

Infinite Ulysses - Thevet
http://www.infiniteulysses.com/

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rmc
One tidbit of Ulysses is a character wonders if it's possible to cross Dublin
without passing a pub. Using OpenStreetMap I figured out that it was
[http://www.kindle-maps.com/blog/how-to-walk-across-dublin-
wi...](http://www.kindle-maps.com/blog/how-to-walk-across-dublin-without-
passing-a-pub-full-publess-route-here.html)

~~~
ganeumann
So you're saying the only way to walk across Dublin without passing a pub is
to walk past the Guinness brewery? :)

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rmc
You can't walk in there and have a pint! So it's OK IMO :)

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jamesdelaneyie
You can at the Gravity Bar [0] but with this route you don't pass the entrance
so it's all good :)

[0] [http://www.guinness-storehouse.com/en/Index.aspx](http://www.guinness-
storehouse.com/en/Index.aspx)

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leephillips
This looks like a fun project about one of my half-dozen favorite novels of
all time. Unfortunately, there is probably more garbage (explication,
criticism) written about this book than any other, outside of Shakespeare. If
you're hesitant to just dive in, I recommend Nabokov's _Lectures on
Literature_ (all the lectures are great; the one on _Ulysses_ shows you the
hidden machinery turning under the surface of the novel).

~~~
cafard
When I first read it, years ago, I noticed Haynes's dictum that "Shakespeare
is the happy hunting ground of minds that have lost their balance.", and
thought that perhaps it was Joyce's ambition to supplant Shakespeare in that
role.

~~~
cobralibre
So I'll be the one to trot out the infamous quote: "I've put in so many
enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries
arguing over what I meant..."

I'm personally distrustful of people who are temperamentally hostile to
criticism, and I would think that self-described hackers would want to
celebrate practices that seek to explain art rather than to shroud it in
mystery. And Joyce's Ulysses has inspired some criticism that is literature in
its own right, some obvious examples being Richard Ellmann's biography and at
least half of Hugh Kenner's books.

~~~
cafard
I am not at all hostile to criticism--I have, at a guess, seven of Kenner's
books at home (and now that I think of it, wouldn't mind picking up _Gnomon_
).

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dtf
For anyone interested, this is a great, deep site with hyperlinked
annotations. (Not crowdsourced in anyway, though)

[http://joyceproject.com/](http://joyceproject.com/)

There's also a comic version:

[http://www.ulyssesseen.com/](http://www.ulyssesseen.com/)

~~~
pvitz
A comic version for the impatient:
[http://thattherepaul.com/features/uford.html](http://thattherepaul.com/features/uford.html)

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versk
_Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.

— She's making for Bullock harbour.

The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.

— There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when the
tide comes in about one. It's nine days today

The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for a
swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, salt white. Here
I am._

Nice website, if a little unresponsive. If it gets just one more person to
crack Ulysses and discover the immense beauty of this extraordinary work than
it has to have been worth it.

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n0nick
Woah. When I last (tried to) start reading Ulysees, almost a year ago, I
thought about this: An online "book club", allowing users to join in reading
classics and participate in discussions on top of the text. That would have
certainly helped me continue reading the book. Eventually I put the book back
on the shelf, and wrote down the idea in my ~/ideas.md.

Your 'read' page [1] is exactly as I pictured it. Looks like an interesting,
important effort. Kudos!

[1]
[http://www.infiniteulysses.com/ulysses/3](http://www.infiniteulysses.com/ulysses/3)

~~~
kenbellows
You should ask for your royalties
[https://xkcd.com/827/](https://xkcd.com/827/)

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wjnc
Love the idea, and hope that it grows into something bigger.

For any book of historic, literary or intellectual interest you often need
notes, perspectives and connotations. Especially the older a work gets, for
even things as the meaning or use of English words can change. For the best
books you can sometimes buy annotated versions, but the Genius-approach of
annotate anything lends itself particulary well to books.

For now I fear only free books (like Ulysses) can be handled site that
crowdsources annotations. But crowdsourced annotations on all books, provided
you own a license to the work of some sort... wow.

~~~
anonymousDan
With regard to your point about the meaning or use of English words changing,
after trying but failing to read Ulysses a few years ago I asked my
Grandfather whether he had ever read it (he was born in 1914 and grew up in
Dublin). He said he had read it a few times and didn't find it difficult to
understand at all since most of the phrases and slang were things people said
when he was growing up.

~~~
wjnc
I have the same experience in trying to read the classic English philosophers.
The language feels the same, but isn't. Funny thing is that you can find 'the
Greeks / Germans / ..' in a side by side translation to modern English with
notes, but that it doesn't exist for many of the classics. It's easier to get
to understand Biggie than Thomas More (which I own in an ancient English
translation of the Latin original, kind of my point...).

~~~
cafard
"Sure I am that the signification of words in all languages, depending very
much on the thoughts, notions, and ideas of him that uses them, must
unavoidably be of great uncertainty to men of the same language and country.
This is so evident in the Greek authors, that he that shall peruse their
writings will find in almost every one of them, a distinct language, though
the same words."

John Locke, _Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_ , Book II (On Words), Ch.
IX, section 22

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andybak
Ulysses - the 'Trout Mask Replica' of the literary world

~~~
bvm
What would the analogy be for Finnegan's Wake?

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wues
Don't destroy Joyce's wordplay: it is Finnegans Wake, not Finnegan's Wake

~~~
bvm
my mistake. apologies.

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mark_l_watson
Neat idea. When I read Ulysses two years ago, I didn't really follow the whole
plot but I did enjoy Joyce's writing a lot.

BTW, I bought the audible version of Ulysses this year and I am slowing
listening to it. Hearing a good narrator read the book is a very different
experience than reading it.

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slashnull
I initially thought the "infinite" in the title referred to Infinite Jest.

That would have been really wild...

~~~
dannnn
It may be a reference to Infinite Summer, which was a (more traditional)
online book club a few years back reading Infinite Jest.

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calebm
I highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Jim Norton. Ulysses has a lot of
difficult-to-parse writing (such as the last chapter having no punctuation);
the audiobook removes that parsing difficulty. It's also a great performance!

~~~
twoodfin
I'd recommend Frank Delaney's charming, paragraph-by-paragraph, bite-sized Re:
Joyce podcast[1] and the excellent 1982 RTE dramatic radio broadcast[2] (also
essentially unabridged).

Many of the more difficult fragments of _Ulysses_ are made much more lucid
when read aloud, and it's a good trick to use while reading the book as well.

[1] [http://blog.frankdelaney.com/re-joyce/](http://blog.frankdelaney.com/re-
joyce/) [2] [https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-
Audiobook](https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook)

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griffinmahon
I like this a lot -- I love the idea of poring over _Ulysses_ \-- but the
clicking on the reading page doesn't feel responsive enough for me and I wish
annotations were displayed better (I'm used to Genius..)

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psychometry
From the title "Infinite Ulysses" I imagined an unending extension of the text
of _Ulysses_ using a Markov text generator. Perhaps that would be better
suited for _Finnegans Wake_.

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cobralibre
But since Finnegans Wake is structured as a loop, you wouldn't want to extend
it from the end.

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alphonse23
This is obviously a home built website. Interesting to see their design
choices...

