Never mind the weblogs, here's the dog's bollocks!

June 24, 2004 5:44 PM

Ulysses a page a day and the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci a page a day. Fire up your favorite newsreader or sign up for Bloglines and get down to some hardcore retro-feedin'!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken (29 comments total)

If anyone knows of any similar projects, I'd love to hear about them. Brain food good.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:45 PM on June 24, 2004

i like having these books online, but i think it's dumb to be force-fed something arbitrary like 1 page = 1 day. would you watch a film one minute a day for three months?

ulysses is hard work and an incredible reading experience; it's not a vitamin. i don't appreciate reinforcing the idea that literature has some kind of cozy, redeeming value that can be absorbed almost just by being in its vicinity.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 6:17 PM on June 24, 2004

a text version of the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. ... It lacks the illustrations of the original, but it's Good Enough.



OK, then: Leonardo

L'uomo di Leonardo

Studi per chiese concentriche

Studi sul cavallo (plenty of images, just follow the underlined links)

Battaglia d'Anghiari

Anatomia
posted by matteo at 6:17 PM on June 24, 2004

for the geometrically inclined:

Leonardo da Vinci's Polyhedra

Back to the human body

Drawings
posted by matteo at 6:20 PM on June 24, 2004

Thanks for the Ulysses link, stav! Great find!

I've been reading a subway portable version of Gravity's Rainbow a page (or 2 or 3) a day as a sort of (litmus) test for the whole VLB at a page a day scheme. It has been going ok, though not as well as planned. I figure at some point the suspense will build to a point where I can't put it down, but until then, despite _sirmissalot_ 's very valid point, I'll trudge through at my current pace.
posted by shoepal at 6:33 PM on June 24, 2004

Now that is some Pynchon restraint. I would call in sick for several days in a row just to plow through a Pynchon tome. Despite their outrageously complex plots and story lines, they are page turners, and the best way to keep all those complex story lines together is to read it fast, at least the first time through. I have tried taking my time (Vineland - one of his shorter works, over a couple of busy months) and I had to go back and reread huge sections to keep up with all the story line complexities. Perhaps that was just early Alzheimer's on my part.
posted by caddis at 6:55 PM on June 24, 2004

I posted a similar project here earlier: Pepys' Diary.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:03 PM on June 24, 2004

Now that one works on a page a day, thanks.
posted by caddis at 7:28 PM on June 24, 2004

i think it's dumb to be force-fed something arbitrary like 1 page = 1 day

Sure, but you subscribe for a few days, a week and then decide if your interest has been piqued. Kind of a cool way to test drive. Given the amount of crap I skip regularly in my Bloglines subscriptions, this will be a welcome change.
posted by yerfatma at 8:12 PM on June 24, 2004

i don't appreciate reinforcing the idea that literature has some kind of cozy, redeeming value that can be absorbed almost just by being in its vicinity.

Er. Show me someone who's actually doing that.

Me, I've read Ulysses half a dozen times, but it's a pure pleasure to me to have a new page in my list of new stuff in bloglines every morning. Like an occasional whiff of the partially-recalled perfume of an old lover. You're welcome to keep your nose in the air, though.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:20 PM on June 24, 2004

wow, you've read Ulysses half a dozen times!

did everyone hear that? congratulations, really, that's a fantastic achievement. and what a deft mention of your intellectual yeomanship. you really showed that novel who's boss.

beyond that annoying self-congratulation, i would agree that it might be nice to read a random passage of joyce now and then if one had read the text in question 6 times previously. (i also agree that reading an entry of Pepys' diary a day is nicely symmetrical.) but that has nothing to do with my point at all, which is about the commodification of "Thee Classics," you know, like shakespear on your toilet paper or kafka on your Borders t-shirt or, hmmmmm, joyce in your bloglines. it's an unserious, cutesy way to approach a great work of art, AND I FOR ONE AM NOT HAVING IT!
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 9:00 PM on June 24, 2004

The pretentious wanker accuses his opponent du jour of pretentious wankery! The crowd goes wild!

You're the sort of twit who unfailingly tells someone that their favorite band (writer, director, whatever) was cool, you know, until they sold out, aren't you?

it's an unserious, cutesy way to approach a great work of art

Right, because it's important that we 'approach art' with all seriousness, with hushed voices and downcast eyes.

Bite me.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:09 PM on June 24, 2004

oh, get a sense of humor.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 9:13 PM on June 24, 2004

Oh, get a shift key.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:14 PM on June 24, 2004

I'd have to mention that the idea of 'being forcefed a page a day' is nonsense, anyway.

