where have all the readers gone?

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 12:08 pm

ulysses readers, where are you??? am I the only one still slogging thru this book? come out of the closet if you're out there.....

I just buried Dignam and did some business at the newspaper. the odyssey continues.

lapinsjolis · Post by **lapinsjolis** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 7:38 pm

How far are you? I left off at the funeral. I'm reading 'The Cloud of Unknwing' at the moment but intend to trudge on with 'the thing'. Let's take over the thread!

Really though I know Mr. Misery still reading. Poppet?!?

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 3:58 pm

let's do it. we'll claim the thread in the name of Empowered Females Everywhere!!

I just finished the part where Bloom goes to the newspaper office. I think. I have trouble just figuring out what the hell is going on half (ok, most) of the time.

lapinsjolis · Post by **lapinsjolis** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 12:05 pm

Somehow-maybe through telepathy I'll venture to say you know my feelings on the funeral scene. Still he is contrasting the killing 'mother' Church to the healing mother earth as the alchemist does his worst.

We are led to believe. by men who have spent far more money improving their minds than I, that Bloom is a humanist-this is supported by him taking the Catholic Mass 'this is my body'-to a point. His disregard for anyone else's body-say the corpse makes him ultra pagan. He shows no signs of being Jewish, no rending of clothes (not even memories of tradition) I'll bet he doesn't even care if a mirror is uncovered. Molly, who is a simple as Quaker dress, somehow has infused in him all the fury of a pouting former Catholic.

(bio note I thought was curious. When Joyce's children showed no fear at thunder and lighting he said it was because they had no religion. This is too funny. Blind faith could lead you through the storm 'Thy will be done' or 'Though he slays me I trust Him' sort of thing but this laughs in the face of science, I suspect that's why he gained the reputation of a humanist instead of a pagan with common sense)

He also is reiterating Bloom's loss of a son, one he feels guilt for, the longing for his daughter too. A father without a child. He is setting this up again and again. Stephen will fill the void-let him and be done with this. Grief is something I don't find that Joyce does all that well perhaps because he tries to justify his bitterness towards everyone in countless ways more than anything else. It's hard to identify or even care about these people-author touch me already, let me see the world from your view, not some tired, pouty glance of a man in love with his vocabulary. If it's belief you want me to suspend, distract me. Still I find flashes of beauty and lyrical lines-short lived and I'll give the credit to his nationality. Was the editor sleeping on this one?

Joyce betrays his misery as he looks down on those who think we are made for better things. He scowls and ridicules their simplicity. Whilst those who think we are made for nothing are bitter and self obsessed.

Bless my simple mind.

He contemplates, life, death pro-creation among the tombstones and actually I thought the process of thought was rather good here. The futility in created things, titles and things we use to comfort. Of course it eats itself up in the end as all arguments tend to. I enjoyed this part to a point but what he fails to recognize that in those moments of loss we lose sight of the importance of ceremony and things that comfort-they ultimately get you through.

On to the 'newspaper' office, I will speculate he was inspired by the idea of death being news worthy-so taking an obituary as a starting point he writes the whole paper. He is being philosophical-everything is news worthy and nothing is news worthy. He highlights, thoughts and conversations with headlines and brief descriptions. You are reading the Bloom news! But before you cancel your subscription it ends.

The concept reminded me of St. John of the Cross-'All for you, nothing for me. Nothing for you, all for me'. In the stream of thought, only it doesn't add to the meaning of existence, it almost belittles it. I'm not sure if that was intended or not.

I read it quick to catch up and didn't get to write notes on details but a general feel. Be grateful-this would have been longer! It's my impression which is beyond subjective.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 6:52 pm

'Bitterness' is an odd reading to me. I would substitute it with 'warmth'.

I'd forgotten the thunder and lightning quote. Classic Joycean wit.

I wish I could be reading it again, but right now I can't fit it in. No-one has availed of my splendid 'Allusions in Ulysses' tome. The offer is there for the taking.

Poppet · Post by **Poppet** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:48 pm

i'll get there eventually!!!!

i been neglectful of ulysses, poor old guy. spend my weekends visiting friends, or out playing tourist.

i'm also away NEXT week, in maine (well, part of the week) - maybe i can read it all on the beach?

Mr. Misery · Post by **Mr. Misery** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 4:47 am

I have a lot of time for reading these days, which is always a bad sign. Of the last two chapters discussed (the funeral scene and newspaper headlines) I can't add anything to LJ's brilliant analysis. To say that I agree with it is true but misleading, as I didn't properly understand it before her elucidations. Bloom's interior monologue during the services indulges in childish scoffing at ancient rituals and presents it as triumphant debunking--the result is completely unconvincing. The headlines (which played a key role in the formative years of Jay Leno) are, in my judgment, of a forced jocularity.

