Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 06, 2021

I like to tell people I went to Harvard.

It was for a weekend.

James Joyce is so James Joyce that I can’t read his novels. Same for Marcel Proust.

now just imagine Rat reading Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

After taking 2 hours to read the last page, Rat still felt the Clifnotes was too long, and 2 hours was too much time to watch the movie.

In high school we were given Dubliners in freshman year, and Portrait of the Artist as seniors. I read Ulysses in college, not as part of a class, when I had lots of extra brain power to expend on it. Don’t think I could do that now.

Finnegans Wake is impenetrable to me.

This is the second time he read it. He rejoyced.

If the ending is no good, why waste time reading the whole book?

It’s like when people ask if I have read all of the books in my library…yes I have read all of them, maybe not all, of them, but all of them…

“I finally got around to reading the dictionary . . . turns out the zebra did it.” —Steven Wright

Isn’t Ulysses a Greek myth?

I knew a 12 year-old girl that actually read Le Morte D’Arthur. (and if you’re not familiar with it, it rivals War & Peace in length)

Rat reminded me of Tales of Brave Ulysses by Cream. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2CCfxiQ5QY

I’ve tried this with Finnegan’s Wake about a dozen times, but I keep ending up at Page 1.

Well, Ulysses finished me.Ah, glory school days…

Might be easier to apply a clear gloss to the cover, that would finish the book

or

stick it in the wood chipper.

“Cliff Notes”

Oh the Joyce of reading books.

now, why didn’t i think of that…?

Went to all the colleges of Oxford!Really!

Was born in Oxford, me and me mates would sneak in whenever we could!

Lots of times chased out of course! Remember being chased over the Bridge of Sighs with me mate Anthony by college officials!Ah the good old days!

Yes, you can. Yes. YES.

Maybe Rat would like a nice pair of bookends for his birthday?

Ulysses, the butt of many cartoonists’ jokes. A good acid-rock synopsis of it is Grace Slick’s song Rejoyce.

Never read Ulysses, but I did read Moby Dick cover to cover. Never again.

Slacker Rat…..

That’s why people buy audiobooks.

SO glad I(‘ve (finally) found others who were not impressed with Ulysses. . . I remember from a college course that many “classics” were long because authors were paid by the word back in the 1800s. . .also, wasn’t Ulysses the book that introduced the use of stream of consciousness as a plot device?

Reading Ulysses is Usleses!

I can’t. I’m on my second copy of the book. Never made it past the first 100 pages. And I’m a rather well-read individual; I’ve read both the Iliad and the Odyssey (the Odyssey several times) but I still just can’t “get” Ulysses. Maybe if I spent a year in Dublin…

The cliff notes to Moby Dick has more pages than most novels

The last page of Ulysses is the part you actually want to read. Yes.

I went to Rutgers, 3 years ,pipefitter lol

Jim2g- and probably made more money than some of the grads!

No, you didn’t Eat. (Deleted scene: Goat rolling his eyes.)

At least once a decade, since I was in my teens, I have reread Joyce, dutifully tackling Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses as well as his other works. I can’t say I’m any more enlightened at 76 than I was a 16 but with age and experience, have come new understandings and appreciations, every time I read him.

I do the same thing with the complete works of Shakespeare.

I read the first page and the last page.

That’s nice. Now do Finnegans Wake.

Honestly now, has anyone here, or has anyone you know ever read Ulysses past page 2?

I’ve never finished Wuthering Heights…tried three times but gave up. I barely got through Jane Eyre.

“I can say I’ve finished Ulysses.” Mr. Rat, as my father told me many years ago, “Saying it don’t make it so.”

I spent some time at Penn State ( 1 day driving seminar for too many tickets in my youth )

Great morning chuckle , Mr. P

Granddaughter was saying that she had a book assignment for school that was so boring she put it down after 10 minutes. The she said that it was Heart of Darkness. Finally, something we have in common.

I have started that book probably a half dozen times – usually when I was really sick and stuck in bed. Never, never made it through. So far I’ve been fortunate in the era of COVID, but I have a copy just in case …

I like to tell people I was rich.

It was a gift card, which expired.

Has anyone here read Finnegan’s Wake?

Utterly unreadable except for Molly’s section.

The last few pages are the best part of the book.

“… and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the fig trees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rose gardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” – from Molly’s Bloom’s Soliloquy

Here is the entire soliloquy. https://archive.org/details/MollyBloomMonologEnd/page/n3/mode/2up

“And the head coach wants no sissies,

So he reads to us from something called Ulysses.”

- Alan Sherman, “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh”

An Irish performer on A Prairie Home Companion told of Joyce’s portrait appearing on the Irish 10-pund note. “He always wanted to be a singer. Now he’s a tenner.”

“and the head coach wants no sissies, so he reads to us from something called ’Ulysses”…..“Camp Granada” song by Allan Sherman

Ulysses is a pile of pig dung.

There is a local race called the James Joyce Ramble. My brother asked if it has a finish line or if it just goes on and on and on…

That’s about as much as you’ll get out of it anyway.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was easy; Ulysses was a slough but do-able, but Finnigan’s Wake has repeatedly beaten me back….

I’m still waiting for the movie…

I got about fifty pages into it and gave up. I couldn’t understand it.

Or you can miss someone else’s life.

yes

If you do Twitter, the account to follow is https://twitter.com/UlyssesReader?s=20 . The bot posts a tweet from Ulysses every 10 minutes, working sequentially thru the book. Currently on the closing chapter (Molly Bloom’s soliloquy).

James Joyce looks awesome with his eyepatch.

I find it surprising Rat would read any of Ulysses.

I’m flashing back to an earlier strip where Rat runs for president and a debate moderator asks if he is pro-choice and he hears “pro-Joyce”.

i once wrote a book. it was two pages long.

i went to cal, stanford, mit, harvard, depaul, u of o and ten more collages as a 12 year old. WOW! im smart!