Marathon readers take on “˜Ulysses’ all night long
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 2, 2002 9:00 p.m.
BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Actor Elliott
Gould kicks off the Marathon Reading at noon Thursday.
By Bridget O’Brien
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
[email protected]
UCLA may be a dry campus, but some English department graduate
students are spending 27 continuous hours at a homemade bar outside
Rolfe Hall.
The bar is part of a set built for the seventh annual Marathon
Reading, which this year features James Joyce’s
“Ulysses.”
The event raises funds for English graduate student scholarships
and fellowships, mostly to defray costs of sending students to
conferences to present their work.
Actor Elliott Gould started reading aloud the 783-page novel at
noon Thursday and students, faculty and other celebrities plan to
finish around 3 p.m. today.
“Things get a little thin around 4 a.m.,” said Chris
Loar, a graduate student in English. Though most shifts last only
five minutes, in the marathon two years ago Loar ended up reading
several shifts that stretched up to 45 minutes long.
“It’s adrenaline mostly,” said Loar.
Shivesh Kumar, a fourth-year microbiology and
English student, reads along with “Ulysses” at 9 p.m.
Thursday. Pariticipants have been reading all night, hitting page
355 at 2:20 a.m., and expect to complete the book at about 3 p.m.
today.
Peter Dennis, best known as the voice of Winnie the Pooh, read
Thursday during the second hour of the marathon and admitted
he’d “never read a word of it before.”
After getting his first dose of Joyce, Dennis said he would like
to read all of “Ulysses,” “starting at page
one.”
As of Thursday afternoon, the event had raised about $12,500
according to Kevin Cooney, graduate student of English and the
event’s coordinator. He expects to reach the usual amount of
about $15,000.
Most of the funds come from sponsors through Friends of English
and alumni, but there is a donation box and a fund-raising raffle
at the event.
Cooney said about seven or eight students are planning on
staying most of the night, but many just go for their five-minute
reading shift or stay to listen for a while.
Second-year environmental studies and women’s studies
student Jo Situ found out about the event through her English 4
class and read for five minutes at 3:20 p.m. Thursday.
“I bought this book so long ago, but it was always too
intimidating,” she said. Like Dennis, Situ hadn’t read
“Ulysses” previously, but didn’t feel that that
detracted from the experience.
“It was amazing. The rhythm and language come together and
I was really drawn into it. I like how it stumbles me.”
The marathon, which is free to all, will close today with
reading by actress Bairbre Dowling, who played a role in the film
version of Joyce’s “The Dead.”
