How to listen to Ulysses
Book a flight to Kolkata India, and from Kolkata to Istanbul, for at least four days each, between February and April. Rent a home-stay room on College Street in Kolkata, and in the Balat neighborhood of Istanbul.
Get wired over-the-ear headphones, a phone with a headphone jack and long battery life, and walking shoes.
Download The Odyssey audiobook, translated by Emily Wilson, read by Claire Danes. Length: 13 hours.
Download two different audiobook recordings of Ulysses by James Joyce. Length: 30 hours each.
Download a course about Ulysses. Length: 12 hours.
On the way to Kolkata, listen to the Odyssey, start to finish.
Learn about Kolkata’s Bengali identity, languages, its colonial past as the capital of British India, the Writers’ Building, the Victoria Memorial, Boi Para, and reputation as the literary capital of India.
In Kolkata, walk around the city, listening to the Ulysses audiobook for ten hours per day, three days in a row, start to finish.
Record (write or voice memo) all of your questions and observations. When done, ask everything to an expert or top-tier AI. Save the answers to re-read later.
While travelling from Kolkata to Istanbul, listen to the course about Ulysses, for more understanding and layers of meaning, preparing you to listen again.
Learn about Istanbul’s past rulers, mixed identities and languages, juxtaposition of the sacred and commercial, and note its proximity to Aegean Sea of the Odyssey.
In Istanbul, listen to the other recording of Ulysses, ten hours a day, three days in a row, start to finish, while walking around the vastly different neighborhoods, taking a ferry across the Bosphorus, noticing the similarities between Istanbul’s call to prayer and Dublin’s church bells. This time you’ll have a deeper appreciation of the book.
Record all of your questions and observations. Again, when done, ask everything to an expert or top-tier AI. Re-read the previous answers now, too.
Back home, post pictures, videos, the GPS map of where you walked while listening, and especially your thoughts.
(I haven’t done this yet, but plan to. I listened to that Odyssey audiobook in two days of walking around Port Meadow, Oxford, and have been yearning to listen again.)
All the counselors hate the waiters,
And the lake has alligators.
And the head coach wants no sissies,
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses.
I gave Homer a few tips when he wrote the Odyssey.