My August (2017) reading list: Joyce
For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.
James Joyce.
At the occasion of our visiting Dublin, this early August, I have put on my reading list the first, the best and the last book of James Joyce:
(yes, I took the Alma Classics edition of Dubliners rather than the matching's Wordsworth Classics edition, of which I also bought A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man).
Of Irish literature, I have only read Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett. I have always longed to read Joyce, the postmodern legend. I remember being intimated by the sheer volume of the book. Ireland is also an unknown territory for me, the counterpart of UK of what Portugal is to Spain, an enigmatic sidekick of a familiar country, a familiar culture, a familiar world. I've always meant to bring Elena to Dublin for a Saint Valentine occasion.
Finnegans Wake is reputed for being unreadable, although I quite enjoyed Barthelme's the Dead Father, and Idioglossia is one of my favourite off-the-track excursion out of language.
Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904