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What are you currently reading?
Joseph:
Now reading a giant history of Black Mountain College, mostly out of interest in the poets associated with the place, like Charles Olson, Jonathan Williams, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Ed Dorn, and Robert Duncan (not to mention the involvement of Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Willem De Kooning, Josef Albers, and Cy Twombly), but in general the book is a fantastic look at what was a really awesome attempt at making a workable, artistically driver place for alternative education. Fascinating reading, and I haven't even gotten to any sections dealing with the figures I was originally interested in.
Also reading some Spinoza, some Gertrude Stein, some Zizek, some Ed Dorn, and going to start a Samuel R. Delany novel soon. Plus this really great book of interviews with American independent publishers.
Woo! Literature!
Inlander:
I finished reading the Iliad last week and it was just as incredible as I'd hoped it would be. I'm going to move on to the Odyssey soon but in the meantime I decided there wouldn't be a better time to read the recently pulished Ransom, David Malouf's short, beautiful retelling of the meeting between Priam and Achilles at the end of the Iliad. I only started it yesterday and I could have finished it tonight if I didn't want to savour it so much.
smack that isaiah:
After I read both the Iliad and The Odyssey for the third time I found Dan Simmons' Ilium and Olympos books, and they are as amazing as anything else Dan Simmons has ever written.
If you've liked anything by Dan Simmons before, and you've read a fair amount of classic literature (Shakespeare, Proust), and classic sci-fi, I'd recommend Ilium and Olympos once you finish The Odyssey
Avec:
I'm reading Ulysses while reading the Odyssey. Pretty solid plan, actually.
Joseph:
The Odyssey definitely provides some good background on Ulysses, but it's pretty important not to get too hung up on that sort of intertextuality; the real power of Ulysses lies in the use of language, innovation, and attention to detail, with the various guiding principles Joyce employed certainly being interesting and serving to lend a certain structure to the narrative, but not ultimately being of central importance. Nabokov's lectures on Ulysses can be a pretty good thing to look in to, to show the novel's other powers, beyond what could be called the more "superficial" structural choices. There are other good essays out there, of course (predictably, I'll recommend the Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner ones especially).
Either way, two incredible books. What translation of The Odyssey did you end up turning to?
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