A Twitter adaption of “Ulysses” reveals the secret of Bloomsday | Hacker News Reader

A Twitter adaption of “Ulysses” reveals the secret of Bloomsday

theatlantic.com

48 pointssamclemens10 comments

This part made me chuckle:

Twitter had published an application programming interface (API) for its service. Using the API, I wrote some software to automate the posting, such that everything would be timed correctly. I just had to push a button and watch. We named the project “Twittering Rocks.”

It ran successfully in 2007, and thanks to the software, it would be easy to run Twittering Rocks every Bloomsday. Which we did, in 2008, and 2009, and 2010. Then it broke completely and hasn’t worked since.

It broke, surprisingly, not because Twitter arbitrarily decided to screw developers. It was because of the migration to OAuth, which, if memory serves, just happened to coincide with the beginning of the period in which Twitter decided 3rd-party devs were screwable.

The conclusion nonetheless is apt:

How many apps on your phone don’t work properly anymore? Software breaks all the time.

But books don’t.

They did that one time in Night Vale...

"Listeners, we are currently fielding numerous reports that books have stopped working. It seems that all over Night Vale, books have simply ceased functioning. The scientists are studying one of the broken books to see if they can understand just what is going on here. The exact problem is currently unclear, but some of the words being used include ‘sparks,’ ‘meat smell,’ ‘biting,’ and ‘lethal gas.’ For your own safety, please do not attempt to open a book until we have more information on the nature and cause of these problems. The city council has released only a brief statement, indicating that their stance on books has not changed, and that, as always, they believe that books are dangerous and inadvisable, and should not be kept in private homes."

I am so glad to have come across this article; thank you. Since an aborted attempt to read it -- with its hundreds of pages of stream-of-consciousness -- I have always wondered why this book was so praised.

What's your takeaway from it then - if you now think it's worth its praise why is that?

There's a piece of writing advice I like: "Take pity on your reader." Stream of consciousness style writing at such length is very painful to read. So I never understood why an author would do it, but for some kind of self-gratification that strikes me as pretentious. Now this article has explained that Joyce had a goal that I often think about in relation to my often humdrum life, elevating the ordinary. I have a bit more respect for this now. Perhaps not enough to read the thing again, but still.

Thanks. How does stream of consciousness elevate the ordinary? Forgive me for trying to drill down to the nub of the matter but without it the answer is just pushing the bubble up the wall.

Since you didn't realise this on your own when reading it can I assume that it didn't succeed in that respect?

Not OP, but I think books like Ulysses are more important for historical reasons than intrinsic literary value. It's not a bad book (far from it) but not a Top 100 Book [1] IMHO.

[1]http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100_2.shtml

I happen to agree with you 100%. I read the book this year and found it fascinating to see how easily relatable people 100 years ago were, especially since the stream of consciousness gives a better insight into their thoughts than a regular novel would. I did not however think it was a great book in itself which is why I'm curious to know what makes it great in other people's opinion (especially since I didn't find that article very supportive of it). Most of the time it felt like the author was enjoying himself more when writing it than I when reading it.

For me the stream of consciousness style didn't work at all. But I'm referring specifically to these passages of the article, which set the novel in a new context for me. I always appreciate hearing someone else's well-articulated reasons for why they adore something that I did not, particularly when the sheer joy of their experience shines through.

>Joyce picked June 16 as the time of the novel partly to commemorate his first date with his future wife (more on that in a moment), but also because it was an otherwise ordinary day, on which ordinary people did ordinary things. Like the rest of literary and artistic modernity, the novel pits the epic against the mundane, and Joyce’s version toes the line with virtuosity.

and

>Ulysses bathes in low-culture vulgarity, even if it’s hard for today’s reader to see it clearly. The choice of June 16 as an homage to his future wife’s first date is partly romantic, but partly bawdy, too.

>Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants in faux-humble deference to tradition, as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot had done by incorporating classical references and source material, Joyce devoured and disgorged them again. And it was beautiful and real, like watching a drunk heave outside a pub in the wee hours of the morning. This is life.

You serve your audience, not the other way around. I'm sure a lot of authors and artists feel that the audience is an entity meant to serve them.

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