In celebration of Bloomsday, 2007, LibriVox is releasing the long-awaited audio version of James Joyce’s Ulysses
The work comprises more than 32 hours of audio, and the project took a year-and-a-half to complete, with scores of volunteer participants. Started in November 2005, it is one of LibriVox’s longest-running projects, and is also the longest text we have recorded.
The LibriVox Ulysses project had a few special rules: readers were encouraged to read in groups, in public places, and no editing was required. And yet some of the sections (notably, sections 15 c,d,e,f and 18) have been done with extraordinary attention to detail and creativity. The audiobook can be downloaded here.
Bloomsday also sees the release of another Joyce novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
There is some rumbling within the LibriVox community about trying to produce a new audio version of Ulysses every two years.
Happy Bloomsday and happy birthday to you, Hugh!
Thanks!
Just reading this sentence: “readers were encouraged to read in groups, in public places, and no editing was required” gave me an intriguing idea. Why couldn’t Librivox audio books have ambient aural backgrounds for each scene (e.g. a scene at the market could contain some background sample of the Jean-Talon market, properly edited and mixed so as to keep the main audio intelligible)?
Or for that matter, could dialogues be actually acted out by different persons instead of just read by one person? Maybe you already thought of these, but they just appeared to me now.
Oh, and Happy HughDay!
some of the ulysses chaps were read as dialogue, with different readers… as for layering background samples, the nice thing about public domain audio, is that anyone can take it, improve it, cut it up, add background sounds, music or whatever they like ;-)
i think i’ve enjoyed the bit read by you and the guys the most thus far. i didn’t mind the moments when the guys would stop for a mistake or burst out laughing. it made the experience more enjoyable. more real. and the violin was warm. felt like i was kicked back @ a pub…ejoying a rich beer and hearing a brilliant story. (: