James Joyce Reading Group discussion

Opening discussions on any aspects of Ulysses...

Most readers familiar with Joyce understand that the novel is a modernist "retelling" of the epic poem (known as The Odyssey) by Homer.

The book also adheres to Homer's three-part structure - 1) Telemachus 2) Voyage 3) Ithaca.

In short, this three part structure allows us to 1) get to know Stephen Dedalus, or, if the reader has aleady read "Portrait" (which is highly recommened to further appreciate Ulysses), to re-familiarize ourselves with him. Stephen represents Telemachus, or Odysseus' son. In this case, the father - son relationship between Stephen and Leopold Bloom is a symbolic one...

2) Voyage allows us to meet Mr. Leopold Bloom (who represents, syboloically, our modern-day Odysseus), his wife, Molly (Penelope), and follow Bloom's voyage through the expanse of a single day in Dublin. (June 16, 1904, the day that Joyce met Nora Barnacle, his life-long companion).

3) Ithaca brings Stephen and Bloom back to Bloom's home base, after their meeting in a brothel.

This simple three-part form contains a catalogue of all things Dubliner, and also gives Joyce a chance to use a pre-determined form to fill with his experiments in prose.

Ulysses is perhaps most well-known for its use of "stream of consciousness" writing. I've never been comfortable with this term, for is suggests that the writer just puts any old word down that comes to his or her head. This is hardly the case in Ulysses. Joyce spent about 11 years composing Ulysses, and spent many more years editing the text as successive editions would be printed. Ulysses was published in Paris by Shakespeare and Company (owned and ran by Sylvia Beach), and the story of its publication is perhaps as notorious today as the book itself.

Because of the unusual style of the writing, both typists and printers were highly confused by the text, and often made "corrections" in the proofs. The first printing of the novel arrived with hundreds, if not thousands of errors. I had a copy of the original manuscript and the first published edition of the novel, along with Joyce's corrections. There are dozens of mistakes on every page.

After several years of trying to correct the successive editions, Joyce finally gave up on working on the manuscript to devote all his time to the construction of Finnegans Wake (which took him 18 years to complete). In the 1980s, Hans Walter Gabler assembled a team of scholars and all the available proofs and notes from Joyce on the corrections in order to assemble an edition that would be as faithful to Joyce's ideal text. This edition was originally poblished by Random House and heralded as "The Corrected Text". Later, the publisher renamed the edition "The Gabler Text".

I find this edition the superior text, and it is perhaps more easily readable than say, the text published by the Modern Library (probably the text most popular and easiest to find).

Agreed on the Gabler text, Phillip.

being a human being, i feel particularly close to mr bloom. he is one of the more human of literary protagonists.

I have the feeling that those under "a certain age", let's say, empathize more with Stephen...then progress/regress to empathize more with Bloom as they grow older...just a thought. I'm 38 as of this post, and I still feel like a Stephen. My wife is DEFINITELY a Molly! <:)>

On the Gabler text -
I am sentimental -
2 things.
1. I was at the Miami meeting where
Gabler presented and Thomas Kydd gave his
famous attack on the text. Kydd was eloquent. Gabler was not likeable. And defensive without being convincing. And the whole was like a vested interest industry.

2. When I was thirteen my parents had the Modern Library edition on their shelves and I picked it up - and with my mother's one line answer to my question "What is this?" (what goes on in the heads of some people for 24 hours.) I "read" the book. I remember Nightown and of course Molly. But mostly
I remember the print. The newspaper headlines etc. Also found the same in
Dos Passos' USA which I read about the same time (I had a remarkable English teacher, Rowse Wilcox, who was wonderful at making us see books in unconventional ways that let us read unconventional looking books.)
So I have an emotional connection to the appearance of the Modern Library edition, and I find the Gabler looks "bookish" and misses the effects.
But perhaps that is just my sentimentality. I have yet to see a satisfactory answer to Kydd's complaints however.

Bryllars

i like both edititions, but if you do the comparisons with the original text and the notes that joyce produced (i once had a copy of the first edition with joyce's corrections), the gabler text really is more "complete". if you know the story, there were numerous printing errors in all the first few editions that came out. the gabler text sought to deal with printing mistakes, and other textual errors.

i agree, i like the look of the modern library text, but i prefer the "words" of the "corrected" or "gabler" text.

you say gabler "misses the effects". what exactly are you talking about?

