The End

Well kids, I finished the thing last night. Proud of me. The final episode, Penelope, was great. Quintessential stream of consciousness. Molly Bloom ponders it all and every main theme and idea presented earlier in the book is reiterated perfectly. Joyce ends the book with a bang and if I ever reread any parts of this book (God forbid!), I’ll probably start with this episode.

I can’t believe I just mentioned “re-read.” I’m so ready to move on, but not before a few final thoughts:

1) This has easily been the most difficult and rewarding piece of fiction I have ever read and I won’t lie to you: many times I contemplated bailing out, or at least taking a break. I didn’t though and I am immensely glad of it.

2) Don Gifford’s book of Ulysses annotations was essential. Thanks Don! You made understanding this book possible.

3) To say James Joyce is a genius is an understatement. There should be a new word created, just for him, that means “beyond genius.” I can’t imagine being able to create something so complex: the depth of the characters and the exactness of their movements, the thematic development, the volume and scope of all the references, the prose itself and the different styles of writing, and on and on. This book is simply one of the most profound examples of human creativity that I have ever encountered.

4) Just a quick note on old Leopold Bloom (“Poldy” for those of you in the know). What a great anti-hero. I’m pretty sure I would never hang out with the guy - in some respects he’s pretty much just a strange, boring, and annoying dude with a proclivity towards a number of bizarre sexual perversions. A freak for sure. But I love the idea of the anti-hero and this book does it right. It has got to be one of the best examples of this in all of literature.

5) Reading is, by its very nature, a solitary and isolationist thing. Reading Ulysses is even more so; it is by far the loneliest book I have ever read. It is not possible to talk in detail with anyone about the book while reading it because no one else is reading it. So, in this respect, this blog was immensely helpful, even if it was for the most part just a conversation with myself. This blog forced me to think about the book, after putting it down, which enabled me to connect with it, outside of the actual process of consuming it. This was a very good thing.

So there it is. I guess this blog is done, unless I have some sort of great epiphany or idea related to the book that drives me to post further (unlikely). Besides, like I already mentioned, I’m ready to move on. I can’t imagine my all-but-nonexistent audience will mind. So bon voyage and junk! Proud of me, proud of you, and especially proud of James Joyce.

Episode 17, Ithaca

So I finished Episode 17, Ithaca. This episode mirrors the part in the Odyssey where Telemachus and Ulysses, like a classical, crime-fighting, father/son superhero duo, corner the evil suitors vying for Penelope and slaughter them, to the man, with Ulysses’ god-powered, magical bow. So, needless to say, I had high hopes for this episode (so much so in fact that I decided to read it “cold,” i.e., without first reading the plot summaries or any annotations, so as not to spoil anything). However, the counterpart in Joyce’s Ulysses, although dealing with the same scenario, is most notably not dramatic and exaggeratedly anti-climatic. Basically, Bloom and Dedalus (a.k.a. Ulysses and Telemachus) return to Bloom’s house after a long night and the reader, having been told numerous times throughout the book that Molly, Bloom’s wife, is unfaithful , expects Bloom and Dedalus to catch her in the act and reenact the climactic moment in the Odyssey. This is not to be in Joyce’s version. The suitor in Joyce’s version is long gone and Bloom only reflects on the world, in his typical way, before crawling into bed and literally kissing his wife’s right butt cheek (seriously). No big finale here. No grand confrontation. At first I was disappointed, but after mulling it over, I’m convinced that this was the only way to go, that a big Hollywood ending would have been totally out of place. Joyce wants to show us what really happens, the mundane detail, the subtlety, the notable lack of drama. And life is like that, flowing by like a lazy river, with only a few rough, whitewater stretches popping up occasionally. To put it simply, we spend more time clipping our toenails (as Bloom does in Episode 17) then fighting back evil, wife-stealing suitors. Or at least I do. It reminds me of something I heard an old man say one time, reflecting on the meaning of life. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” he said. “What may seem big at the moment really isn’t and, when it’s all said and done, you most likely will be able to count all of the truly big moments in your life on one hand, or maybe two if you are lucky.” There is good truth here and Joyce seems to know it and show it in Episode 17, which, in retrospect, is probably my favorite in the book.

A Troubling Obsession?

I am pretty much thinking about this book all the time now. It colors my reality at multiple points throughout the day, popping up in relation to real life. You know, moments like "Wow, this or that is just like the part in the book where..." Is this an interesting byproduct of a great piece of literature or just a troubling obsession?

Verbose Verbosity

So far, the writing style in Episode 16 is quite verbose. For example, the following sentence (I am making this up) “Smith walked drunkenly down the street” would become (I am also making this up):

“In so far as his leaden, inebriated legs would oblige and given the circumstances of the hour, aut viam inveniam aut faciam, Smith directed his meanderings and diversions in as much as was reasonable given the jocularity of the relations he had endeavored to cultivate as related to and borne up from the ivre mort celebrations of the day, and given the mode of transport available in that most late of hours.”

Scary thing is, I am kind of digging it. God, I am such a loser.

Ulysses and Freud

One of the cool things about Episode 15, now that I have had a chance to digest it a bit, is the way in which it serves as a psychological study of the two main characters, Bloom and Dedalus. The “bubbling up” of the subconscious in these two characters throughout the episode really highlights, in the most significant way so far, the influence Freud and his theories of psychoanalysis had on this book. All the crazy dream sequences and drunken hallucinations, the repressed memories and feelings of the characters, laid bare by the literary process. It’s one big fictional account of the whole Freudian thing, Freud as applied to literature. Modernism.

Episode 15, Circe

So I just finished Episode 15, Circe, and let me tell you, it’s all over the place. A bit of a mess really. Written in play script format, with stage directions and such, it is basically one long dream sequence, with very little “real time” content (a quick side note: Circe is the longest episode in the book and, as such, made for quite a long read). Honestly, it was a chore to get through it with all the jumping about. As far as the content of the episode goes, it was easily the most salacious and scandalous episode so far, and it is no wonder that this thing was banned upon its initial release (I found it pretty racy even by today’s standards). So, I have determined that we need to add another theme to the pile: human sexuality (yes, I am suggesting that this is an entirely separate theme from the aforementioned theme of Love). This episode is chock full of all sorts of subtle sexual innuendo, overt sexuality, sexual relations, and full-on descriptions of sex acts. Yipee! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, seeing how it mostly takes place in a brothel and all.

Themes in Ulysses

One of the things I was reading the other day was an article on the main thematic points of the book. The article basically narrows it down to four main areas: 1) Late 18th and early 19th century Irish politics, especially in relation to the question of Home Rule 2) Catholicism and the Catholic church 3) Isolationism and 4) Love. It’s interesting to think about how these overlap and intertwine in the book and, since reading this article, I have been consciously “on the lookout” for items related to these four meta-themes. References to these themes are everywhere (this is not surprising of course, these are what themes “do” after all), and are both obvious and obscure. Personally, I would add a few (Commerce and Money, for example) but I think that these four are definitely solid choices, especially the theme if isolationism. I was thinking about how this theme is played out via Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness writing style. If this particular writing technique does anything, it supports the theme of isolationism. Following the inner workings of the consciousness, the inner thoughts and desires of the individual, pretty much embodies the very idea of individual isolationism. These moments are wholly and completely our own, and even our best efforts at articulating them to others cannot make them anything more than secondhand. We are, for better of for worse, isolated in this way, we are our own islands of thought, and Joyce works through this idea in a really interesting way via his stream-of-consciousness style.

Party Time in the Maternity Hospital

Episode 14 takes place in a maternity hospital, but not where you may think (i.e., in the maternity ward). It actually takes place outside the ward, amongst a group of drunken medical students discussing all sorts of off-color, bawdy topics while a woman who has been in labor for three days attempts to give birth. This just strikes me as odd, setting a party in a maternity hospital. Obviously there is much more going on here than drunken revelry and births.

Stylistic Transformations and a Fateful Meeting?

