3 Comments

Boy, do we connect--although I don't so much agree about Tár, despite the brilliant performance by Cate (I think it's ultimately idea-driven). I'm a deep Ulysses/Joyce lover--can't stop reading or alluding to that novel. Isn't it Anthony Burgess who said in _Re Joyce_ ( I have so many flags on this book but still can't find the quote) that if he had two books on his bedside table, they'd be the Bible and Ulysses? Love this essay. ~ Mary

Expand full comment
author

Thanks, Mary! Agreed on Ulysses—it really does contain everything. I remember the passage you're thinking of from Burgess—it inspired me in youth, before I knew that the phone/laptop would end up being the "bedside labyrinth." I found the line in an illicit pdf of Re Joyce I was able to download:

"Let it join the bedside library, then, along with Joyce's other big book, Shakespeare, the Bible, Boswell, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Rabelais, Nabokov's Pale Fire, Tristram Shandy, and other works which are more concerned with solid objects in space than with the illusory current of mere time."

Expand full comment

Thank you, John, for the full quote from Burgess. xo

Expand full comment