D
OES THE GABLER TEXT HAVE THE LOVELY ENORMOUS
initial letters that introduces each of the three (see above) sections?

I am sentimentally attached to the Modern Library text. Our high school librarian (bless you Mrs. Noonan) had a secret copy of Ulysses that she would loan out to seriously interested students who wanted to read it. (Needless to say, Ulyssess is not something that is on the recommended list for high school students! They have enough trouble with gay penguins in 2009!) I think I can let that cat out of the bag now, it is too late to get her into trouble (this was 1969). So both the copy that I read the first time through as well as the dogeared dogsbody copy I have today are Modern Library editions, so to say that I am sentimentally attached is an understatement.

However, tracking down things that are real typos and distinguishing them from Joyce's creative use of the English language is a great service to the reading community.

As most of you know, each chapter has a Homeric/Greek parallel. Typically the untitled chapters are known by incidents associated with Homer. (I add a list of the standard chapter "titles" below). However, each chapter has decided theme that is emphasized by a systematic overlay of symbols: an art or science, a part of the body, colors, moods, etc.--and in fact the style of every chapter changes based on the theme, just to emphasize it the more.

I think that one of the reasons that he has done this is to give a transcendent quality of epiphany over what is an often bitter and ironic depiction of "dear dirty Dublin." This is where a lesser artist might have been satisfied with a slice of life or a social commentary, or sprawling broad picaresque humor. (Although there are aspects of all this subsumed in the work.) So that the most common things, and by implication, our lives, function on both the level of tawdriness, true, but as also, an outward sign of inward grace, for God is a "cry in the street." sxo life is simultaneously elevated by his mythologizing, and yet what it is.

A very helpful set of charts of these correspondences for Ulysses newbies:
http://www.ulysses-art.demon.co.uk/sc...

For reference, the chapters are referred to as:
TELEMACHUS
NESTOR
PROTEUS
CALYPSO
LOTUS EATERS
HADES
AEOLUS
LESTRYGONIANS
SCYLLA & CHARYBDIS
WANDERING ROCKS
SIRENS
CYCLOPS
NAUSICAA
OXEN OF THE SUN
CIRCE
EUMAEUS
ITHACA
PENELOPE

Molly Bloom wordle: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/14552...

Getting the book published at all and not banned or even burned (literally) was insanely difficult at the time. It wasn't his first such encounter with obstacles, one edition of Dubliners, I believe, was bought up in its entirety, just so the lot could be burned. In looking over the early publishing history, it is such an amazing story, I assembled an interesting timeline:
1. Ezra Pound, serial publication in The Little Review 1918.
2. Serialization halted in 1920 when the editors were convicted of publishing obscenity.
3. Banned in the United States in 1921.
4. Published in English in Paris in 1922 by Sylvia Beach from her well-known Rive Gauche bookshop, Shakespeare and Company.
5. Published in England in 1922 by Harriet Shaw Weaver, 500 copies shipped to the States seized and probably destroyed.
5. John Rodker produced another 500 more in 1923 intended to replace the missing copies, but these were burned by English customs.
6. Bootleg copies appear in 1924. Probably with all kinds of mistakes in them: which is really a bad thing in a book that is difficult as Ulyssess.
7. In 1928, a court injunction against Samuel Roth was obtained and he ceased publication of the bootlegs.
8. The novel was not published in the United States until 1933.
9. In 1933, Random House arranged to import the French edition and have a copy seized by customs.
10. U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled in 1933 that the book was not pornographic and therefore could not be obscene
11. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling in 1934.[Wikipedia:]

I read it 10 years ago. Currently in the middle of FW, but looking forward to another go in a few years.

My first exposure to Ulysses was as follows:

I was living in Garden City, Kansas, of all places, about 12 years ago (don't ask). I had become interested in Joyce, I'm not sure how, perhaps from various internet wanderings, so I went to the public library and found a nice hardbound copy of Ulysses. I took it home and flipped through it and was utterly confused by what I saw. But here is the interesting part: The book ended with the Ithaca chapter. I distinctly recall the last word in the book being, not "Yes" but "Where?"

