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

[David Morris]

Ok, but have you READ it yet?

On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 8:10 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> looks like I lost the line in this THAT SAID THAT, LOL....(self-editing is
> like cutting your own hair)
>
> On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 8:01 AM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> >
> >> >
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>