There is a meticulous artistry to Episode 14 that I found pretty interesting. Basically Joyce rolls through the entire history of the English language, stylistically, starting with Old English and ending with an almost incomprehensible flood of 20th century American slang. I liked certain parts and found other parts utterly baffling, which pretty much sums up the entire experience so far. Another remarkable element to Episode 14 is that this is the episode in which Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus finally directly meet. In this meeting, Bloom plays a sort of father figure role, “protecting” Dedalus (or kind of thinking about protecting him?) from his increasingly drunken friends and maybe even from himself. It should be interesting to see how this relationship plays out.

Full Circle

It’s interesting to note (or maybe just interesting for me to note to myself) that I have come full circle on my approach to reading this book. At first, I was determined to try and let the thing stand on its own and was consulting very little, if any, outside resources. Now I find myself seeking out and reading anything I can get my hands on, before, during, and after I read each episode. This has been working well in that, as I probably stated earlier, understanding this book without some such support is, in my humble opinion, impossible. If I were to recommend anything to anyone trying to read this thing I would tell them this.

Thumbs Up for Episode 13

So far, Episode 13 is my favorite. I liked the characterizations, style, and structure and really began to feel like I was finally “getting” it. And yes, this episode is totally prurient and salacious like they said it would be but, as is the case with all good writing, it isn’t “obscene” in an sensational way but rather in a way that forwards the themes and ideas of the book. The section starts with a group of young people hanging out on the beach, with the thoughts and desires of Gerty MacDowell front and center. The prose is styled as “Romantic” (think Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austen) and in the third person (as such, is easy to follow and I did not find myself referring to the annotations much in this episode, which was a nice break). There is a nice flow and progression to this episode, even when the narrative switches later to a more typical, stream-of-consciousness style found earlier in the book (this time, Leopold Bloom’s thoughts). I don’t know, I guess I don’t have much to report here except for the fact the Episode 13 is great.

Weblog Inventor Guy

So, the web resource I cited on Monday the 19th is discovered to be, after some Wikipedia reading, the weblog of none other than Jorn Barger, the guy who pretty much invented blogging. Small world, eh? Seems he's a huge Joyce expert. So there it is.

Joyce Quote

"I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book."

-James Joyce

Episone 13, Nausicaa

I am a few pages into Episone 13, Nausicaa. Apparently this was the episode that caused the serializations to stop because the censors found it so offensive. For readability, it is very straightforward so far, being a direct, percise, and somewhat over-written (on purpose) account of a few young women contemplating their lives.

In other, related news, I found a really great web resource. I will be referring to the site often for help as it appears to cover pretty much everything related to the book. I like the little "things you should know about Ulysses" list on the site:

• It takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904 (Bloomsday).
• The main characters-- Leopold and Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus-- correspond to Homer's Odysseus (aka Ulysses), Penelope, and Telemachus.
• Joyce first thought of the idea in 1906 as a story for Dubliners.
• He quickly realised it should be the sequel to his autobiographical novel, Stephen Hero (which he rewrote with this in mind, as A Portrait).
• Each of the 18 chapters corresponds to one of Odysseus's (or Telemachus's) adventures.
• Each chapter is written in a different style, with symbolism appropriate to the corresponding adventure. These patterns were hinted by Joyce in privately-circulated schemata.
• Joyce included hundreds of puzzles that can only be understood by very careful reconstruction of exactly what each character is thinking and doing.
• Because the book was so complex, no one has ever managed to create an authoritative 'corrected' edition.
• The most useful companion-volume is Gifford's Ulysses Annotated.
• Harold Nicolson claimed that Joyce pronounced it 'oolissays'.

Hey, I knew that part about the Gifford annotations!

Listening to Long Lists

Joyce includes some really long lists in Episode 12, such as names of people, or places, or things. Interestingly, I sometimes find myself reading these lists out loud so as to feel their rhythm. It seems to work in that it makes the words more real somehow. I’m not sure what the greater meaning of including such long lists in the text is, but I think my instinct here is good. What is the role of the reader and how are they expected to participate? Is this book meant to be heard? Perhaps. It is true that one of the more popular activities on Bloomsday is to participate in a live reading of the book. Maybe I’ll check it out.

