Completists' Club discussion

Chamber Music (poems, 1907)
Dubliners (short-story collection, 1914)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (novel, 1916)
Exiles (play, 1918)
Ulysses (novel, 1922)
Pomes Penyeach (poems, 1927)
Collected Poems (poems, 1936)
Finnegans Wake (novel, 1939)


Posthumous publications

Stephen Hero (precursor to A Portrait; written 1904–06, published 1944)
Giacomo Joyce (written 1907, published 1968)
Letters of James Joyce Vol. 1 (Ed. Stuart Gilbert, 1957)
The Critical Writings of James Joyce (Eds. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellman, 1959)
The Cat and the Devil (London: Faber and Faber, 1965)
Letters of James Joyce Vol. 2 (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)
Letters of James Joyce Vol. 3 (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)
Selected Letters of James Joyce (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1975)
The Cats of Copenhagen (Ithys Press, 2012)

I believe Ellman's Biography ought also be included:
James Joyce

I've got Ulysses knocked off and 100 pages of The Wake. Somewhere Back In Time I must have read some/most of Dubliners (will be re-read) and Portrait (will be re-read) when I was capable mostly only of reading Catcher in the Rye. But a year from now when I've finished The Wake, there seems little reason to not go back and mop up the rest of that Joyce Ellman spilled on the floor.

I'd like to get to Ulysses, too. My reading plan looks covered until 2014. Any chance of pairing it with Women & Men?

Aloha wrote: "I'd like to get to Ulysses, too. My reading plan looks covered until 2014. Any chance of pairing it with Women & Men?"

Ulysses, with Blamires, is a breeze next to Women & Men. But if Ali's doing both The Wake & W&M &. . . it could be done. Myself, I usually trying to restrain myself to one head-cracker at a time.

As far as novels are concerned, I only have Finnegans to take on. I'm thinking of buying it just to have it on my shelf, since Dubliners, Portrait and Ulysses look a bit lonely up there by themselves. Reading it though? That's a whole nother story.

I think I'll stick to focusing on Women & Men. Maybe I'll pair Ulysses with Proust.

In my early to mid-twenties I was obsessed with Joyce. I've read Dubliners over and over, some stories three or four times, and Portrait twice and Ulysses twice, and some sections of Ulysses many more times, and parts of the Wake but never the total Wake. I've been through the Penguin collection of his poems and read a great deal of his collected letters (especially the dirty ones! he loved when Nora farted during sex...) but I am yet no completist. Never delved into Stephen Hero because I always thought it was a draft of Portrait, but now I hear it actually differs greatly.

Dirty Joyce letters? I can't even imagine.

Stephen M wrote: "Dirty Joyce letters? I can't even imagine."

Oh, they're something: http://loveletters.tribe.net/thread/f...

Excerpts (NSFW):
"to tremble with love for you at the sounding of some chord or cadence of music or to lie heads and tails with you feeling your fingers fondling and tickling my ballocks or stuck up in me behind and your hot lips sucking off my cock while my head is wedged in between your fat thighs, my hands clutching the round cushions of your bum and my tongue licking ravenously up your rank red cunt."

"My prick is still hot and stiff and quivering from the last brutal drive"

"It was you who slid your hand down down inside my trousers and pulled my shirt softly aside and touched my prick with your long tickling fingers and gradually took it all, fat and stiff as it was, into your hand and frigged me slowly until I came off through your fingers"

"I imagine things so very dirty that I will not write them until I see how you write yourself. The smallest things give me a great cockstand - a whorish movement of your mouth, a little brown stain on the seat of your white drawers, a sudden dirty word spluttered out by your wet lips, a sudden immodest noise made by your behind and then a bad smell slowly curling up out of your backside."

"At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her."

...and on and on. Oh James!

Oh my god. That is just crazy.

Ha, I wonder if he ever thought people would be reading this.... I feel like a creepy voyeur.

Wow, he was certainly holding back in Ulysses wasn't he?

That's like the Disney artists making dirty drawings of Disney characters on the side.

AHHHHH! It keeps getting more graphic! He found a special girl didn't he?

So Joyce isn't gay? I automatically assume writers and artists are gay unless told otherwise. I'm so used to it in art school.

Oh yeah, Nora was one of a kind! And she was apparently completely uninterested in his literary career. I don't think she made much of an effort to read any of his work.

I think she wanted him to be a singer, not a writer... he apparently had a lovely singing voice.

Reminds me of a guy I dated with a really respectable and conservative job, too. No, not a priest.

Aloha wrote: "Reminds me of a guy I dated with a really respectable and conservative job, too. No, not a priest."

The conversation gets dangerously close to awkwardness.

Geoff wrote: "I think she wanted him to be a singer, not a writer... he apparently had a lovely singing voice."

That's so interesting. The greatest writer of all time and he marries someone who isn't all that interested in literature.

Has anyone ever read Beckett's erotic letters to Lucia Joyce? "I can't go on. I'll go on. Fudding you stupid."

I was going to take a break from all these tomes with erotica, but it looks like I only have to shift within the genre.

Stephen M wrote: "Geoff wrote: "I think she wanted him to be a singer, not a writer... he apparently had a lovely singing voice."

That's so interesting. The greatest writer of all time and he marries someone who is..."

Well think about it, his entire life, almost the entirety of his waking moments are taken up with literature, writing or discussing it. It might have been nice to have Nora as a refuge, a world away from that world. It is wonderful that Vera was so involved in and essential to Nabokov's productivity, but some people just need a damn respite once in awhile. And Nora was no Vera, despite her indulgence in erotic farting.

