Shortcut to hand written print

As I went into procrastination mode, instead of just getting those postcards written and posted, first I started wondering how to create my own personal font, which should not be overly complicated with some True Type inverter I guess - then I started to think about what James Joyce's own handwriting would look like, which lead me to a reasonably smart eye catcher by an inspiring author, the home for C.J. Renner's writing - www.iwritegood.com.
He offers  two different fonts, one called James Joyce and another named Vincent van Gogh. Immediately I installed these two, and it is an amazing feeling to type with the almost original look of a genius :-)

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Real postcards are SO last century :-)

This reading club suggests that people send postcards to one another, which I liked intuitively.
I used to send a handful when on holidays, but alas! even that has been left undone for osme years. Birthday greetings have disappeared - apart from my dentist reminder that always comes on that date. Last December, I sent a handful of must-do christmas greetings, and we also had a few back, and that's all. So off I went in my archives to search for relevant postcards (of which I still keep a considerable collection), and to find a fountain pen. That's the practical part - I also have the list of members to pick from, and the value of the stamp needed for the US.

Now all I have to do is to write and post those cards...

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Hand written postcards - SO last century

This reading club suggests that people send postcards to one another, which I liked intuitively. Not that I am very much used to get any podtcards - I used to send a handful when on holidays, but alas! even that has been left undone for osme years. Last December, I did post a handful of must-do christmas greetings, and we also had a few back, and that's all. So off I went in my archives to search for relevant postcards (of which I still keep a considerable collection), and to find a fountain pen. That's the practical part - I also have the list of members to pick from, and the value of the stamp needed for the US.

Now all I have to do is to write and post those cards...

Journal of Studies in Short Fiction - lots of Joyce-related articles

Articles in Summer, 1995 issue of Studies in Short Fiction

I've enjoyed browsing these articles, they are full version.

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Reading Grace (midway resume)

I've posted  on my blog  @ worldofwebheads.blogspot.com about the novel Grace. Just figured out how to post directly here - by email. Will follow up this way soon. Also preparing postcards!

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Gracious grace

Poor fellow who stumbled at the inn, too drunk to take care. First, we are led to suspect that he was abandoned by someone who may have taken advantage of his insobriety, and knocked him down. The helpful men who finds him on the floor, humiliated in the lavatory, do not know him at all. Neither does the other people at the inn, and someone gets the police. Well, a barman did serve him a small rum. The constable is more interested in taking a formal report, than in really helping the poor fellow, but someone bends down to inspect him, and makes him come back to life, with some brandy as first aid medication. Now a firned of his enters stage, brings him into a car and home to his wife, apparently not shocked by his poor condition, as she must have seen this before, she just puts him to bed, a practical woman she is. Drunkards should be taken well care of, and his friend has a plan. Don't you worry, he says to the wife, we'll get a new man out of him! Some days later, he arrives with two good men, to vist the patient who is still in bed, all that we know is that he has bit a small piece of his tongue, I may think that he is actually enjoying the nursing attention from his wife? Each of these three men are introduced to the reader by their special character; one in particular knows this problem with heavy drinking from inside, as his wife has this terrible habit.

This is as far as I read yesterday; now I'm going read next part of the story, and find out if they will succeed in getting this poor man back on rails, with a healed tongue and mind?

Merging exercise - mashing a double blog

Hm, let me figure out how this works. And, how I like it.
To follow the Motley reading group I was inclined to join a new mashup service called Posterous, which means I get an email with every action on the group blog, and have access to a personal blog. So far so good - much smoother that, for example a Ning group where I do get an email alert for actions, but I have to login to the site to check the content, which means I don't keep up with all of those Nings that I've joined over time.
With Posterous, I have several useful tools in one smart box - I could post from my Flickr album, from Facebook or Twitter (which I prefer not, because my account is not open to just anyone, so it would probably not appear in a tag stream). But with my blogging that feels different. I took up an appropriate blog I made some years ago but never really nurtured, worldofreaders.blogspot.com.

Now I made the experiment and given access from Posterous to merge these two blogs. Do I feel comfortable? Not 100%. But I've made a test on trust to the Posterous developers, as I reported a portion of spam mails yesterday, and had a swift reaction from a real person who promised to look into matters.

So - this double blog post is made from my blog blog and - let me see where it ends up?