Conversational Prose

I am now in the middle of Episode 12, Cyclops. Now this is more my speed. A bunch of guys in a bar shooting the shit. Now this I can get. Actually, I am enjoying this section quite a bit. There is some really great prose in here. Like this: “Hard by the block stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously.” Actually, there is a whole bunch of fine, descriptive prose in this episode, like the passage above, stories told between the pubgoers. And I like the way it is presented. Joyce tells the reader what is going on in a sort of after-the-fact, third-person narrative. Like this: “So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease…” or “So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs. Dignam he was sorry for her trouble…” And so on. It’s like listening in on a conversation. He captures the casual, back-and-fourth socializing we all do, between ourselves, all day, everyday. It’s how it is.

Orpheus and Eurydice

There were a number of cool references to a really great Greek myth in Episode 11 that I forgot about, namely the one about Orpheus and Eurydice. Remember this one? Orpheus, the celebrated poet-musician, heads down into Hades to retrieve his dead wife. He almost succeeds, being told that he can bring her back to life but that if he turns around to look while leading her out of Hades she will disappear back into the depths of the underworld. He gets right to the edge, right on the boundary, and has to look back of course, which ruins everything. What I forgot about this piece of Greek lore is what happened to old Orpheus afterwards. Apparently he was so grief-stricken by this second loss that he began to treat the Thracian women with contempt which really doesn’t work out so well for the guy. According to my annotations, the Thracians are so angered by his behavior that “they revenged themselves by tearing him to pieces in a Bacchanalian orgy.” And so it goes.

Onomatopoeia

Episode 11. Sirens. Just finished it. Not a big fan. This one is just really hard to follow. One of my main complaints is the theme of the episode (or “Art,” according to Joyce’s Linati schema) and the way Joyce tries to honor that theme, namely by attempting to “record” sounds on the page. He appears to be trying to capture sound in written words and it just comes across as totally intelligible. I appreciate the effort but most all words (except onomatopoeia) are words, not sounds.

The Wandering Rocks

So, Episode 10, The Wandering Rocks, an episode in Ulysses that does not actually happen in The Odyssey (it is only discussed and referenced, secondhand, in the Greek version). The episode is composed of nineteen short sections that overlap and interlace, in character, place, and theme. The stories in this section are like little snapshots of life, small pieces, often mundane and ordinary, of the everyday. In the annotations, the scenes are said to be “temporally simultaneous but spatially remote,” a stop-start, herky-jerky narrative that, ironically, is simultaneously concurrent in time. The main job of the reader, it seems, is to weed through these nineteen pieces and weave together a coherence for themselves, a whole from the parts. I like the little visions of life here that Joyce provides us, so descriptive and poignant, but I must admit that it is a struggle at times to tie it all together in order to understand the central action.

A Shakespeare story

The characters in the episode Scylla and Charybdis discuss a funny and apparently singular account concerning Shakespeare that I though was amusing. It is found in the diary of John Manningham (March 3rd, 1601). It is the only third person account that mentions Shakespeare ever found anywhere and, as such, becomes by default a major piece of evidence on the man’s life. It is basically a story linking the most famous actor of the day (Richard Burbage) to Shakespeare. The text in the diary goes like this:

“Upon a tyme when Burbridge played Rich.3 there was a Citizen greue soe farr in liking with him, that before shee went from the play shee appointed him to come that night unto hir by the name of Ri: the 3. Shakespeare overhearing their conclusion went before, was intertained, and at his game ere Burbridge came. Then message returne to be made that William the Conquerour was before Rich. the 3. Shakespeare's name William.”

Such ribaldry!

Who was Hamlet?