These are so similar to the letters of Joel Osteen it's uncanny.

I think when it comes to sex and passion, there are few deviations.

Lobstergirl wrote: "These are so similar to the letters of Joel Osteen it's uncanny."

No one ever discusses Joyce's chops as a poet, playwright, filthy correspondent or critic, it will be fascinating to approach some of this stuff, I have no idea what to expect. Apart from trilingual puns and fart sex.

The Cats of Copenhagen is a posthumous childrens' book? Was this recently unearthed?

Geoff, you should write a book on all the famous authors' wives.

But good point about Joyce. I'm sure the reprieve was exactly the kind of thing that drew him to her. (That and their dirty dirty correspondence). It just cracks me up that that was written in 1909. Who says internet porn has made us worse???

James Joyce, putting Fifty Shades of Grey to shame 100 years beforehand.

Joyce's fart sex shit was in my head all night! Thanks for posting the excerpts! I'd never come across them before. I count myself lucky that I have never linked excrement and eroticism in my private life.

Eddie wrote: "Joyce's fart sex shit was in my head all night! Thanks for posting the excerpts! I'd never come across them before. I count myself lucky that I have never linked excrement and eroticism in my priva..."

If the fart sex shit was in your head all night, maybe it resonated with you a bit more than you'd like to admit...???? (kidding)

You've heard of 2G1C?

I assume that's an acronym for 2 Goodreadsers 1 Canon? In this case, Joyce's?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Girls_...

I would post a link to the trailer, but it will permanently scar Eddie.

Oh I knew what it was. I was trying to be witty. It's difficult to be a lad in these internet days and not have been exposed to two fair gals consuming feces in acts of sexual depravity.

I should have posted the link and lure Eddie into watching it. I wish I could see his reaction.

I just thought the phrase "fart sex shit in my head" was humorous and evocative of some kind of dirty sickness, but, seriously, I kept thinking about it all night and how Joyce sublimated that craziness into something that people still found offensive, but then I thought that maybe the reading public, or rather the people who deemed it offensive, knew that fecal-mania was coded into Ulysses.

And, Aloha, I watched 2G1C a while ago...

Dang! Can't shock people anymore.

Eddie wrote: "And, Aloha, I watched 2G1C a while ago... "

2 gaffers 1 camera. A behind the scenes look into movie making.

Aloha wrote: "Dang! Can't shock people anymore."

I was shocked. That is absolutely revolting and I despair for humankind.

MJ wrote: "Aloha wrote: "Dang! Can't shock people anymore."

I was shocked. That is absolutely revolting and I despair for humankind."

Think that's revolting, have you ever tried sitting through a full Rush Limbaugh broadcast? Talk about somebody with shit comin' out of their mouth! Zing!

I'd rather go through 2G1C.

Geoff wrote: "Think that's revolting, have you ever tried sitting through a full Rush Limbaugh broadcast? Talk about somebody with shit comin' out of their mouths! Zing!
"

Yes, it is, Stephen. If you want, I'll post the link so you can find all you need to know about movie making.

Stephen M wrote: "2 gaffers 1 camera. A behind the scenes look into movie making."

From James Joyce to 2G1C. Everything is 6 degrees of separation.

well, catching up with this has been greatly hilarious and I think JJ would have enjoyed it to. I hate to hijack the thread but here's the voice of the Joyce, ten minutes of Wakefulness which some of you will enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkS1Qr...

If you listen closely to the recording you can actually hear his wife rolling her eyes at Joyce's pretensions. Or is that the sound of her frigging herself?

Interesting thread so far. I hope no one minds if I inject a literary question here!

I absolutely loved The Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses. But after reading Finnegans Wake, I want two weeks of my life back. I read a readers guide to it and didn't even understand that! Yes, there are lovely passages but what the fuck does it mean?!!! Am I just supposed to take some acid and enjoy the ride, or is it possible to understand this at some conscious level? Please enlighten me, those of you who enjoy it!

Tej wrote: " But after reading Finnegans Wake, I want two weeks of my life back. I read a readers guide to it and didn't even understand that! Yes, there are lovely passages but what the fuck does it mean?!!! Am I just supposed to take some acid and enjoy the ride, or is it possible to understand this at some conscious level? Please enlighten me, those of you who enjoy it! "

I'm mid-course. You'll need two years rather than two weeks. I'm reading it with the Annotations by McHugh which is terribly fascinating. I'm re-reading each paragraph at least four times each, over the course of reading. I average a page every 45-60 minutes, 4-5 pages per reading session. The only additional book I've read is Our Exagmination, which is very helpful. I'm at page 100, 5 chapter in, and I absolutely adore it. It is genius.

My caution is that you won't understand what it means until you've figured out how it works. And that question has taken me two months to feel at all confident about. Not everyone likes to read books like this. I love them. Please stay in touch if you'd like to give The Wake another go one day.

Nathan, I'll tackle Finnegan's if you'll retackle GEB.

Aloha wrote: "Nathan, I'll tackle Finnegan's if you'll retackle GEB."

I might consider it. I think I ditched my copy a few years back. But it's possible that a Relative may still have it. Have you read his Strange Loop book? My understanding is that he wrote that one because many folks missed the argument he was trying to make in GEB.

You're correct, Nathan. I've flipped through it. I Am a Strange Loop is not as demanding as Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid and is in a more chatty format.