In the next two chapters we accompany Bloom on a pub crawl (this is unheard of in Dublin) and meet with Stephen in the library. Bloom has many thoughts, recorded in mind-numbing detail, but the important thread seems to be musing about his beloved but unfaithful wife. This is mitigated somewhat by his own infidelities, but the pang is genuine as a sensual memory is beautifully evoked: wine on his palate recalling him to their first kiss.

The library scene involves a discussion of Hamlet amongst Stephen and some owlish men of letters. "After God Shakespeare has created most," he observes, and this is still true. The play's theme of a missing father is echoed in Stephen's quest: "[Fatherhood] is a mystical state, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the Madonna...the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude. Upon unlikelihood." An apostate looks at faith, a boy looks for his father. Bloom significantly makes an appearance at chapter's end.

maria · Post by **maria** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 7:03 am

It may be useful to remember that Mr. Bloom is Jewish, aside from representing sensual Joyce. and this day occurred in Dublin 100 years ago. All of this has a major impact on his commentary, especially within the church scenes. At all times, he is an outsider looking in, which, incidentally, would have been very much true to life in Dublin then. You'll notice that he is always set a little apart. This is two way traffic: he IS apart from his surroudings, which gives him a mental freedom to comment on an almost unanimous religious and social ethos, albeit from a "less informed" position. And his surroudings are definitely apart from him (Newspaper men, Nozy Flynn, Davy Byrne).

In the library scene, there are many talking heads, but remember that it's mainly filtered through the head of Stephen Dedalus, who is cerebral Joyce. Even though he is a committed free thinker, he is a creature from the 1904 Dublin inside track.

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 3:18 pm

I haven't gotten to the library yet, but I'd hardly call Bloom's search for lunch a pub crawl. They don't do pub crawls in Dublin??? I'd have run out of the first place too--gobs everywhere stuffing their gobs...in fact, I'd have been off lunch completely, but anybody who can eat organ meats...well, whatever. I picture him looking like Mr. Burns.

Bloom uses some strange words in his strange little thoughts--I assume that words like 'slowlier' are meant to expose him as some wannabe intellectual?

LJ, Mr Misery and Maria--thanks for your insights.

maria · Post by **maria** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 4:32 pm

Really glad if info helps. I agree about the awfulness of the offal. Maybe you know about this already, but one of the big Joyce "things" is the triumph of Art and the intellect of the individual over rampant collective mindlessness: such as extreme nationalism. He wrote Ulysses during WW1 and was appalled at what was happening around him in Europe. He also despised the elevation by contemporary Irish literary figures of Irish mythological fighting heroes as role models for future nationalist martyrs by his contemporaries (you'll get hints of in-fighting when you get to the library scene). Ulysses was written, not just on the model of Homer's Odyssey: it also has different sections representing different parts of the body. The purpose of this is to elevate to an epical hero the "boring little man" going through his daily, peaceful struggle through his own personal mire.

The language is very much of the era, but with Joyce's own special twists and takes on it and the accents. It sometimes helps to read it out loud to "get" it (This is where a good audio recording might really help those who aren't famililar with dublinese...just a thought). Usually if you're completely floundering, you'll find that if you keep on going, you'll "get" it later. He has flashes of little non sequitur segments from time to time that are a kind of Pulp Fiction-style mish-mash of the order.

Bon chance!

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 4:31 pm

I've never checked out whether a good audio-Ulysses exists. Twould be good. What I'd really like is Finnegan's Wake, to read and listen together. Joyce reading Anna Livia Plurabelle was a reveleation, his beautiful, high-pitched voice trilling 'Well you know or don't you kennet every telling has its taling and that's the he and the she of it...'. If only they'd kept him in the studio for a month for the full thing.

maria · Post by **maria** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 5:13 pm

Actually there IS one, but it costs a holy fortune in Ireland (c. 100 euros) and is 22 CD's long. It's read by Jim Norton with Marcella Riordan. I've heard segments from it and it certainly helps to put shape and make on the text in a very accessible way: it brings out the poetic flow of the text and makes it a lot easier to grasp some of the musicality of the prose.

Actually Jim Norton's also done an audio Finnegan's Wake, and I've heard some of the selections from that too, but I've found it a bit beyond me. However, I always found my onslaughts at grasping Finnegan's Wake very heavy sledding. Mind you, I haven't tackled it in a very long time, so perhaps I should give it another shot. I've also kind of harboured a suspicion that the morphine Joyce was taking for his eye problem had got to him at the point he wrote Finnegan's Wake, but then perhaps I'm just a Philistine, and anyway I've also spent enough time around addicts to make me a little jaundiced about a lot of things. I suppose the connection between the realisation of innovative genius and drugs has often been blurry in many instances, so maybe I should loosen up a little on the judgement stakes.

