All the Italicized bits are web-quotes, some edited for length, of random things that struck me while browsing today, several involving Ulysses.

The timing of Justice Kennedy’s retirement explained:

Justice Anthony Kennedy announced that he would be retiring, and it was reported that, as an executive at Deutsche Bank, Justice Kennedy’s son Justin Kennedy had presided over $1 billion in loans to President Trump, who has publicly referred to Justin as a “special guy.”

One reason for America’s health crisis:

Taco Bell was named the best Mexican restaurant of 2018 in the [annual] Harris Poll.

Local Iowa example of fact-free America: 

[A local citizen\] wrote that the vigil-keepers lacked sympathy for American citizens. “What about the ones living in Mount Pleasant who couldn’t find a job because they were employing illegal immigrants instead?” The view that immigrants take jobs from citizens or depress wages was a common one, but it was disputed by local business owners. The unemployment rate in Henry County is 2.9 percent, and many factories display “Hiring” signs. Gary Crawford, who owns Mt. Pleasant Tire, said he paid tire installers $16 to $24 an hour, with full benefits. “I know most of the people who run the factories,” he said. “They just can’t find help.”

An uncapitalized English word related to a single Chinese book:

redology

Noun (uncountable)The study of the novel Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the four classic Chinese literary works.

 

Greed in the literary world:

 

Another academic named Charles Rossman … had discovered that the Joyce Estate, run by Stephen Joyce, the author’s notoriously prickly grandson, had authorized the Gabler edition* for the reason of creating enough “new” content to extend the copyright, which in Europe was expiring in 1992. This was not an inconsequential claim. At the time, “Ulysses” sold an estimated 100,000 copies a year. A renewal of the copyright would protect revenues for decades to come, for both the publisher and Stephen Joyce, who had to legally authorize this new edition.

 

A juicy nugget concealed in another version of Ulysses:

“The Secret Confessions of a Conservative,” where the anonymous writer explains that his pro-life, pro-death-penalty positions are so consistent that “if an embryo or fetus commits murder, then he should be aborted.”

The original blogger:

Joyce fanatic Jorn Barger was a polymath who in the earliest days of the internet wrote a lot of brilliant Joyce analysis on his weblog (a word he also coined).

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* Though filled with errors, the controversial Gabler edition is now widespread and most favored by Joycean academics.

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