Words for the Road

[walter23]

I have been reading and rereading James Joyce all the time. An enchanting magician of words. Here is a taste of his Ulysses...

Man, nobody reads Joyce. I put Ulysses (and Finnegan's wake, for that matter) on the bookshelf to look smart if visitors come by, but I secretly think I'm even smarter for just relegating these to the bookshelf rather than putting myself through them

Incidentally, Finnegan's Wake is even more abstract / unstructured than Ulysses. I do know people who have pretended to read Ulysses, but nobody reads Finnegan's Wake.

(In all honesty I do see how people could get some pleasure from his imagery, but I just don't understand it well enough to get through it.)

[Michael T. Murphy]

Yeah, I have never read Joyce either. I know Joseph Campbell thinks very highly of him.

I had to read Kant, Hegal, Heidigger, Sartre, et. al in college as a Philosophy major. Took about 1 hour to read 3 pages of the "Critique of Pure Reason." Comprehension was less than 1% on the first go.

I did have a doctor ask me if I was an English grad student once because I was reading Thomas Pynchon while waiting for him. I thought he was pretty readable and enjoyable.

I take so many pain pills now that I can't read Time magazine. TV is not so hard, though I get lost sometimes.

[Hugo Zhang]

Walter,

I know, his wife Nora didn't read beyond page 20 of that book even she was the inspiration of that hotblooded and now immortal Molly. Like Proust, Joyce is much talked about and less read.

But on the other hand, how many people use LF cameras today? As a percentage of population, my guess is the number is less than Joyce readers.

I have not and will not read his Finnegan Wake though. Ulysses is as far as I would allow myself go. Every time I open this book, Joyce just dazzles and delights me.

[Struan Gray]

"Dubliners" is one of the few books I have enjoyed re-reading. The language is very visual, and the characters drawn so exactly, so it has strong photographic resonances for me.

My current bedside reading is William Empson's "Seven types of ambiguity." A bit dense - but very quotable - and again, full of insights that have photographic relevance.

[Colin Graham]

I like Thomas Pynchon too...in moderation. V was great, Mason & Dixon though I still cant get through. Haven't tried his latest.

Started rereading some Paul Bowles this week- The Sheltering Sky, Points in Time and Up Above the World are all great road books

[Michael T. Murphy]

I like Thomas Pynchon too...in moderation

Hey Colin, you are in good company. I found this in a Herald Tribune article about Radiohead last week. I wasn’t aware of this connection:

Radiohead has become a cyber-cottage industry - through its merchandising company, W.A.S.T.E., named after Thomas Pynchon's underground postal system in "The Crying of Lot 49"

Radiohead also had a link to the photographer Chris Jordan on the front of their web page. I saw it just a day or two after I was at his site.

http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/

They seem to be pretty sharp, I think I will just live my life according to what they post on their site. It will save me a lot of thinking and decision making for myself from now on.

Best,
Michael

[roteague]

I take a photography book. Generally either Jack Dykinga's "Large Format Nature Photography" or Joe Cornish's "First Light". I love both, and get a lot of inspiration from them.

[JPlomley]

I've printed the How To Articles and key threads from this website and read them b4 the first day of shooting, just so I don't screw up too many shots. Perhaps not as inspirational as poetry, but certainly as beneficial.

[Ben Calwell]

I second "Travels With Charley."