Think of it! They went to the trouble to remove the (sinful!) last chapter and have the book bound back up! (...they say there is strangeness, too dangerous, in our theaters and bookstore shelves - those who know what's best for us, must rise and save us from ourselves...)

I first checked it out
from the local college library and
read it in 1951 when I was 11.
wanted to see what it was
that caused it to be censored
the Molly chapter was definitely included
and this was in east tennessee. . .

I have been thinking about Stephen Dedelus a lot. In Portrait, he has an epiphany, and goes off with the great and arrogant confidence of youth. It is kind of an upbeat ending. Then he ends up back in Dublin in Ulysses (after living in Paris!) dead broke, and pushed around by everybody. I have heard it said that Stephen Dedelus represents Joyce's immature self, and Bloom represents his more mature self. One parallel with Proust is he has a fictional self, and one that he is distanced from, and increasingly treats in an ironic fashion. I had a thought of writing an essay that overlays the narrative arc of his portrayal of the poet/bard figure with the development of the injection of an essentially poetic consciousness into prose and the resulting strain it places on language.

Too long to go into here, but I'll let you know if I ever get around to it.

Ive been reading this off and on for a awhile. Some things confuse me. At the end of EUMAEUS the final phrase in the sentence is italized "...and looked after their lowbacked car." Does anyone know whether this is a typo? or intentional? Because it seems to imply that Stephen and Bloom take the streetcleaners vehicle, whearas in the following chapter they are again walking I think.

I guess where I am confused is in whether the change in possessive pronoun is meant to imply a metaphorical change of "power" or whether is simply a typo.

Thought this might be the forum to ask.

One thing you can take to the bank is that Joyce consistently checked and double checked minuscule details of Dublin life, even going as far as timing walking distance in his character's perambulations. So any apparent violation of continuity is very likely either memory of a previous incident, free association, indirect quotation, or metaphor.

I actually found an explanation for this. I owe the Literary Symbol By WILLIAM YORK TINDALL for the following explanation, which involves an obscure metaphor for consubstantiality:

The passages in italics, as my student pointed out, are from "The Low-backed Car," a ballad by Samuel Lover, which tells of a couple off to get married by the priest. ...Joyce suggests by this device that Stephen and Bloom, having met and agreed, are now off to be united in the following chapter, where over the kitchen table at number seven they will symbolize their atonement with cocoa or god-food. Consubstantial at last, Bloom will become "Blephen" and Stephen "Stoom".

Thanks for your feedback on this. Your right, now that I look at this edisode there are other instances of the exact same method.

This episode does have alot of the merging and blending of boundaries. I've thought that the use of "Blephen" and "Stoom" seemed to have happened in this one as apposed to the following, though it didn't. Ithaca seemed to establish a distinct otherness, especially with Stephen's walking away.

Thanks for pointing out the Lover ballad.

Yeah, it was kind of confusing the first time I read it too.

Joyce was terrifically fascinated by the ways in which language can mirror and also diverge from reality. Even as far back as Portrait, Joyce has the young Stephen think "a belt is also giving someone a belt." Given the associational manner of stream of consciousness, and a willingness to, as I would put it, show language in the process of its making (he had, in his bosom, I would say, a half-warmed fish), Ulysses is filled of a large number of spoonerisms, such as the errors in reporting Dignam's funeral: Leopold "Boom" is recorded as present, and an unknown mourner in a macintosh is recorded as being named Macintosh. Molly asks Bloom to define met-him-pike-hoses (metempsychosis).

A friend kindly sent me a list of spoonerisms. The several examples of Spoonerism that have been sometimes attributed to Dr. Spooner include such gems as :-

"Blushing crow" for "crushing blow"
A well-boiled icicle" for "well-oiled bicycle."
"I have in my bosom a half-warmed fish" (for half-formed wish).
He raised this toast to Her Highness Victoria: "Three cheers for our queer old dean!"
Upon dropping his hat: "Will nobody pat my hiccup?"
At a wedding: "It is kisstomary to cuss the bride."
Paying a visit to a college official: "Is the bean dizzy?"
Addressing farmers as "ye noble tons of soil"
Visiting a friend's country cottage: "You have a nosey little crook here."
He reprimanded one student for "fighting a liar in the quadrangle"
Another stern reprimand to a misbehaving student:- "You have hissed all my mystery lectures. You have tasted two worms. Pack up your rags and bugs, and leave immediately by the town drain!"
and "Mardon me padom, you are occupewing my pie. May I sew you to another sheet?"