Dubliners: paralysis, gnomon, simony

On reading The Sisters, the opening essay of Dubliners, I was wondering why the sisters are in the title; as the narrative is spun around the uneven friendship between a young boy (the narrator) and his peculiar attraction towards Father Flynn, a old paralyzed man sitting in the backroom of an "unassuming shop, registered under the vague name of Drapery", selling children's bootees and umbrellas". Father Flynn was sharing pieces of pious wisdom with the child, in the form of complex and mysterious riddles. His earthly pleasures were snuff (brought by the child as a present from his aunt) and beef tea (made by one of his two sisters, who must have been in charge of the Drapery shop). The boy is visiting the house of mourning with his aunt. Our narrator, the child is an observant, silent listener in the world of elderly people, afraid to accept a cream cracker because of the noise, but accepting a glass of sherry. What we learn about this old priest seem to have unspoken pointers to an attraction to young boys, or perhaps this is so easy for me to spot because of todays' scandalous revealing of the overwhealming evidence of pederasts in the catholic church. This is how I read this story, in 2010. On one hand, the young boy has felt a sort of mystified-intellectual attraction, on the other hand he is now piecing together indirect messages about a disappointed person, "they said it was the boy's fault" and "something gone wrong with him". And, the sisters? They have a shared childhood in Irishtown, apparently they never married as there is no mention of other family relations, (they may even have been Catholic nuns for a while, and were probably also marked by the peculiarity of their brother, the venerable priest and his unspoken attraction towards ...whatever. Also, in the first pasages, we learn that this young child is struggling with odd terms such as "paralysis, gnomon and simony". According to Tindall's a Reader's Guide to J.J, Dubliners is not as simple as it may seem; the paralysis theme relates to Dublin as city - but he also warns against overly complex interpretations

On reading Joyce (or not)

Well, as I mention in my last post, I joined this reading club yesterday, with the intention of opening my dormant love with James Joyce, which was so obviously my father's favourite - although I never really made him tell why so. After reading the blogging here and there and threads spun from conversation over the past two weeks of this book reading month, I think I'm getting a little closer to a point. There might be some humbleness into father's shyness of really talking about this passion; he was not really a literate, more like a reader, even a professional proof reader making sure that no typos, grammar errors or incorrectness leading to misinterpretations, would pass in print. Every date or biographical detail should be precise. So, according to this codex, his primary approach to sharing Joyce would be to point at passages that were problematic, and to keep a careful vocabulary record of different translation issues. Father would probably never consider himself an expert, even when he had some really deep insight in the matter (which was often the case as his research habits were extraordinary), much rather he would take a humble position in life. Or so at least it appears to me right now. Perhaps tomorrow I will find more aspects to this matter...

This reflection came to me while reading what Alan Levine wrote about what he does NOT know - his in-expertise, and how Chris Lott, the initiator of this Motley reading group, was answering in the comments here cogdogblog.com/2010/02/06/what-i-dont-know/

And, next posting WILL be about reading Dubliners, I promise :-)

A procrastination chain of connective inspiration

Yesterday, in my usual procrastination mood I wandered about looking at some Flickr photos because of an invitation to make friends with an Australian connection, and from a double portrait I jumped over to Nancy's album where she uploaded finger licking, lovely documentation from a recent restaurant visit in Rome in an old chocolate factory - how typical for Choconancy! Plain pasta with chocolate chips as a starter! I find this new trend of sharing meals online quite fascinating; in this case you could even see the overwhealming chocolate pride dessert plate before and after devouring.

Ok, so next step in this Roman adventure was Nancy's photo of two versions of James Joyce in Italian as well as English. A topic which hit me hard as i know I have this box waiting for me downstairs, left from my father's house, full of books by and about Joyce. Long ago, I read Ulysses, but also felt that I did not really get it. I sometimes tried to make father open up for his deep insight in the author, but all that he could really do was pointing to his book shelves and suggest that I read this or that book, or he would eventually point me to some words, a sentence that were translated differently in the second version in Danish. It never really made me figure out why he himself was so deeply fascinated by James Joyce.

And, third step in this passtime afternoon was the James Joyce reading club of February, which I felt I should join in the hope of getting some more inspiration to take up reading Joyce. Dubliners, I read most of these short stories first thing after I brought home the selected books from father's empty home. The language was so easy going and fine, to enjoy and reflect, as were the different characters depicted. Nothing made me feel excluded in the Ulyssean way. I just liked this little book, first I read it in English and then, in Danish to see what something was lost in translation, as it always seem to be. That was last year, about this time. This year, I wish to dig one more layer deep - so I joined this book club.

I'll stop this post now, and see how this blog could be shared within the framework.