literature
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Ep. 36 – The Complex Life of Lucia Joyce- (w/Linus Ignatius & Llewie Nuñez)
Linus Ignatius and Llewie Nuñez starred in the play Lucia Mad as James and Lucia Joyce, respectively, back in their university days. They drop by the podcast for a deep dive into the complex and tragic life of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia. We discuss how they prepared to portray the Joyces on-stage, Lucia’s genius as…
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Ulysses & The Odyssey: Calypso
“… I found that for [Joyce] human character was best displayed – I had almost said entirely displayed – in the commonest acts of life. How a man eats his egg will give a better clue to his differentiation than how he goes forth to war… Cutting bread displays character better than cutting throats.” –…
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Ep. 35 – The Hundredheaded Rabble
Join Kelly and Dermot for a story about James Joyce’s youthful rebellion against the literary establishment of Dublin, his obsession with the apocalyptic predictions of a 12th century monk, a tale of psychic horror by W.B. Yeats, Jonathan Swift and Dublin’s oldest public library. It’s a jam-packed episode! The paragraph discussed in this episode can…
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Ep. 34 – Translating Finnegans Wake into Japanese (w/ Kenji Hayakawa)
Kelly and Dermot are joined by translator Kenji Hayakawa to discuss the gargantuan task of translating Finnegans Wake into Japanese. We discuss Naoki Yanase’s translation of Joyce’s classic novel into Japanese, creating special software Japanese characters to tackle Joyce’s various coinages, why Japanese is an ideal language in which to read Finnegans Wake, why only…
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Decoding Dedalus: Full Fathom Five
“I haven’t let this young man off very lightly, have I? Many writers have written about themselves. I wonder if any one of them has been as candid as I have?” – James Joyce to Frank Budgen This is a post in a series called Decoding Dedalus where I take a passage of Ulysses and …
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Ep. 33 – Nuncle Richie
Stephen contemplates the horror of a visit to his Aunt Sara and Uncle Richie’s house. We discuss parallels in this scene with Joyce’s real life aunt and uncle, why Joyce’s Aunt Josephine gave away her first edition of Ulysses, the intractable Dubliner/culchie divide, middle class pretension, Hiberno-English, Wilde’s Requiescat, and the difficulty of parsing conversations…
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Ep. 32 – James Joyce Tower & Museum
Dermot and Kelly get an insider’s view of the Sandycove Martello Tower – the Omphalos of Dublin itself! Maggie Fitzgerald, James Holohan and Andrew Basquille give Blooms & Barnacles a tour of all the museum’s nooks and crannies. Discussions include the Joycean historical items on display in the museum, the history of the tower, what…
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The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. On page 49 of “Proteus,” Stephen Dedalus spends a paragraph thinking about his shoes, which feels appropriate rounding out an episode that consists of walking on the shore: His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs, nebeneinander. He counted…
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Ep. 31 – Contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality
Let’s have fun with consubstantiality! Kelly and Dermot untangle Stephen Dedalus’ thoughts on the dual nature of God the Father and God the Son, the Nicene Creed, the difference between being made and being begotten, the death of Arius, seahorses, a shocking fact about the Star Wars cantina and an even more shocking fact about…