The Long Haul

Whilst driving about for a living, I check out books on CD from the library. Mostly great books I’ve always meant to read but never had the captivated, on-the-clock-but-with-one-sense-free time: On The Road, The Sound and the Fury (an Oprah Book Club selection!) and now Ulysses. The Naxos recording by Irish Actor Jim Norton runs to 22 discs. I’d hoped to get it before Bloomsday but only received it last week. (There are a lot of holds for some of these books.) Still, thanks to some extra road time I’m already up to disc 15. At this rate I’ll not need to renew. Ulysses in less than a month. ‘Tis quite a pseudo-intellectual accomplishment. (Hearing’s not reading.) Lucky I didn’t get the Capital Records version read by Mel Tillis; that set’s 23.

One surprise: a minor character named Bannon. So it really is an Irish name.

Joyce’s follow up was titled Finnegans Wake. As an Irish-American I’d have gone with S. Grant. I hear Julia Dent Grant was quite sensual. "I put my arms around U.S. yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes U.S. I will Yes."