So as I may have mentioned earlier, Joyce sets up a rather interesting conversation in this episode (Scylla and Charybdis) on the Shakespeare play Hamlet, specifically on the identity of Hamlet. The character Stephen Dedalus wonders aloud as to the many coincidences between Shakespeare and Hamlet, including thoughts on the implications of the relationship between Shakespeare’s only son Hamnet (who died at age eleven) and the fictional character in the play who almost bears the same name. Apparently, such explorations of the life of Shakespeare and their influences on his works were all the rage back then (and maybe they still are). This got me to thinking about the nature of Art again and the nature of the divisions between reality and fiction that an artist builds into their work. Is it worthwhile to try and understand everything about the creator of a work of Art in order to gain insight into the work itself? Or, should it stand entirely on it’s own, free of context, an encapsulated package of meaning? The answer is probably both of course, and, for what it’s worth, it seems to me that when you find something that appeals so strongly to your heart and soul as all great art should do, it is only natural to try and delve as deeply into it as you can in search of what makes it tick.

More Tidbits...

Some more tidbits from Scylla and Charybdis:

Groundlings were cool. These were the lower class theater goers in Shakespeare’s day that “ate, drank, drew corks, smoked tobacco, fought with each other, and, often, when they were out of humour, threw food and even stones at actors.” Now that’s theater.

Many scholars think Hamlet, to a great extent, is Shakespeare personified, an autobiographical look at the author himself. With so little to go on (relatively speaking, hardly anything is known about Shakespeare’s life) it might as well be.

Somewhat famously, Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets to someone named “W.H.” No one has any idea who this is. Hmmm, and ambiguous reference, wonder where we've seen that before?

Shakespeare’s wedding should probably be regarded as a shotgun wedding by modern standards. He was 18 when he married a 28 year old Anne Hathaway, who bore his first child five month’s after the wedding (do the math). Also, they were most unhappily married, to the point where Shakespeare left her to live in London for a large portion of his adult life. And, like a bad episode of Jerry Springer, he spurned her even after death, writing her out of the first draft of his will (he later gave her his bed…whoopee!) and placing a curse on his gravestone against anyone who would “moves my bones” so as to ensure that she would not be buried next to him.

Here’s how the mythological Minotaur was conceived, according to the annotations: “Minos, king of Crete, offended Poseidon, who revenged himself by making Minos’s wife, Pasiphäe, fall in love with a white bull. To fulfill her passion she concealed herself in a wooden cow that Daedalus prepared for her; the result of the union was the Minataur – half bull, half man.” Seriously, where do they come up with this stuff?

Scylla and Charybdis and Shakespeare

So, I finished the annotations for the next episode of Ulysses (my strategy at this point is to read all the annotations, then read the actual episode all the way through, then review the annotations. This is to experience an “uninterrupted” read of the actual book while still picking up on all the references. Yeah, I should be finished this thing sometime next century). This is the Scylla and Charybdis episode based on the part in The Odyssey where, to get to where he needs to be, Ulysses must choose between sailing by either a horrific six-headed sea-monster known as Scylla or a raging whirlpool-like sea monster known as Charybdis. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Needless to say, Ulysses screws up royally and brings down all manner of hell and havoc upon himself and his hapless crew.

In any case, at least from the annotations, this section seems to be focusing on contrasts, differences, choice, and enigmas, as set up by the original story in The Odyssey. It also contains a very large number of references to literature and literary figures, both real and imagined. And speaking of literary figures, Shakespeare looms large in this episode, so large in fact that I felt like I was reading his plays while digesting the annotations (there’s that book-within-a-book thing again). Joyce continually conjures up the old bard throughout, analyzing his plays and his life in great detail. He especially focuses on the enigma that is Shakespeare himself and on the more puzzling aspects of some of his works (Hamlet, arguably Shakespeare’s most enigmatic character, is particularly dissected). Puzzles, layers, depth, and enigmas. Sounds familiar, eh?

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!! Remember, everyone's Irish on March 17th!

U.P.: up

So, I’m all caught up with the references from the previous episodes. Thus, I am in the process of reading my first episode “in tandem” with the annotations. Such a richer experience of course, a source of context, the notes serving as an anchor of sorts. Either that or a life preserver. I’m about halfway through Episode 8, Lestrygonians. Since I’ve started reading the annotations, my old “one-episode-in-a-single-sitting” rule is totally out the window. So much more to read.

