Allusions to Ulysses

This thread is intended for any interesting reference to Ulysses. I was prompted me to start this thread when I noticed several lines borrowed by rock bands in the first section of the book:

Sonic Youth borrowed "i am the boy who can enjoy invisiblity" for Secret Girl and Foetus borrowed the "snotgreen sea" and "the scrotum tightening sea" for Water Torture.

Then I found this interesting website puporting to catalogue other lyrical references to Joyce. N.B. it has the title of both songs WRONG. Who knows what else is wrong?

http://www.themodernword.com/Joyce/music/pomes_penyeach.html

I remember Cream had a song with the line "tales of brave Ulysses". Can't think of the song. Ring a bell anyone?

At least they list Jefferson Airplane's rejoyce, a really wonderful transposition of Ulysses' thematic material to the anti-war movement and civil unrest of the sixties.

Re #2 The song is actually entitled "Tales of Brave Ulysses," and I believe it originally appears on the album Disraeli Gears. I do think that it refers more directly to our boy Homer's work, though, than to Joyce.

I could be wrong, though.

Often am.

You're not wrong this time, Becky.

Just googled ToBU and you're right, the song is in fact about The Odyssey, not Ulysses :(

Oh well, and I won't mention that I once owned that album and should've already known that! Groovy, psychedelic album cover, Disraeli Gears, too, btw.

Oh, just noticed this thread. I made a reference elsewhere to the Odyssean elements in the hillbilly melodrama Cold Mountain.

Cream also did song called "Swlabr" and an undanceable thing called "Pressed Rat and Warthog" (b/w "Anyone for Tennis?"). I don't think any of these were particularly Homeric, though.

Hey nice review of ...the Genie, maki. It's on Hot Reviews presently, and I'm betting your Everyman review will land there as well.

And Pummzie's review is now on Hot Reviews as well.

And new member, Aeyan, is presently holding the #1 spot (!) on Hot Reviews with his precisely perfect piece on The Shipping News. Nice.

And even thenaughtyhottie is holding her own, glory be to Hugh.

And tomcat just reviewed an obscure Dostoyevsky novel which, I think should land there as well.

So presently four of the top ten Hot Reviews (if we include honorary BTU member, makifat, are occupied by the magnificent members of Brave Effing Team Ulysses! (BETU)

I'm feeling like an awful proud papa at the moment. Seeing all of you in the Hot Reviews simultaneously is like looking at that classic photo of Joyce, Pound, Eliot, and was it Beckett too?, seated together in someone's study, no doubt discussing The Cantos or The Wasteland or the progress of The Wake.

Write on, BTU, write on!

and how could I overlook Blue's review of Child in Time by McEwan? Not Hot yet, but it deserves to be! Maybe a few people here need to go take a look at it, enjoy it like I did, rightfully click on the appropriate button and who knows, maybe those myserious LT-Powers-That-Be will make it Hot too!

egad!!! and HarvReviewers insightful review of "Madness Under The Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach".

Okay I'm done (I think) see why I don't point out reviews anymore, I can't keep up with all of your brilliant scrivening. If I overlooked yours, I'm so sorry, please feel free to send me a complaint and I'll be sure to post it.

And don't forget my grampa Ganeshaka's review about Alaska too!

So, going back to the Cream and "Tales of Brave Ulysses," (because pop culture references are where my head is right now), the song was used prominently in two episodes, several seasons apart, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So there.

Thank you for getting this thread back on track, Becky, re. Allusions to Ulysses (I'm so sorry, Slick, I'll start an Acknowledge Reviews thread and not so rudely interrupt yours again I swear).

Oof, sorry to offend BTU.

Won't happen again, I promise.

EnriqueFreeque wrote:

Seeing all of you in the Hot Reviews simultaneously is like looking at that classic photo of Joyce, Pound, Eliot, and was it Beckett too?, seated together in someone's study, no doubt discussing The Cantos or The Wasteland or the progress of The Wake.

I think the photo you're referring to is this one (or others shot from that day in October, 1923).


Ford Madox Ford, Joyce, Pound, John Quinn


Joyce, Pound, Ford, Quinn

They're at Pound's flat in Paris (the chairs Ford and Quinn are sitting on were actually made by Pound). Ford was just getting his Transatlantic Review underway (which didn't last longer than two volumes, if I remember correctly), and asked Joyce to submit a new work. Joyce submitted the infamous eight-page "Mamalujo" sketch--what would eventually undergo drastic revision and find its way into Book II.4 of the Wake. Of note, the sketch was given the title "Work in Progess" by the Transatlantic Review, as it also gave new works by Hemingway and Tristan Tzara the same moniker; it was not Joyce's decision, though he would publish fragments under this title until the Wake was published in full in 1939.

