"The blue smoke rising and the brown lace sinking in the empty glass of stout."

Allow me to say in this, my opening salvo, how delighted I am that you’ve all agreed to join in the fun.  It makes me quite happy, the response I’ve gotten to the idea of a group read and discussion of Ulysses.  When I first posited the idea a week back I had only the brave buy-in of the esteemed Mr. Colón.  I’m grateful and excited by his participation, and already I look forward to his future, insightful postings.

Cisco, you will be interested to know that I’ve persuaded/pressured some other folks into this venture as well.  Many of them are friends and colleagues from work.  Yes, they couldn’t easily escape my routine nagging and several caved into my request after only, say, the fourth or fifth time I pestered them for a commitment. Welcome.  Welcome all.

So why read Ulysses? we now ask ourselves. Well, I suppose that is the question left open for us each to answer for ourselves and each other as this discussion progresses.

As to the function of this blog and my general thoughts on the structure for this reading group, let me say that I envision very few if any hard and fast rules.  I know from enough failed book club experiences that people chafe at deadlines, forced discussions, etc.  So instead, this is what I humbly propose:

Bloomsday is June 16^th, 22 weeks away and oodles of time to read a book in.  Some will no doubt want to keep a rather regular pace and read the book straight through subject to their standard reading habits.  So, some of you might be done much, much sooner than mid-June.  Others, me included, foresee spans of time where they might want or have to set Ulysses aside.  As a general rubric, try to get in about an episode a week and you’ll be golden.  Read faster should you choose or read a bit slower (but not too terribly much) and we’ll all get to the finish line of June 16^th together.

Also, on posts: talk about what you want, link to what you want, etc.  Let’s start a convention, however, of including in the header or opening line of each post a reference to where we are in the book and what we’ll be delving into.  Even better, we can tag individual posts with labels for each episode.  This way as folks begin to “check-in” with the blog they can quickly skip over what would be spoiler posts of any readers who might be several episodes/chapters ahead.  

For an example of a possible naming convention, I might call my next post,on Episode 1 something like “Mocking the Mass: Alex, Episode 1.”

That’s all from me for now.  I will be posting on Episode 1 in good time.  By the bye, I love the pint idea Cisco.  My next post will include my thoughts regarding execution of the exchange.

Cheers,

Alex C.

Incidentally, my header is a quote from Louis MacNeice’s long poem “Autumn Journal.”  MacNeice, of course, was an Irishman and one of the Auden set.  I’ve long liked the line, and thought if nothing else it speaks to the kind of atmospherics we’ll be immersing ourselves in whilst visiting on the page various haunts of dirty Dublin circa 1904.