(This dizzying interchange of words reaches a climax in Finnegans Wake where a vocabulary that is somewhat English twisted into portmanteau words. But it is also a frequent visitor to the pages of Ulysses)

Useful if you want to look up a quote:

Searchable Ulysses:
http://www.online-literature.com/jame...

I have been working on some chapter summaries. These are not too much the narrative as a guideline to the major themes etc. They seem to have been helpful to some friends I know so I will post them here.

Telemachiad (Chapters 1-3)
An outline/guideline for the first three chapters.

These constitute the "Telemachiad", and concentrate on Stephen Dedelus, the analogue of Telemachus, the dispossessed son in the Odyssey. Stephen is challenged by the two burdens of the Irish: 1) religion and 2)history, and responds with 3)imagination.

Each chapter has certain symbolic resonances and themes, and a distinct style, although Stephen's stream of consciousness is present in all three.

The first episode TELEMACHUS, is in early morning, about 8-9 am. Its art is Theology, and its manner is presented sarcastically (mostly through Buck Mulligan). The location is the The Tower on the rocky shore. The plot theme is the dispossessed son. If you are familiar with Portrait, Stephen appears to have chosen his vocation and set out on his flight. But he appears to have crashed back in Dublin after his abortive flight (Dedelus) to Paris. (A sub theme of Lucifer's fall, connected with his pride and guilt over his mother.) The tower is a symbolic navel, and his connection to his mother, the sea, holds him back. Stephen is dispossessed in that he is broke, and hands over the key for the night, so he has no where to go.

NESTOR takes place at about 9-10am, and its art is History/Received "wisdom" and takes place at the School. The wisdom is not truly wise it is common sense at its best and bigotry at its worst. The horse represents Blake's "horses of instruction": a tame kind of knowledge. Stephen demurs: history is a nightmare from which he is "trying to awake", and, God is not mediated but a "cry in the street".

PROTEUS takes place about 10-11am. It's art is Philology/Metaphysics, and its theme is clearly primal matter/metamorphosis. It take place on the sandy shore tide and involves flotsam, sea change, transformation. This is the most difficult of the three chapters, as Stephen's memory forms part of the metamorphosis, and so his thoughts move through space and time and simultaneously inhabit other places. (To be more helpful on this chapter, as I know some folks may be getting lost, I will give some examples and go in in much more length.)

Since they are remembered, and are in Stephen's thoughts as indirect quotation; for example, the words of the old Fenian, Kevin Egan, in exile in Paris whom he met when in Paris is interleaved with his thoughts. One remarkable passage, where Stephen remembers having been denied, in Paris, access to a money order at closing time has him assassinating the postal functionary in his mind, and then guiltily resurecting the man, also in fantasy, and shaking hands with him. This protean interleaving makes this s tricky read and you may want to read it twice.

You may have noticed in several places by now, Joyce's willingness to use conventionally disgusting imagery. sometimes if is for comic effect, but often it is to transform it aesthetically. For example the dog on the beach (Joyce was terrified of dogs as an aside) encounters a dog corpse. However there is a sense in which it is interleaved with a momento mori, in the dog's confrontation with its own mortality, a theme that is picked up with the theme of drowning/"full fathom five your father lies"/sea change. Many of Joyce/Stephen's fears appear here as well; Stephen's playing with perception, using an ashplant as a blind man's cane with closed eyes, anticipates Joyce's encroaching blindness. But the most amazing case of aesthetic transformation (finding the transcendent in vulgar naturalism) in this chapter is a tiny instance in which Stephen ducks behind some rocks to relieve himself out of sight of a pair of cockle pickers. But the effect is subtle, and actually rather beautiful (and what is happening is not fully apparent if you are not paying attention):
In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.