I subscribed to the feed 10 days ago, read the first few pages as they went up, then didn't read anything for a several days, and caught up to the present by reading the most recent 5 pages this morning. They don't disappear if you don't read them every day. Choose your own adventure.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:21 PM on June 24, 2004

Oh Snap!

*blows whistle* Penalty! 5 minutes in the box, _sirmissalot_. We do not, under any circumstances, use the word yeomanship in the blue. Save it for the grey!

Stav! I had a whole paragraph written about your display of restraint. oh well.
posted by shoepal at 9:21 PM on June 24, 2004

Hey, I restrained, I restrained. No exclamation marks or (comedy) ALLCAPS to be seen!

You know, except just then.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:28 PM on June 24, 2004

Gerty, dear, borrow me a beer - grown men are fighting on the windowsill and I can feel my scrotumtightening.
posted by Opus Dark at 9:33 PM on June 24, 2004

Goldfilter: "Oh, get a shift key." posted by stavrosthewonderchicken
posted by shoepal at 9:33 PM on June 24, 2004

i have to agree that "yeomanship" is pretty much out of bounds. i hope the community at large can forgive a poor young man for letting his passionate love of the arts get the upper hand.

(hey, i'd get a shift key, but it's missing from the keyboard and i refuse to sell out just to upgrade.)
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 9:41 PM on June 24, 2004

forgive a poor young man for letting his passionate love of the arts get the upper hand

Now, see, that I can get behind. I suspect the difference between our respective loves for the arts may be that mine is a little greasier and sweatier than yours, perhaps, which is a distinction of degree not of nature. That's why I posted this, after all.

*gets behind passionate love for the arts, positions himself*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:48 PM on June 24, 2004

*bends over for the sake of art, braces himself*
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 10:08 PM on June 24, 2004

Um, isn't the whole frickin' thing already online? Please see the menu on the left.

I agree that the page-a-day thing is lame, but if it gets someone to read the book, it's a good thing.
posted by jpoulos at 6:05 AM on June 25, 2004

I'd just like to mention that I'm a fond fan of Bloglines and can probably prove that its shot my work productivity to hell. I can't hope to try reading any of the stuff mentioned, but it's nice to know it's out there in yet another digital format.
posted by codger at 6:23 AM on June 25, 2004

Hi. I'm the creator of the Ulysses site.

I made it because I wasn't staying on task when I'd try to read the book. I wanted something to help me and this seemed both obvious and easy to implement. Time will tell whether it is effective or not.

I look forward to my page waiting for me every morning. So far I haven't had a day where I've read just that one page, but I do go back to whichever page has been posted each day and read again from there. I don't see why this is a problem for anyone else. You're all still free to read your books whichever way you like and whichever way satisfies your minimum seriousness requirements.

Also, _sirmissalot_'s use of the word commodification seems very out of place to me since the whole thing is completely free. Buy your toilet paper and t shirts elsewhere. Please.
posted by squant at 7:31 AM on June 25, 2004

that has nothing to do with my point at all, which is about the commodification of "Thee Classics"

And your "point" (a rather blunt one) has nothing to do with this post or with the site itself... as pointed out by the site's creator just above my comment! I love MetaFilter. And I love this post. Thanks, stav, you greasy, sweaty patron of Thee Classics! Didn't they cover "Land of a Thousand Dances"?
posted by languagehat at 8:16 AM on June 25, 2004

Hmph. No discussion of the book in question?

I picked up Portrait of the artist when I was like 13, and it was totally impossible; I assumed this would be, too, and it remains to be seen whether I'll get it as a whole, but the writing itself, small-scale, is amazing. Listen to the descriptions of Mulligan:

face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

In one sentance you can see the light on the sandy-blonde hair; Joyce got it perfectly.

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.

I'm not sure I like using the word Gestalt, but that's it. He captured an entire huge complex elusive feeling in couple sentances.
posted by Tlogmer at 8:46 AM on June 25, 2004

Hats off to you, squant!!! I've been looking for a way to approach this work in a way which will (a) not force me to lug it along on the subway every morning - though I did actually do this with Gravity's Rainbow last year - and (b) not completely destroy my productivity at work. The bite-size-chunk approach seems to fit the bill exactly.
posted by UlfMagnet at 11:44 AM on June 25, 2004

Hmph. No discussion of the book in question?

We don't discuss content; we discuss the context of content, unfailingly choosing that aspect of which is the least most interesting.
posted by Opus Dark at 12:43 PM on June 25, 2004