My Reading Plan

My copy of ULYSSES has 780 pages. I’ve flipped through them – while there several sections, there don’t seem to be any chapters. To finish the novel in a year, I would have to read about 2.1 pages a day (or 2.136986… to be precise -- an irrational number, by the way). That seems eminently doable. Perhaps there will be days when the story tugs me along beyond this quota. Perhaps there will be many more days when I will read exactly 2.136986… pages, or down to the closest word (splitting this hair down to the closest letter of the closest word would be overdoing it, I believe).

But I noticed Joyce’s signoff at the end: Trieste-Zurich-Paris, 1914-1921. And here I thought Joyce was holed up in dreary Dublin to write this. One small stereotype shattered. Maybe larger stereotypes will also crumble.