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If Marilyn Can Enjoy Ulysses by James Joyce…Are You up for the Challenge?
How to spin Ulysses into something that entertains and makes you look like a true Joycean Scholar.
James Joyce is a hot topic this year. 2022 is the centenary of the publication of his masterpiece of modernism Ulysses back in 1922.
Ulysses at 100, was originally banned in the U.S. for being an ‘encyclopedia of obscene words’, but still occupies a hugely elevated position in literature.
Yet it is the most difficult text you will ever read.
Scholars visiting MoLi (Museum of Literature Ireland) often apologize to its director, Simon O’Connor, for never having read the book in full.
Joyce wrote ‘The Longest way round is the shortest way home’.
Many believe the meaning to be ‘Everything worthwhile takes a long time’.
Like reading Ulysses?
All two hundred and sixty-five thousand words!
Yet Marilyn Monroe did it!
Marilyn had a personal library of over 400 books, books that became a refuge to her during her bouts of loneliness and insomnia.
In a 1999 Christie’s Auction of The Personal Property Of Marilyn Monroe, Lot 510 was a 1934 Random House Edition of…