Home > Media > Books > James Joyce and Lawrence Rainey - Ulysses: Notes & "Telemachus" - "Scylla" & "Charybdis" " A Facsimile of Notes for the Book & Manuscripts for Episodes 1-9
James Joyce and Lawrence Rainey - Ulysses: Notes & "Telemachus" - "Scylla" & "Charybdis" " A Facsimile of Notes for the Book & Manuscripts for Episodes 1-9
Kallisti's Full Review: James Joyce and Lawrence Rainey - Ulysses: Notes &...
James Joyce's Ulysses is purported to be the biggest selling book in the English language other than the King James Version of the Bible.
Although popular in sales, I suspect that most owners of this one have yet to read it, or to finish reading it. It tends to sit on the shelf emitting an aura of intelligence and good taste. It's a status symbol, a mysterious object of desire.
Perhaps some owners of the book somehow absorb this classic example of Joycean fiction through telekenetic means. Impossible? Not if you believe the claims of Alan Ball who was given credit for writing the script & screenplay for 1999's classic film, American Beauty.
Ball, who's previous writing credits only seem to include a few episodes of Brett Butler's situation comedy, Grace Under Fire, remarkably penned a phenominal & archetypal story of life, sex, marriage and death. A inarguably classic work of fiction fitted to the silver screen.
Even more remarkable are the similariaties between Ulysses and American Beauty. The similarities are mere coincidence, according to Mr. Ball as he claims that he has never read Joyce's Ulysses.
As reported in Nasty (nasty.cx), by Susan S. Brown the Ulysses/american Beauty synchronicities begin at the beginning: with the first names of the protagonists. Leopold Bloom in the novel; Lester Burnham in the movie. L.B..
They are both middle aged, middle class -- Leopold is a "canvasser of ads"; Lester is a telemarketer. Leopold masturbates in the bath; Lester is having his "honeymoon in the hand" in the shower. Both characters engage in body-building to primp their aging bodies... both LBs experiences urges and fantasies which may be deemed inappropriate by the readership of Joyce's day or the modern movie viewer. Lester serves a sardonicly joking "pot pie on a stick" and Leopold seems to be entertaining his penchant for black humor with a refrain about "Plumbtree's Potted Meat". Their dour humor is inspired by their respective wives who are having affairs with characters which can are described (by Joyce in this case) as "bounder(s).. [&] boaster[s]". Both husbands are resigned to these affairs with a clear complacence.
Did Alan Ball really pick up references to potted meat products via the "Jungian collective unconscious" as he claims, or do copies of Ulysses subliminally contact their owners? You decide.
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