What’s a JoyceGeek?

An Invitation

We JoyceGeeks are a highly productive breed. Some of us are quite public about our enthusiasm – Joseph Campbell, Mike Watt, Thornton Wilder, John Cage, Brie Larson – announcing to the world our devotion to James Joyce’s untamed and multivalent language at nearly every turn. Others have been more private about it – Samuel Beckett, Richard Linklater, Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon – revealing our geekiness in more subliminal ways by allowing only the subtlest references to the master to ‘wink through’ our art. But make no mistake; we are legion, and our influence on the art world has been indelible.

And yet we have always run the risk of being labeled by critics and even scholars as lunatics – especially those of us who read Finnegans Wake. Granted, some of us actually are lunatics, but proper art must sometimes dance on the edges of sanity and even cross its boundaries in order to retrieve substantive and lasting treasure.

So join the party and let’s start changing the world.


…and JoyceGeek is also a website

Regardless of your experience level with Joyce, if you click around, you might find one or two useful resources. The thunderword video-series in particular has gotten quite a lot of positive attention, as has the the blog, which ranges in topic from close readings of Joyce’s texts to examinations of Joyce’s influence on our culture today.

And (shifting to the first person singular), my name is Adam Harvey. The blogs and the video tutorials are mine, and I use this website to keep readers posted on my various Joyce related activities. I run a weekly James Joyce reading group, I host an annual Bloomsday show each June 16th, and I am hard at work finding new ways to bring Joyce’s final masterwork, Finnegans Wake, to a broader readership through my performance and film work.

But at a bare minimum, all you really need to know is that I read Joyce, and am thrilled to share what I know with anyone who asks. Have fun exploring.

10 comments on “What’s a JoyceGeek?

  1. Wish I could have been present at your NY performance.
    all the best,
    Heather

  2. Giovanna Livreri Frisella says:

    I’m geek.
    I’m.
    I’.
    ‘.
    .

  3. ejp says:

    Never not well read, dear …

  4. john burciaga says:

    Simon I did not know but he should be here still. When will we see him again? He lived not too long. Tell me more.

  5. john burciaga says:

    Next Wake…? Who’ll sing the Ballad…Or hold yer gob…

  6. Ernst Pattynama says:

    I very, very much enjoyed your thunderword series!

  7. Bob Dowling says:

    Adam 6 16 17
    You deserve buckets of praise for last night’s Bloomsday. I was looking to see if St. Johns was doing anything then heard your radio interview. Gotta get the word out. The readings and visuals were superb. You and all that talent right under our noses in Santa Fe.

  8. Clint Carroll says:

    Really enjoy your aminations. Didn’t discover Joyce til my 30’s. I’m a physician but have always secretly wanted to study literature. Read Finnegans Wake last year and am now studying it seriously in fits and starts. The high point of human art, if you ask me 🙂

  9. Kiheon Nam says:

    We (Korean Joyce maniacs) have finished 12-year reading of Ulysses. Now we are reading Finnegans Wake, 4-5 months per chapter. Now we have finished I.1, I.5, I.7, III.1, and are reading I.8.

  10. Thank you for all the great teaching. One thing I don’t see mentioned in recent years is the Finnegans Wake topic book “War and Peace in the Global Village” by Marshall McLuhan in 1968… I’ve been creating a multimedia Earwicker Pub Crawl centered on it at https://WakeIndra.com

    I really appreciate your work, thanks again!

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