Here’s a few comments:

1) The phrase “method to the madness” is from Hamlet. It’s from an aside Polonius makes concerning Hamlet’s seemingly bizarre behavior. I like finding the origins to stuff.

2) This section has the famous “U.P.: up” note to the character Breem. According to the notes, there are numerous theories as to what this may mean, but nothing authoritative. This happens every so often in the annotations, where they’ll say something like “no known reference” to what appears to be an obvious reference to something. Imagine that. Maybe I’ll quit my day job and pursue a Master’s in Literature based on one of these “loose ends.” It’ll be fun.

3) Lots of Irish historical references in this section. It’s like a history lesson within a fictional narrative. Add another one to the list of things that this book “is.”

Tandem Reading

So, with the annotations added into the mix, reading this book has become quite a project. But I refuse to give up of course. I’m stubborn like that. Anyway, there is a practical matter to attend to, namely, how exactly to read the novel along side of the references. The author of the annotation book, Don Gifford, states that his book “is thus designed to be laid open beside the novel and to be read in tandem with it.” Tandem reading. Should be interesting.

As I mentioned before, the annotations are quite extensive and numerous (a single sentence usually possesses many, many separate references, piling up on each other like ice floes in a thawing river). Gifford has a suggestion here that bears mentioning. He states that the reader can “accept an interrupted reading and follow it with an uninterrupted reading [of the novel]…read through a sequence of the notes before reading the annotated sequence in the novel…or skim a sequence of notes, then read the annotated sequence in the novel with interruptions for consideration of those notes that seem critical, and then follow with an uninterrupted reading of the sequence in the novel.”

So much work. There better be a prize at the end of this or something.

The Time Machine

Back in 11th grade we once did an exercise where we discussed the idea of a time capsule and what to put into it. We went around the room and everyone was asked to suggest one thing that they felt needed to be included. It was kind of interesting. First off, if you can only include one item then you have to sit back and think about what single thing best represents us, best tells our story, what kind of thing says the most about who we are. There were typical items like newspapers, books, pictures, and music (I think I said a Beatles album or all Beatles albums or something. I was really into the Beatles in 11th grade). There were also some interesting suggestions, like world currencies (check out a US dollar bill sometime, like really check it out, there’s a lot going on there), a supermarket receipt, a restaurant menu, or a concert ticket stub.

It was cool to see the variety of things that people suggested. Everyone has their own ideas about what defines us, and each one kind of goes together to form a whole reality, a bigger picture of the world at a given point in time, which brings me to Ulysses. This book is a lot of things of course, but one thing I am starting to realize more and more is that it is essentially a time capsule, a literary time capsule, attempting to completely capture the life and times of Dublin, Ireland, on June 16th, 1904. And it does so, as much if not more than any other book I have ever read, capturing a specific point in time on a page. A view of the world, through human eyes, through human experience, reality according to Stephen, Leo, and Molly (and the at-large population of Dublin), Joyce tries like hell to paint a picture of what exactly life was like back then, every particular nuance, every attitude, every image, every thought, everything, which of course bring us back to Realism, but a really real realism, the realest of realisms (okay, I’ll stop). Anyway, I think this is one of the more interesting things about the book and is something I will certainly be looking out for in the weeks to come.

Annotations Continued...

So, excuse the absence once again but I am playing catch up here a bit, reading over the annotations from the first seven episodes that I already read. Getting the background here is great, like backfilling a foundation beneath a scaffolding already laid. Also, reading this book of annotations, straight up, without referencing the original text, is ironically a similar experience to reading the original text itself. Reference after reference, thrown willy nilly together on the page. I love it actually, so much context, so many little stories (Bible stories, Jewish stories, Irish history, money, Greek literature, etc.). So much to learn. Here’s a few:

Did you know that the term “sea change” (one of my favorites, and a great album by Beck) was coined in Shakespeare’s The Tempest? This is referenced in Ulysses.