Grossness in Joyce is partly grounded in his transformation of the commonplace, though. You will be living through other's eyes, so you will encounter all aspects of life, but Joyce always does more than that, and is always building towards what I would call a hymn of life, all despite.

A good quick description can be found here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_...

Calypso Chapter

Now we are following Bloom. Sort of a psychic twitter feed if you will.

Takes place about 8-9am, with Bloom and Molly.
Fairly easy to read narrative, interspersed with Bloom's stream of consciousness.

Science: Mythology, organ: Kidneys, keyword: Metemppsychosis (wandering of souls)
Themes: Wayfarer/Exile/captive/domestic, nymph, cat (familiar)

Note how we have gone back in time so that we start paralleling the start of Stephen's day with Bloom's/

The Lotus Eaters Chapter
Time around 9-10am

The lotus referred to is the drug of forgetfulness, so this chapter explores the modern city of Dublin stressing the theme of seeking escape/release from its pressures.

Themes:/Fragrance/Chemistry/Drugs/
Temptation of Faith/Opiate of the Masses
Flower/Genitals/Eroticism/The Bath

Hades Chapter
11-12pm
Occult/Descent into Nothingness/Underworld. Hearse=Coffin.
Organ: Heart. Heartbreak, Bloom's father a suicide, otheer sad memories as well. Dignam died of a heart attack
The insensitive mention of suicide is symptomatic of Bloom's marginalization, a theme that is repeated through the book, where he is repeatedly ignored, talked over, his jokes quashed, his feelings discounted and so forth.
Art: Occultism. The chapter is filled with fanciful and naturalistic thoughts about death and afterlife.
In Dublin of that time, funerals were a male affair and widows did not attend.

AEOLUS CHAPTER READ ALL ABOUT IT
In the Odyssey, Aeolus, god of the winds makes a gift of his divine breath (to speed Ulysses home) dissipated by disobedient sailors, its strength is destroyed.

YOU'VE SAID A LUNGFUL
The thematic organ is of course the lung. Breezy. Hot air. Puffed up. The metaphors keep coming. Setting: a newspaper office, natch.

Please note, I point out some of these major symbols and themes to increase your enjoyment (and help the confused).

If you understand roughly what is happening most of the time you are doing fine. You might even forget quite what episode in the Odyssey you are "in".

Don't forget to enjoy the elevation of the banal occurrences to epic heights, which is silly and serious, humorous and humane at the same time!

Some notes on chapters 8-10.
LESTRYGONIANS
1-2pm
Takes place in or by dining places, food markets, butcher shops, blood red, meat, slaughter. The Laestrygonians (or Laestrygones, Laistrygones, Laistrygonians, Lestrygonians; Greek: Λαιστρυγόνες) are a tribe of giant cannibals from ancient Greek legend. So we see the theme of eating, but especially in the form of devouring of life.
Police =>meat, passive =>vegetarianism.
Dejection, disgust, despondency, shame.
Digestive prose. Oesophagus.
A chapter that may make your gorge rise, it makes great fun of the questionable table manners of many of the Dublin citizenry.


Aristocratic (Nobility)

SCYLLA & CHARYBDIS
2-3pm
Library
Literature/Brain/Dialectic, cerebrum, gambling, dialectic, whirlpools, Youth & Maturity.
The 2-edged sword/dilemma, paradox. This chapter is a bit tricky so read it slowly or reread. I found that by doing so this has become one of my favorites, since it is really quite funny, but you have to pay attention, as so many jokes and literary references are easteregged away, and the transitions between thought and action are subtle. (This is my third time through the book.) Stephen explains his twisty theory that Shakespeare is himself the ghost of his own father, with outrageous spins on self begetting sonship (the later encounter between Stephen and Bloom is anticipated), as Bloom, passing through the library , but not encountering Stephen, looks up his Keyes logo (and also surreptitiously checks the classical statues to determine if they really have anuses--to satisfy his intellectual curiosity, of course--this is also a satire of criticisms Joyce was already receiving about his attention to naturalistic detail.) During the increasingly vexacious discussion, scortatory Buck Mulligan pops in to lob verbal hand grenades. (Yeah, look it up.) The point is, you'll miss plenty, but if you get the hilarious sense of scholarly literary anarchy in the discussion, with all the implied criticism of the literary type it entails, you are on the beam.

