Tag Archives: David Pierce

On Reading Ulysses for the First Time

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  1. Don’t panic.
  2. Don’t panic if after the first episode you haven’t understood much.
  3. Don’t panic if you don’t know if you’ve come to the end of the first episode.
  4. Everything comes to those that wait.
  5. Everything will be revealed by Linati and Gorman-Gilbert.
  6. Everything comes in twos and threes.
  7. If time permits, read Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
  8. If further time permits, read Homer’s Odyssey.
  9. If further time permits (after time permitting and further time permitting), read Frank Budgen’s James Joyce and the Making of ‘Ulysses’.
  10. Time is of the essence as it happens. All events take place on one day, 16 June 1904; ‘Bloomsday’ to later devotees.
  11. The novel begins twice, once with Stephen’s early morning and once with Bloom’s.
  12. The novel ends twice, once with Stephen and Bloom having ‘found’ each other and once with Molly’s soliloquy in bed.
  13. The novel’s space also matters.
  14. The Blooms live at number 7 Eccles Street on the north side of Dublin; Stephen is staying at the Martello Tower 9  miles south of Dublin on the coast at Sandycove (where the novel begins).
  15. Bloom is an advertising agent, Stephen for the time being a school-teacher. Dublin is where they meet.
  16. Consult the Linati schema and the Gilbert-Gorman plan.
  17. Begin now.
  18. I will. Yes.

A condensed version of a handout David Pierce gave to his students as preparation for reading Ulysses. It must be twenty years since I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. My next reading stop.

The Porcupine of Authors

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Recognise this portrait?

When Constantin Brancusi’s sketch of James Joyce was shown to Joyce’s father, the latter quipped that his son had changed somewhat since he last saw him.

I read this in David Pierce’s outstanding (so far) Reading Joyce, preparation for my summer plan to tackle Ulysses. Pierce’s book is about far more than Ulysses and essential reading to my mind as a Joyce refresher or introduction. Taking inspiration from W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and Janet Malcolm’s Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey, Pierce’s guide introduces itself thus:

Reading Joyce is not for everyone, and nor should it be, but, for those who develop an interest, the habit can be forming and even last a lifetime. . . This book is written to convey something of the pleasure in reading Joyce, and it is informed therefore by a spirit of humour and appreciation. It issues from a belief that the reader new to Joyce needs a certain amount of guidance, but not an excessive amount. I look to the reader, therefore, who appreciates a challenge and who, long after the prompt books have been put down, will continue reading ‘the porcupine of authors’ . . . Indeed, the reader I have in mind is sceptical of reading books with ‘notes’ in the title and is looking for a critical engagement with a writer who is so highly regarded.

Sufficient introduction to lure me in.

Later in the introduction Pierce returns to Brancusi’s sketch:

. . . Brancusi’s spiral is also an epiphany, an epiphany being Joyce’s borrowed term to convey the distinctive character of his collection of stories – the moment, for example when a character or the reader suddenly understands their destiny or the narrative’s destination.