Quinn (a New York lawyer and modern art collector) would eventually tick Joyce off somethin' awful: Joyce had sold a faircopy manuscript of Ulysses as it was still being written in the later stages. Quinn would immediately sell it in 1924 to Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach for a poor price--it would sell for exponentially more, today. It wasn't Quinn's selling of the manuscript which irked Joyce, rather it was the low price. Later, Joyce would demand a percentage of the sale from Quinn.

The Rosenbach Manuscript, today: http://www.rosenbach.org/exhibitions/archives/ulyssesinhand.html

Thank you Ded! The bottom one is definitely what I had in mind.

Found another: in the film Slacker when the three guys are performing the ritual where they throw the tent and the typewriter into the river after one of the guys' girlfriends has run off with another guy the reading that accompanies the toss of the typewriter is from Ulysses when, well I don't want to post a spoiler. I guess this might be an instance of bibliomancy as well. Except as an exorcism rather than a soothsaying.

Strick's adaptation of Ulysses is interesting--you'll just have to ignore some of the automobiles that make random appearances on the Dublin streets. O'Shea does a phenomenal job (but where's Bloom's mustache!). Maurice Roëves plays Dedalus, but he isn't nearly dirty enough. I've yet to see a good 'n filthy 'n squinting Dedalus. (The absolute best Bloom I've ever seen, though, was played by David Suchet--he famously played Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot--in a 1993 PBS documentary called "James Joyce's Ulysses." If I remember correctly, it was part of a series called something like Masterpieces of Modern Literature. Not all of the novel is adapted, only bits from "Telemachus," "Proteus," "Calypso," "Cyclops," and "Circe." Clive Hart and Anthony Burgess provide some commentary. Wonderful documentary)

Joseph Strick's adaptation can be watched in full on YouTube, starting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN321y5KMzc

What about Bloom (2003) featuring Stephen Rea as Leopold Bloom?

Trailer here including a m****bating Molly! How far we've come since Ulysses was banned.

Looks a bit stagey for my taste.

Yes ! Much love for David Suchet as Bloom. It's definitely the best adaptation so far.

This just in ! Everyone in the group must rush to Toronto for tomorrow night. It's the last performance of Stoppard's Travesties at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

Oh wow was it good! Tristan Tzara, Lenin and Joyce in a wonderfully misbegotten retelling of The Importance of Being Earnest. There are wonderful correspondences throughout, starting with the unintentional (?) similarity between Joyce's methodical High Modernism and Tzara's random cutout poetry. There's also a wonderful extended section which borrows the catechismic technique of the Ithica chapter.

Joyce is alternately a vaudevillian charlatan but also the closest model for Stoppard's own theatrical strategies. The play itself definitely not High Modernist but it's a wonderful PoMo tribute. Grab your passports now!

The Simpsons were in Dublin during Bloomsday on last night's (US) The Simpsons. Though, that episode aired on St. Patrick's day in the UK/Ireland.

Not quite an allusion allusion, but definitely a cultural reference.

Additionally, if anyone's seen (at least the musical adaptation of) The Producers, one of the main characters, named Leopold Bloom (played by Broderick in the musical), asks "When will it be Bloom's day?" Oddly enough, in an earlier scene, a calendar shows it to be June 16th.

6: The other obvious Odysseyan stories are far superior to Cold Mountain. They are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

I have mentioned in another thread the Marilyn Monroe connection to Ulysses, the Marilyn who played Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Not the Savant, but who was a savant in her own right.

Well, Lorelei Lee, in But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (the sequel to GPB), connects with members of the Algonquin Round Table. She learns that, on a trip they all took to Europe, they had the opportunity to meet "a literatour called James Joyce." Someone who "might have had something to say." They declined, so as not to have to "explain all of their personal illusions before their jokes could be laughed at, and it only wasted everybody's time."

The fictional Algonquins of the Round-Table missed out on Joyce, but the real Joyce did not miss out on chuckling over Lorelei. He was a fan of the Loos.

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You apparently mistook my description of Cold Mountain as "hillbilly melodrama" as a sign of approval.

Yeah, I did kinda act like a Pangle on that one.

Nick Cave's Saint Huck is born in the everchanging neverchanging murky water of the Mississippi. That is almost certainly a Joyce reference "neverchanging everchanging water" Vintage 673 (656)