Just a few miscellaneous things.

Run for the dictionary you lollard costards!

His look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though...
lollard: follower of Wycliff
costard: bumpkin

Mystical George Russell went by the pen name of AE (for aeon). Stephen is broke and borrows constantly, embarrassed about his reputation with all the literary gents he has touched up: A.E.I.O.U.

Ann hath a way. => Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife.

Stephen describes his molecular discontinuity and personal continuity by referring to a mole on his chest. In Joyce nothing is a coincidence. Even his errors are "volitional." A mole is a blind animal. One of many references to Joyce's severe eye problems and fear of blindness: closing eyes on beach, blind stripling, etc.

Joyce really pulls out all the stops on vocabulary here. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's ducats. Ducats, Shakespeare of course, but usquebaugh? Gaelic for whisky.

Glittereyed, his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought the face, bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed.

rufous, ruddy iron oxide color,
ollav, In Irish history, a man of science or learning, equivalent to a university professor, From Irish ollamh, from Old Irish ollam ‘doctor’.


Pissing on Synge's door.... ....in pampooties to murder you. Despite Stephen affecting to despise Mulligan's anarchic jokes, young Joyce and Grogarty (the real life Buck Mulligan) carried out countless pranks; they once broke into AE's mystic meetingroom, and hung up ladie's skivvies--they penned a note: "I didn't do it."--and signed somebody else's name. Joyce deliberately transfers some aspects to Buck, so as to make Stephen more gloomy and needy.

"Pampooties" or "cuarans" were made from the raw skin of a freshly killed deer or stag, whilst the skin was still soft. The hair was retained on the outer part. Egad James, how wack.

"Linements of gratified desire." Quotation from Blake.

WANDERING ROCKS
3-4pm
The Citizens in the Streets/Labyrinth.
Steering through the hostile environment, anaemia, resemblances, coinjuctions, displacement. The ship is the crumpled Elijah is coming/Blood of the Lamb pamplet floating on the Liffey. There are large numbers of different Dublin citizens passing through this chapter in more or less random conjunction. The elder Dedelus is hit up for cash by one of his daughters, we see glimpses of how dysfunctional and poverty stricken the Dedelus household has become. One of the girls is seen by Stephen, she having purchased a French grammar on the fly with her food money--perhaps she longs to escape to Paris too-- Stephen promises not to tell.

Ulysses as post-dated prophesy....

Several events, happening in the future, are anticipated in Ulysses. For example, everyone is complaining about tramlines not making what would appear to be logical connections: these routes were added after June 16, 1904. Also, several places marked by the violence of the Easter uprising are associated with Ulysses, and there are oblique references made to the coming bloodshed.

Episode 11, The Sirens

Set at the Ormond Hotel. This chapter explores the seduction of sound and of music.

It starts out with an "overture" of groups of words in the first two pages arranged by sound and somewhat separated from their sense, but merely have dim associations with meaning; you can clearly note echoes of musical instruments: brass, woodwind, percussion, as well as harmony, rhythm and counterpoint. The sounds of these word clusters are revisited and put into context later in the chapter. In some way this chapter anticipates later and more extreme experiments in musical and thematic composition with language in Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

While dining, Bloom and other males watch the seductive barmaids Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy (glod and bronze hair: flightier and soprano, more dignified and alto) and listen to the singing of Simon Dedalus and others, and the rhythms of the sound-haunted establishment. Note Douce and Kennedy constitute the "sirens", and that their bottom half is hidden from view much of the time and in a greenish shadow, hinting at a mermaidenly aquatic quality: they also "bob to the surface"=peek out the window.

Bloom has dinner Richie Goulding, and ends with a brassy note of flatulence, was it the burgundy?
(Stephen's uncle Richie). Molly's lover, Blazes Boylan, nearly crosses Bloom's path and proceeds to their assignation, his theme is jiggy jogging jingling, anticipating the noisy brass quoits of the bed. Other musical themes: iron shod ringing horse's hooves, squeeky footsteps, clock ticking, tapping, clinking,chipping, splashing, sipping, giggling and so forth.

The Sirens is the first chapter of Ulysses that gave real pause to some of Joyce's most sophisticated and ardent supporters when it appeared in syndication.