I happen to be a big Jim Norton fan, and think his voice and style is precisely suited to Dublin of the Joyce era: to my ear he captures EXACTLY the tone and the time, although I believe he isn't everyone's cup of tea. If I werea truly committed Ulysses reader starting from scratch and looking for a short-cut, I'd buy it and listen and read in tandem. It's an entirely personal view, but I think that Joyce's unfulfilled wish, and real potential, to be a concert singer is ever present in the way he writes his prose and a lot of it is best heard as opposed to read. Whether that was a conscious wish on Joyce's part, I just don't know, but for me it makes sense.

Mr. Misery · Post by **Mr. Misery** » Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:53 am

The next chapter is comprised of many short sections, and we go from being tangled up in Bloom to seeing a panorama of Dublin and its inhabitants. The idea is that things are happening at the same time and Joyce is attempting to encompass everything within his artistic prism and purlieu.

--The war imagery mentioned earlier in this thread is in evidence, with the begging one-legged sailor and wounded soldiers. The Jesuit Father Conmee (con me, not subtlest of jokes) greets and blesses them and others, including the undertaker's assistant from Dignam's funeral.

--Stephen's sisters do shirts and make pea soup though thankfully the author does not tell us what shade of green it was.

--Molly's flame Blazes Boylan buys fruit for her and roguishly flirts with the cashier.

--Weirdly Stephen meets up with the man who taught him Italian, Almidano Artifoni (arty phony?), and gets scolded for abandoning his idealism, or something.

--Boylan's secretary Miss Dunne fields a call.

--Rochford, Flynn, M'Coy (incidentally I once knew a girl named McCoy, but she shipped away), and Lenehen chat. The latter remembers attending a dinner with the Blooms, and the ride home when he pressed against Molly while Leopold was looking to the stars. The infidelity theme is suggested again.

--Bloom at the bookstore significantly chooses Sweets of Sin with no guilt. Judging by the excerpts given it sounds like a winner.

--Stephen at a bookstore peruses a book by an abbot intended for believers, but shuts it quickly when his sister approaches so that she won't catch him. This is genuinely witty, playing off of Bloom's buy and suggesting that a religious book is an illicit pleasure for Stephen. His remorse resurfaces.

--There are sections featuring Stephen's father Simon Dedalus and Martin Cunningham. Get me out of here, Cunningham!

--Buck Mulligan and Haines reappear and discuss Stephen's obsession with Hamlet, his struggle with nonbelief, and why he finds myths unsatisfactory: "The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of retribution."

--The Italian teacher redux. Serving suggestion: thin strips of almidano artifoni in a light tomato sauce.

--Poignantly the young son of Dignam remembers his father's last confession and wonders if he's in Purgatory.

--All of the characters meet to watch a procession.

This was a complex chapter but because of its multifarious nature the narrative of the main characters Bloom and Dedalus did not progress appreciably.

maria · Post by **maria** » Sun Aug 22, 2004 5:38 pm

An extract from The Irish Times, Saturday August 21st 2004, which may be of interest on this section, reviewing yet another new book on “Ulysses”: “Ulysses Unbound: A Reader’s Companion to James Joyce’s Ulysses”, by Terence Kileen (Wordwell). The review is by Declan Kiberd:

The most ingenious – and contestable – analysis concerns the Scylla and Charybdis episode. Killeen sees Stephen’s theory about Shakespeare as a meditation of paternity, anminated by an intense misogyny (in the sense that Stephen seems to resent his mother for giving birth to him and then for leaving him alone in the world after her early death). This would explain the “hysterical” element in Stephen’s analysis. The analogy with Hamlet would then work as follows: Bloom is both Shakespeare and the usurped King Hamlet. Stephen is Hamnet, Shakespeare and the avenging Prince, while Molly is the unreliable Ann Hathaway and Queen Gertrude (with Boylan doubling as the cuckolding brother of Shakespeare and as Claudius).

Many readers will find this the most interesting section of the book, but it is in itself a theory (Killeen’s) about another theory (Stephen’s). In general, however, our guide restrains himself to humbler points-in-passing about this or that episode. On these matters he is unfailingly accurate and sensible. He notes that the singers in Sirens are men, not women (as in Homer), and that they are seduced by what they themselves sing. He astutely remards on the sudden appearance of charged poetic lines in the midst of the technical language of the Ithaca episode (“The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit”). And he rightly rebukes the early interpreters of Penelope who were taken aback by the generalised nature of Molly Bloom’s sexual desire 2that they decided she had to be a slut”.

These are all worthwhile insights which might have been more fully developed, but Killeen is much too cautious a textualist to extend such commentaries. Doubtless, he goes in fear of that moment when the pursuit of a theory might seem manic.

End quote.

Make up your own minds!

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 9:06 pm

Declan K taught my sister-in-law on a masters course. She was hugely impressed.

