Writer and academic Catherine Flynn will be releasing a centenary edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses through Cambridge University Press this year. To promote the release, Professor Flynn has been hosting a podcast, featuring interviews with Joycean scholars and readers, discussing each chapter of the book.
With all the possible points of entry to Ulysses open to me, I of course put my hand up to talk about Oxen of the Sun, the notoriously ‘difficult’ chapter. Episode 14 of the U22 podcast is now live, and you can hear me credit my late father with introducing me to Joyce by dismissing the challenges of reading Ulysses (his tip - read it out loud); and I absolutely murder the French and German languages during my reading.
From the episode description:
Set in a maternity hospital, “Oxen” parodies the development of English prose. A celebration of maternity or a rival creative feat? Joyce called it the most difficult episode “to interpret and to execute”; we talk about the shortcuts he took in composing it and its unexpected humor. Joining us are Greg Harradine, a composer in the Scottish Borders, Emmet O’Cuana, Dublin writer living in Australia, and Chrissy Van Mierlo, Museum director at Loughborough Bellfoundry, UK, and recovering Joycean.