Grand Podcast Abyss Grand Podcast Abyss

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is the fifth in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. This one covers episodes seven through nine of Joyce’s Ulysses. First, we hear James Joyce’s voice, reading from the “Aeolus” episode. Then I consider the following: the formal anti-realist turn represented by the use of interpolated headlines in “Aeolus,” plus the chapter’s motif of comparing and contrasting various empires and peoples and the way they are represented in the novel (Greek, Jewish, Roman, English, Irish); the narratively dense “Lestrygonians” and the information it relays about Bloom’s life and times, especially in one of the novel’s most moving, passionate, and beautiful passages; and “Scylla and Charabdys,” with its return to philosophical themes (Plato vs. Aristotle; idealism vs. empiricism; Romanticism vs. realism) and Stephen’s strikingly proto-postmodern theory of Shakespearean authorship, what I call “Dark Stratfordianism.” (You won’t want to miss my digressive tirade on Shakespeare authorship theories, nor my answer to the question: who is Shakespeare in Ulysses?) The first 15 minutes are free to all; the rest requires a paid subscription. Please like, share, comment, subscribe, and enjoy! The slideshow corresponding to the lecture can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is the fourth in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. This one covers episodes four through six of Joyce’s Ulysses. I begin by characterizing the lower-middle-class cultural milieu of the Bloom sections of the novel with its focus on popular and middlebrow as well as high culture, as opposed to the highbrow sections devoted to Stephen Dedalus. I more closely consider the novel’s possibly almost occult use of Homeric correspondences with help from Stuart Gilbert’s James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Study. Then I investigate “Calypso,” particularly the introduction of Leopold Bloom as curious, kind, artistic, science-minded, socially outcast, and lower-middle-class Odysseus; the ambivalent-to-hostile evocation of Zionism; the subversive if potentially disturbing act of sexualizing domestic women, domestic children, and domestic spaces; and the theme of metempsychosis. In “The Lotus Eaters,” I focus on Bloom’s skeptical view of religion as opiate of the masses, as well as his pornographic correspondence as Henry Flower and his fancied erotic bath. Finally, I consider “Hades,” with its theme of fathers and sons, its pioneering use of the trauma plot, its secular conception of death, and the possibility that Ulysses overall is not just a revision of The Odyssey but also of Dante’s Inferno and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Please like, share, comment, and enjoy! The slideshow corresponding to the lecture can be downloaded here:

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture, free in its entirety, is the third in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. Its topic is the first three chapters of Joyce’s Ulysses: “Telemachus,” “Nestor,” and “Proteus.” I first make some general remarks about the novel’s context, its structure and form, and its textual history. I also discuss the nature of the book’s notorious difficulty. I summarize the first three chapters for first-time readers and then closely examine select passages. Themes raised in “Telemachus” include Stephen’s mourning for his mother and search for paternity, his sense of himself as a servant to three masters (the British Empire, the Catholic Church, and Irish nationalism), and his complex revision of Irish nationalist myth in the figure of the Shan Van Vocht; I also consider the formal interplay between stream-of-consciousness and more conventional narrative prose. In “Nestor” I dwell on history as nightmare and the affinity Stephen perceives between the Irish and the Jews as a usurped and oppressed people. In “Proteus,” with its much more thoroughgoing stream-of-consciousness narration, I consider the war in Stephen’s mind between Plato and Aristotle, idealism and empiricism, Romanticism and realism, and their synthesis in the very form of this novel; I further investigate Stephen’s relations—filial, sexual, and amicable—with men and women; and I pause to remark on the unparalleled beauty and significance of Joyce’s language. This episode is the only free one in the Joyce sequence. Please like, share, comment, and enjoy!—and please offer a paid subscription so you don’t miss the rest of this summer’s tour through the most consequential novel of the 20th century, not to mention the archive of episodes on modern British literature from Blake to Beckett, a forthcoming sequence on Middlemarch, and the fall focus on American literature, including Moby-Dick. The slideshow corresponding to the lecture can be downloaded here:



This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is the second in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. Its topic is Joyce’s first novel, the autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I discuss the novel’s history, from its first version, Stephen Hero, a 1000-page omnisciently narrated realist saga, to its revision as a dense, brief novel narrated entirely from within the language of consciousness of Joyce’s stand-in Stephen Dedalus, from the babytalk of his childhood to the philosophizing of his early adulthood. I explain Joyce’s modernist revision of the bildungsroman as genre: his schematic exposure of its structure and devices. I detail the paradoxes of a static portrait that is also a developmental bildungsroman, an interpenetration of time and eternity. I explore the relations between literature and painting. To demonstrate the type of close reading Joyce demands, I give a dramatic reading from a passage in my doctoral dissertation about the function of articles (a, the, a) in the novel’s title. Then I journey through the novel’s plot and structure, elaborating on themes, styles, and motifs, with attention to the narrative’s mythic dimension in the story of Daedalus and to the themes of gender and sexuality the novel raises. I also link the novel to Romanticism as both a fulfillment and critique of that earlier movement, with reference to Joyce’s Blakean, Byronic, and Shelleyean allusions. Finally, I discuss Stephen as Luciferian rebel, anti-nationalist apolitical radical, and aestheticizing philosopher. Next week, we will rejoin Stephen in the first three chapters of Ulysses. The first 14 minutes are free to all; please offer a paid subscription for the full episode. Please like, share, and comment—and please enjoy. The slideshow corresponding to the lecture is below the paywall.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is the first in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. I begin with some advice for reading Ulysses, which we will begin in two weeks. Mainly, however, this episode covers Joyce’s first major work, the short story collection Dubliners. I briefly discuss Joyce’s life. Then I explain the censorship troubles Dubliners faced, the influential theory of the “epiphany” informing its composition, and its structure as the bildungsroman of a city. I also consider the history and theory of the short story as a form. Finally, I examine select stories from the collection for their stylistic and thematic significance, from the decadent minimalism of “The Sisters” to the universal vision of “The Dead,” with comments on Joyce’s religion, politics, and sexuality. Next week, we will turn to Joyce’s autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The first 20 minutes are free to all; please offer a paid subscription for the full episode. Please like, share, and comment—and please enjoy. The slideshow corresponding to the lecture is below the paywall.

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is about the life and work of Samuel Beckett, with a focus on his play Waiting for Godot. We begin by considering Beckett’s place in literary history as an experimentalist trying to find a way to write after Joyce. Then I consider his biography in more detail, including his relationship with Joyce, his work with the French Resistance, and his turn to both minimalism and the French language. Finally, I read Waiting for Godot itself, his most famous play, as a drama of “posts”: post-Christian, post-Romantic, post-political, post-theatrical, post-modernist, and post-life, with nonetheless a minimal ethic counseling us against total despair. Don’t miss my shocking theory about the true identities of Pozzo and Lucky. This episode is free to all. If you enjoy it, please offer a paid subscription, especially if you want access to our summer reading of Ulysses and Middlemarch. Please like, share, comment, subscribe—and please enjoy! The slideshow corresponding to the lecture is here:



This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com/subscribe