Mr. Misery wrote:The Jesuit Father Conmee (con me, not subtlest of jokes) ... Almidano Artifoni (arty phony?)

Interesting because my assumption, probably wrong, was that both 'con' and 'phoney' were coined post-1922. I wish my dictionary did etymology! Too late for an internet search...

Mr. Misery · Post by **Mr. Misery** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 11:48 pm

Con (1896): swindle; Arty (1901): showily or pretentiously artistic; Phony (1900): not genuine or real. Webster's Ninth.

Section 2, chapter 11: Sirens

One of Joyce's aims was to incorporate music and everyday sounds into prose, which he does throughout the novel and especially in this chapter. "Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattle market, cocks, hens don't crow, snakes hisses. There's music everywhere."

That was a lovely passage, but I don't know what to make of this: "Pat is a waiter hard of his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait." I assure you that was quoted verbatim.

Bloom sits in the Ormond hotel restaurant admiring the barmaids, and the presence of his rival Blazes Boylan is felt nearby. They listen to songs, among them "All is Lost Now," perhaps Bloom's feeling about Molly. "Last rose Castille of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone." Me too.

Mr. Misery · Post by **Mr. Misery** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 11:53 pm

Here's Otis's valuable list of the sections and chapters, a great help in keeping things straight.

Otis Westinghouse wrote:
PART 1 TELEMACHIAD

1. Telemachus
The Martello tower, 'Stately, plump Buck Mulligan' to 'Usurper'. pp. 9-29

2. Nestor
Mr Deasy's school, 'You, Cochrane' to 'dancing coins', pp. 30-42

3. Proteus
Sandymount strand, 'Ineluctable modality' to 'a silent ship', pp. 42-56

PART 2 ODYSSEY

4. Calypso
Breakfast at 7 Eccles Street, 'Mr Leopold Bloom' to 'Poor Dignam'. pp. 57-72

5. Lotus-Eaters
Bloom in the streets, 'By lorries' to 'languid floating flower', pp. 72-88

6. Hades
Dignam's funeral, 'Martin Cunningham' to 'How grand we are this morning', pp. 88-117

7. Aeolus
The newspaper office, 'In the heart of' to 'truth was known', pp. 118-150

8. Lestrygonians
Bloom in the streets: lunchtime, 'Pineapple rock' to 'Safe!', pp. 150-183

9. Scylla and Charybdis
The National Library, 'Urbane' to 'bless'd altars', pp. 184-218

10. Wandering Rocks
Dublin: afternoon streets, 'The superior' to 'by a closing door', pp. 218-254
[N.B. This is the only episode to use the graphic device to separate sub-sections of the episode, of which there are 19 in total]

11. Sirens
Ormond Restaurant, 'Bronze by gold' to 'Done', pp. 254-290

12. Cyclops
Barney Kiernan' pub, 'I was just passing' to 'shot off a shovel', pp. 290-343

13. Nausicaa
Sandymount strand: Gerty MacDowell, 'The summer evening' to 'Cuckoo', pp. 344-380

14. Oxen of the Sun
Maternity hospital, Holles St., 'Deshil Holles Eamus' to 'Just you try it on', pp. 380-425

15. Circe
Nighttown, '(The Mabbot Street' to 'his waistcoat poket)', pp. 425-532

PART 3 NOSTOS ('return')

16. Eumaeus
The cabman's shelter, 'Preparatory to' to 'lowbacked car', pp. 533-586

17. Ithaca
7 Eccles St: Bloom and Stephen, 'What parallel courses' to '•', pp. 586-658

18. Penelope
Molly Bloom's monologue, 'Yes because he never did' to 'yes I said yes I will Yes', pp. 659-704

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 7:25 am

thanks, Mr. M, Mr. W and Maria. I'm finding your posts very edifying (take that Benbridge scholars), and the section list makes a very handy bookmark. I'm back on it tonight, really. No Harry Potter for me.

maria · Post by **maria** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 1:01 pm

Otis: perhaps you don't know that in the new Penguin centenary edition of Ulysses, there is an intoduction by D Kiberd. I've had reason to be killing time round Greene's Bookshop a little lately and I have been dipping into it. I think your sister 's view on him is bang on the money. It's lengthy, but well worth a scan, if any of you want to get a leg up in some of the more inaccessible parts. If you've bought the book recently, this is probably the edition you have, so I'm possibly preaching to the converted.

Forgive my repetitiousness: but I think you really need to fly in faith when you're reading Ulysses. The sections have entirely different styles, and often from the perspective of different characters. Joyce is putting language on a series of internal emotional lives that were certainly never verbalised before, nor probably that much since, so linear rationale just doesn't work with Ulysses One of the reasons I've been so keen on Otis' idea to get you all into the book is that I am truly fascinated by how such a localised book has such a universal audience.