In hindsight, it is pretty clear that the overture is kept fairly short so you would remember the phrases it introduces, and that every effort is made to slip the narrative context back onto those sounds later in the chapter, if only the reader would pay close attention. But at that time nothing like it had ever been attempted in English literature*, and it irritated supporters like Sylvia Beach and Ezra Pound.

*Possibly excepting Stein, who arguably arranged words without attention to sense.

I am reading a book on Irish history. I knew some of this, but it really drives home a lot of stuff: how Dubliners felt alienated from the countryside, how step by step the history of the country (with no little help from England) was set up to be tragic, how patriotic actions were frequently doomed and hopeless, a spirit of glorification of vain attempt, or the nostalgia for a romanticized past, the resentment of being occupied, the terrible bloodshed that is in the future* (of 1902).


*and in the case of Northern Ireland, even past Joyce's life.

So who's reading Ulysses now? Chime in, don't be shy.

nice work, ed. thanks for posting these signposts. are you reading gilbert's book as well? a lot of the info you're posting comes out of that original study, and joyce worked with gilbert closely on that book.

it's also good you're reading some irish history alongside ulysses (or any joyce).

the sirens is a favorite chapter, being a composer it was interesting to see how he handled the idea of creating fugues with prose. i love all the repetitive elements from the opening "fugue subject". nice work. and the tension is starting to mount for bloom, he knows blazes is about to visit molly, and he's trying to suppress that information but can't quite get it out of his mind.

wandering rocks is also really something on a structural level: the use of the circle that the carriage makes as it rounds dublin, and the way that the narrative is very cinematic - connecting characters the way a camera would do if it were observing objectively, and not staying fixed on a central subject. love it.

proteus is my favorite from the telemachus episodes. the prose is gorgeous, and of course the philosophical inquiry of "if no one is there to perceive it, does it exist?" is a playful irish nod to the great philosofears. (a bit of FW speak there, excuse me).

hades is a place where we really start to get to know bloom's vulnerability. the funeral reminds him of his son who died shortly after childbirth. this is another element of torment (like boylan) that bloom comes back to in a few of the chapters that surround the hades episode.

I read Gilbert many years ago. I am synthesizing some of the critical stuff with my own idiosyncratic reactions. I sometimes think that Joyce is emphasizing or not emphasizing certain parts based on the requirements the chapter seems to need, in some cases the "organ" gets a lot of emphasis, in others, very little. I think sometimes people miss the idea of focus in Joyce, view all the stuff of equal importance and get hung up on minutia. I think there is a background and foreground.

Phillip wrote: "history.."

In the passage about the Irish heroes and the references to actual historical individuals, and certain premonitions of later events a little history helps.

background and foreground...indeed. agreed. have you read anthony burgess' book "Re:Joyce"? i think he said something like, never mind the jawbreakers (difficult words, etc.) joyce's truths are always expressed in good round dublin terms. i think he's saying what you're saying - don't sweat the minutae, the bigger picture is the key.

if you're a scholar (i wrote my graduate thesis on joyce), all the minutae is there for scholars and puzzle fans. for me, joyce is about ecstatic prose, and the story he has to tell, which is the story of humanity...of humane humans. joyce isn't a fan of brutality, he has to usher in narrators that have an interest in what happens in the bar with the citizen to tell the story. one of my favorite quotes from that chapter is ""i mean love, the opposite of hatred". and then that other narrator steps in and meditates on love (love loves to love love....). that's a beautiful passage, that's what attracted me to joyce in the first place.

i think the irish history thing comes a lot more into play in finnegans wake than in ulysses.

I just read Ulysses this summer, and after completing it I read Gilbert's study. I had already read Dubliners and Portrait, and enjoyed both of them a lot. One thing that I like about reading Joyce is that there is so much there. I feel that if two isolated people read Ulysses, they would each notice/emphasize different elements of the work based on their own life experiences, beliefs, etc. I think that this really adds to the living nature of Joyce’s work: he not only captures the spirit of humanity by dissecting the ordinary, but he is also able to reveal it differently depending on who is reading it.

