Why the incredulous tone? The number of nation wide media outlets available in 1963 was minuscule compared to today. If something got mentioned on NBC, everyone in the country heard about it, because there were only two other networks out there. Nowadays, we got hundreds of networks, plus the Internet, plus vastly more radio options. (Not nearly as much print, of course.). It’s far, far more difficult to create a genuine nationwide sensation today than it ever was in the '60s, simply because there are so many media outlets, and so many of them cater to specialist niches. I don’t have a cite to back this up, but I’m pretty sure if you polled the number of people today familiar with 50 Shades, even by reputation, and compared it with the number of people in 1963 familiar with Joyce, even by reputation, the numbers on Joyce (as a percentage of the population) would dwarf 50 Shades.
You’d think that, if he’s going to argue against the James Joyce novel, he’d at least argue for the Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem, which actually is something called Ulysses.
So your new approach is that no one but a few NYC eggheads was really aware of Ulysses. The novel was not something that the general public would readily think of when they heard the name “Ulysses,” even in a context that made it clear it was a title. The funny thing about this idea–well, apart from the preposterousness of your demand that we prove it was “on top” of literally everybody’s mind, an obviously impossible condition for anything to meet–is that it completely destroys your previous arguments about how the song couldn’t refer to the novel because it would be offensive to include a reference to an ostensibly dirty book on the radio. If nobody knew what Ulysses was how would they be offended?
The real lesson is that you should never ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer.
Hell, I found 3 different books about Joyce online that reference the song. I don’t see any evidence that anybody believes Sherman’s line is a reference to something by Homer.
But he was alive in 1963 and he gives out $100 randomly. And he polled people.
He cannot be wrong.
Maybe not. But 7 of 11 people he polled certainly can.
This just in:
Historians at CUNY, while cataloging some personal papers of Allan Sherman, have uncovered an early draft of the lyrics to Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh, Sherman’s enormously popular 1963 hit song. According to a press release issued by the university, the third verse was originally written as follows:
All the counselors hate the waiters
And the lake has alligators
Our head cook won’t give us some cake
'Til he reads us from some thing called Finnegan’s Wake.
Yes, it’s a little clunky, but it does show that he had James Joyce in mind when he was writing this song.
Whaddya mean “cite?” It’s not enough I gotta make up the facts, now I have to make up my own cites too?
That’s stoopid. It’s clear, obvious, absolutely plain, that he was reading the lyrics to the 1850’s ballad.
-
Why would a cook, a cook be reading a book like that?
-
Wouldn’t parents be outraged that the phrase “Three quarks for Muster Mark” would be used as the inspirations for the subatomic particle named by Murray Gell-Mann? A particle that helped to validate the quantum view of the universe? Which allowed for uncertainty and possibly hippies?
Clearly, clearly it was a reference to the street ballad. The story of the ballad is about a guy who, while drunk, whacks his head, is thought to be dead, and at his wake, someone spills whiskey in his mouth causing him to reawaken.
WHISKEY=COOKING. IT’S ALL THERE IN THE TEXT, PEOPLE!
Have I gone into a looking glass world where camp cooks read stream-of-consciousness, absurdist literature to EIGHT year olds?
I also read your lost passage to 273 people I met on street corners and EVERY LAST ONE of these unimpeachable and uncorroboratable witnesses agreed that Sherman HAD to mean the street ballad.
Next time you want to put forth one of your crackpot “theories”, try to do a little research, ok?
Sheesh. :rolleyes:
My first exposure to Sherman was My Son, the Folksinger. I heard it at the house of the inappropriate* bachelor uncle as a child. Said uncle also gave me and my sister copies of Playboy to keep us quiet, and had bathroom wallpaper of giant buxom naked ladies in red velvet. It was the 60’s.
*(He also let us play with a roll of fiberglass insulation, demonstrating his poor judgment.)
Or his meanness. Itchy! 
It doesn’t have to reflect the world as a whole, just Sherman’s world. And in Sherman’s world, the Joyce book was far more significant at that time than Homer.
But of course, nothing anyone says at this point is going to dissuade you from your preposterous theory.
I grew up listening to WQXR in NYC; the radio station/fm location is gone now. (“Woody’s Children”–wasn’t that hosted by Somebody Sherman?)
I distinctly remember my disappointment when my parents told me that the music from the radio was not being played by “live” musicians. And my contempt for the whole idea, which was anybody could pick out a record.
And, interesting about the historiography and reception history of Joyce in the 1960s. (Sorry, no up thread cites.) I don’t feel like hunting down the date, but there’s a fairly well known photo of Marylin Monroe reading Ulysses. Prominently reading, one might say, in that photos of her or any bombshell reading, period, are anomalous. Staged, no doubt, and released by a professional agency which knew that any number of connections would be made.
Ah, it’s 1955.
11,640 times this thread has been opened and at least glanced at.
Hmm.
First, she’s at the back of the book, and the thought of her reading Molly Bloom’s post-coital soliloquy is kinda hot.
Second, the photographer says it’s not staged, and that MM found the book slow going, and I’m willing to believe that.
And third, a quote from MM:
And what is it Joyce most fundamentally wants to say? I’ll tell you what Joyce most fundamentally wants to say:
Hello, Muddah . . . Hello Fadduh . . .
Where is Molly Bloom from? Gibraltar! Where is Gibraltar? The south of Spain! What else is in the south of Spain? Granada!!! It all ties together, people!
I realize you’re joking, but it’s worth clarifying that according to Joyce, what he was aiming for was
a systematic de-sissyfication of Irish men. 
Thank you for this. I’ll think about it. Is that sourced in the URL I linked (I just grabbed it from an image search)? (I’m in an SD mood and cannot be arsed, as they say in a an expression I just learned yesterday from here.)
[QUOTE=Maserschmidt;17866669 [/quote]
[…] it’s worth clarifying that according to Joyce, what he was aiming for was […]
[/QUOTE]
What was Joyce aiming for in writing the book Ulysses? Now there’s a thread…
Correction: although commonly claimed as the source of the name, according to Feynman the passage was unknown to them.
See Particle Physics, Cheese, and the Word Quark, and the thread referenced therein.