself. "If books are not life, then what
> is?"--as someone once wrote. (If you are on Facebook, like the Group page
> entitled this for occasional miscellaneous publishing  and bookstore news)
>
> I urge, beseech you to read this book. I would like a secret society, a
> growing circle, that can allude to it together, openly. Make time when you
> have time to make. It will change your mind. You will live longer, old
> neurons newly aglow. Gut bacteria improved. (But I won't ask)
>
> And, since you won't believe me, ex-salesman, please read Ron Charles's
> wonderfully appreciative and over-the-top review below.
>
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/02/01/olga-tokarczuk-books-of-jacob-review/
>
> *Also, a "pony" could be a cheat sheet or other material used in a test by
> students
>
>
>
>
> >
> >
> --
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>