My favorite episodes were probably Hades, Sirens, Lotus Eaters and Penelope. I enjoyed most episodes, though, and if I were asked to defend that list I would probably not be able to put them too far above the rest. I can say with fair certainty that my least favorite episode was Scylla and Charybdis, though this is admittedly the result of a lower level of comprehension than I had enjoyed through the rest of the book.

I also find a lot of interest in the historical aspect of Joyce’s work. A lot of his attitude and the attitude of his characters can be seen as a result of Ireland’s history and the state of Ireland at Joyce’s birth. I feel an especially strong pull towards Ireland’s historical sufferings (if you will), what with having an interest in Irish history, a personal idea of the vanity of action and decay and a bit of Irish blood myself.

I just started reading Ulysses. I love how much detail he puts into different perceptions. Like when he compares the feelings of cows going to the slaughterhouse to bodies being taken to the cemetery. There is no thought given to the cows in there dieing moments, yet human's deaths are ceremoniously depicted. I also love when Joyce compares digestion to imbibing philosophies or religion. "Peace amd war depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions." One of my favorite lines so far. Reading this book I find my self chuckling at the truths Joyce reveals. This really is a funny book!!!

It is. Keep reading stay with it, and read slowly. I discovered the paradox, the slower you read it, the better it gets and the faster it goes.

Hurrah. Another Joycean is born!

H A P P Y


B L O O M S D A Y

Luke wrote: "I just started reading Ulysses. I love how much detail he puts into different perceptions. Like when he compares the feelings of cows going to the slaughterhouse to bodies being taken to the cemete..."

indeed - a very funny book. not always easy to understand, but as anthony burgess said, "all joyce's big truths are told in good, round dublin terms".

happy belated bloomsday to you, ed!

embarrassing that i didn't check in here in june. nor did i go to any bloomsday events.

Hey thanks Philip. I just finished reading Ulysses for the fourth time a few months ago. I really gave it the space and time it needed, and it was wonderful.

Now that I am no longer nearly as confused, I think it is time to read Finnegans Wake again, a book where even the most astute reader is half asleep.

I also had the pleasure of reading it alongside a dear online friend, who started out rather dubiously, and then, even though confused, read with increasing delight as the book accelerated into its final yes.

I just started reading Ulysses, well a month ago give or take. I am now living in Dublin, and after trying to read the book three times and failing, I challenged myself to do it before June 16. I plan to do the walking tour, pints and all.
I have to admit, that I am reading and rereading. I am enjoying it a lot. Much to my surprise. Wondering if it has to do with experience... I have to say, that I am relating more to Stephen than to Bloom, and I certainly do not relate to Molly at all, not yet anyway.

Hey, Mae, congratulations on your perseverance!

My general hint is that Ulysses is much, much better if you read it very slowly, even aloud. The temptation is to skim the "hard parts" to get to something easier, and sometimes you miss stuff that makes the rest harder than it needs to be.

Not that you can't have fun with the book, even if you don't fully grasp all of it. Far from it!

After finishing it the fourth time, I really appreciated all the hints that Joyce has provided that allow the reader to infer indirectly the order of events, and suggest all kinds of things.

Best of luck to you!

I hear you. I have noticed that the slower I read it, or when I reread the chapter, the second time its more fun. I read the Portrait and actually read a couple of odd chapter if Ulysses to write a paper on Stephen "whilst" in College. The reading is very different this time. I am taking my sweet time with it. And I am enjoying it. Surprise. Because first time around I didn't. I have even joined this cyber club. I don't know if I will read it four times! But, lets see... Being in Dublin and reading it does make a difference for me, since I reconize the streets and the places. Was in Sandymount last week!

And don't forget! Groundhog Day is also James Joyce's birthday!

the more i read it, the more i enjoyed it. this went on for years. there are passages i have read so many times i couldn't begin to count. that's how joyce wanted it.

i agree with the advice of reading it slowly, aloud, if possible. like all great poetry, and ulysses is a study of poetics, among other things, it must be savored slowly.

i may have mentioned it somewhere above, but there are a few critical studies that can deepen your appreciation. it's helpful to have the annotated ulysses, for translating those irish words, if nothing else. and anthony burgess' "Re:Joyce" is a nice study of all of Joyce's works, and the chapters on Ulysses are manageable and useful.