Damn.
I had something to say about "Ulysses" but then I had to run over to Georgia and buy some Alabama bourbon and when I got back everybody here was mad so instead of joining the fray I just went on to bed.
But this is what I was gonna say about "arruginated":
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The term "rugose" had much wider circulation back during James Joyce's days than it does today. Back in the early 20th Century most everyone who could read was aware of the paleozoic solitary rugosian horn coral tetracorala because of it's resemblence to the cornucopia; the Horn 0' Plenty. But not unlike life, the solitary coral o'plenty could offer but little bounty because it was too small; about the size of a rugose, indirect, human penis.
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Why, the pugnacious might ask, did you want to say that? Well I said it because I hope the wording I chose will give example to what I have to say about the writting of James Joyce, which is...
James Joyce knew or did not know what Isimov's professor knew by instinct i.e. what the writer writes is never what the reader reads. Maybe among those posting here only Faldage is old enough to remember 'Ned" in the first reader, but a hundred years ago ten million kids struggled to understand poor Ned and as a result Ned was understood by ten million different kids exactly ten million different ways. Such is the nature of language and human advance.
No. I'm not saying that useful information about the world around us can't be commuted by language. That would be silly. What I am saying is that each individual extracts information about the world that he deems pertinent to his survival (and by extention, his Culture) and as a reward for this learning he receives endorphins in the form of an "Ah Ha!. Now back to James Joyce.
One thing is for sure: for the common reader James Joyce did not his last four books write. For the working men of this World the time spent deciphering Joyce would be better spent baling hay or picking cotton, so it follows that sane or insane James Joyce wrote his final sequence of convoluted books for Asinov's professor friend and homo loquens and art critics everywhere who after spending hours upon hours chasing down presumed James Joyce's associations can find within their clever minds associations that evoke an "Ah Ha!".
There is nothing wrong with the idle mind being entertained.
Now is there?
Last edited by themilum; 12/04/05 05:09 PM.
