June 14, 2015
For those who want to get a jump on the summer assignment, you could pull off many editions just by reading today's NYTimes Book Review, which has every thing in it from a review of a book about the lives of great authors to a review about a book on Stalin's Daughter.
My selection today is a two for one book review: two reviews by authors from today of a book that is extremely difficult to read but considered one of the most important works in the English language--James Joyce's Ulysses.
At the time of its publication by the Irish author, it was considered obscene and the U.S. Postal service actually burned copies of the book. Much of the innovation in Joyce's work is considered normal in today's novels; reading the reviews will help clue you in on what those innovations are.
The book is considered canonical, which is a word you ought to look up, so when you get to grad school you may have to read it. For our purposes, the novel Ulysses points to the relevance of Ms. O'Connor's assignment to look up all those Greek, Roman and Biblical stories because the entire novel pretends to be a modern day (or 1920's) version of The Odyssey.
"How Would Ulysses be Received Today?"
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