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surely monopolizing the forum in order to do a collaborative project that lots of people are behind is a GOOD thing, no? especially if it is finite, ie only for the duration of the reading / discussion. i personallyl ike this kind of constructive / communal use of the forum much better than the usual listiing of favorite books, which can become repetitive at a point.
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my favorite chapter for reading outloud is chapter 11, the Sirens chapter, which if you remember from the odyssey is about supernatural women singing songs so beautiful they lead sailors to their death. the chapter starts with a list of phrases and onomatopoetic sounds, suggesting an orchestra tuning up, then they all find their way into the description of the concert room. it's a treat.
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what goals are we setting for the sylabus? if you'll allow me to just spit out a little suggestion... there's 18 chapters in all, some of which demand fuller attention than others. going week by week, we can definately do
week one: chapters 1-3 -- this is part one of the book, about stephen dedelus, its comparatively straightforward, and it is only about 40 pages. get used to the rhythms of the book, get used to reading with an annotation in hand, and get a full section out of the way. you read 5 pages a day, if you like, and still get it done under a week.
week two:chapter 4-6 are also about 40 pages together, with a lot more of what we might call "plot complications" coming in.
week three: starts to bring us into much more fanciful narrative strategies, as this chapter is written like newspaper colulmns. wonder if we ought to slow down here, get just this one chapter out of the way and play catch up on the rest?
i'll stop here, since i don't know if this sort of a timeline will be germaine to how you'd like to lead it, but i will point out some of the chapter that ought to be taken entirely on their own -- Chapter 12, Cyclops, can be tough going since it's fairly long and written in a deliberately overblown style "giganticism">; chapter 14 ( is very tough going, as he simulates the development of english language paragraph by paragraph, a lot of it is very alien syntax; Chapter 15 (circe -- the above mentioned nighttown section) is UNGODLY long, i think it accounts for about a third of the book itself, but it is also he part written as a play with crazy surreal nonsense breaking out all over the pay, supernatural whores fighting demons sort of bit.
then you're in the last part of the novel. chapter 16 was deliberately written to be too boring to read, and i know most people wind up skipping it for this reason. very tought going. Chapters 17 + 18 are each unique and probably the two best in the book, and therefore ought to be given their own place. 18 is the final post-chapter, the celebrated monologue of molly, its the only female voice in the book and it's really a trip.
hope some of this helps! |
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