Status Updates From The "Ithaca" chapter of Joy...

"The idea... struck Joyce while he was revising the final proof, and he added the fifteen parentheses... additions like these, shattering the typography of an entire paragraph,.. ultimately caused the French printers to parallel 'merde' with a fine new swearword --JOYCE!" (104)

I'm now realizing that this is actually a textbook for the writing of, well, anything. Studying Joyce's process destroys the myth of the author sitting down at a typewriter and composing from beginning to end. Though it starts out a bit heavy handed, this could be required reading for any writing course.

"...publishing...on...February 2, 1922...In red ink on the last proof a printer has substituted [a] word...and noted in the margin, 'lettre de M. Joyce recue 30.1.22." Rarely in publishing history can the phrase 'last minute changes' have so closely approached literal truth."

"The drafts reveal that nothing here is coincidental: in the basic manuscript the number is given as 'Box 320' in both places; later in the proofs, Joyce carefully struck off the zero."

A forensic analysis of Joyce's creative process, this one focusing in-depth on a single chapter.

(3) Was it possible to contract for these several schemes?
Positing what protasis would the contraction for such several schemes become a natural and necessary apodosis? (719)

(2) Why did he not conclude?
What was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich? (689)

Examples of Joyce's original questions followed by the revised version:

(1)What did Bloom think that Stephen thought about Bloom?
What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom and Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom's thoughts about Stephens?

From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received: existence with existence he was with any as any: from existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived.

So far this is a page turner especially when the author remarked some of the paragraphs were inspired by Bertrand Russell's "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy". Here's an example of how the relation of the following entries made it to text:
0=1/many
(infinity sign)=many/one
1=1/1

==>

So far this is a page turner. : )