Impossible to fathom, hilarious, daringly sexy, controversial enough to be banned on two continents, the most scandalous book of the last century, indelible. Descriptions of James Joyce’s Ulysses’ range from outrage to intimidation to cultlike devotion. Many readers give up in despair after reading the first sentence of the dense third chapter: “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.”
That’s unfortunate, since quitters will not enter the familiar domestic world of Leopold and Molly Bloom. If you feel intimidated by Joyce’s epic, remember that millions have read Ulysses before you and millions will read the inexhaustible novel in the future. This conversation will suggest ways to enjoy Joyce’s masterwork in all its ambitious glory. Together we can share Joyce’s sensuous, mind-expanding literary odyssey and, in the process, encounter one of the few profound explorations of the wonders and difficulties of adult love.
Robert J. Seidman is a novelist and Emmy-winning screenwriter. His most recent novel, Moments Captured, is based loosely on the work and life of the pioneering 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, inventor of the first – or second - motion picture camera. Seidman’s One Smart Indian is a novel about a Northern Cheyenne youth set in mid-nineteenth century America. He is finishing a novel about Joseph Pulitzer’s ace reporter, Nellie Bly.
Seidman’s screenwriting credits include the Emmy-nominated A Life Apart: Hasidism in America. He co-wrote Margaret Mead: An Observer Observed, a docu-drama about Mead's intellectual contributions and the creation of her legend. Seidman wrote In Our Time, the final program of a nine-part series ambitiously titled, Art of the Western World. Robert Seidman is co-writer of Waiting for Beckett, a documentary on the work and life of the Nobel Prize winning author. Seidman wrote Wallace Stevens: Man Made Out of Words, a documentary about Stevens' poetry and life. Seidman was co-writer of Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life. This film won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Documentary, a George Foster Peabody Award, and the Emmy for Best Documentary, 2007. His latest documentary is Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People, nationally broadcast on PBS, 2019.
With Don Gifford, Robert Seidman is co-author of Ulysses Annotated: An Annotation of James Joyce's Ulysses, University of California Press. This year the volume celebrated its half century anniversary. Seidman is working on a documentary film, Ulysses and Me, about the multiple pleasures and taunting mysteries of Joyce’s epic.