Did you ever check out what happened to Oscar Wilde (a fellow Irishman to Joyce)? This is referenced a lot in Ulysses.

There was a newsmagazine in the late 1800’s called Tidbits that is acknowledged as the first example of pop journalism, the first National Enquirer, if you will? This is referenced in Ulysses.

Did you know that, in his day, Wordsworth was seen as a big time sellout after accepting a government pension and the position of Poet Laureate of England? And that Tennyson, his heir, faired no better? This is referenced in Ulysses.

Anyway, you get the point. Just so much content. So much in fact that you wonder about Joyce‘s role here as author. Is he simply an assembler of reference? A conglomeration machine, assembling multitudes of disparate pieces of the human experience into a “coherent” whole?

So to end here, in true scattershot fashion, with a few favorite phrases highlighted in the annotations:

Someone is referred to as “an ornament of society.”
Someone is said to be “in the swim” which means they are scheming to make money.
A cuckold is a married man with an adulterous wife as opposed to a cuckstool which is a chair on which a scoundrel is tied to on their door step, so as to be exposed to public humiliation, with passerby’s hooting and pelting the victim.

Clearly the prefix “cuck” is a bad thing.

Help on the Way!

So, I’m back after a little break. Back and feelin’ good. Why? Because my friends at the local library hooked me up with the perfect companion book, an episode by episode annotated guide. And after reading the introduction to this book, it looks like a real winner. Full of great information, with tons of background data, reference notes, and even tips on reading the thing. It’ll be like having my very own university professor helping me along. In fact, the author explains that the book began as handouts distributed to his students, study aids to help him teach the book…and that’s exactly what I need! All of this studyin’ and thinkerin’ and whatnot on my part will of course require much more work but hey, I didn’t sign up for a mere walk in the woods! It does feel like a bit of a concession though, using the annotations as opposed to puzzling it out on my own. However, it seems pretty undeniable at this point that the sheer depth of the text requires some outside support. One of the main lessons I will be taking from this project, generally, as a reader of fiction, is this: some books simply cannot be read without annotations of some sort. Practically speaking, it just can’t be done.

Oh yeah, and one last thing, this book of annotations appears to be longer than Ulysses itself. But of course you knew that already.

The tiny purple fishes...

You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.

And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses:
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.

And you see a girl's brown body dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.

The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses; how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.

The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

- Eric Clapton, Cream, Tales of Brave Ulysses

Peel Back the Onion

On a very basic level, this book is really just one big puzzle. The mother of all puzzles. The greatest puzzle ever told. So, in honor of this, I think I am going to start researching each episode a little bit before reading it. I have done this with Episode 7, Aeolus, and it has paid off. You see, Aeolus is the Greek god of the winds and Joyce sprinkles many clever references to wind throughout the episode. There is no way I would have caught this without knowing this beforehand. I’m just not that smart. So, research then read, in direct contradiction to one of my previous posts. Oh well. This book requires it. Spoilers be dammed.

Thinking about the book as nothing more than a big puzzle got me thinking. What is Art, really, outside of just being a mechanism for presenting a puzzle for the audience to decipher, the more ambiguous and clever, the better? We are a figurin’ sort, us humans. Is the aim of Art simply to invoke this desire in us, to appeal to our deductive sensibilities? Of course it’s more than that but I think that this can be (and usually is) a main component of Art, a fundamental truth, complexity and deep layers a goal in and of itself. Face it, we like puzzles, and Joyce knew this for sure.

“I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.” – James Joyce

Reading in Public

As you may or may not know, I like to go out and read from time to time. Starbucks. The local library. A bar. My latest favorite is an Irish joint down the road that serves expertly poured Guinness pints. So, I have gone there to read Ulysses as I have gone there to read many books (side note: they actually have a copy of Ulysses sitting in a little decorative library next to the bar. I should have just borrowed that one). However, I am starting to be very self-conscious and am battling a growing terror at being discovered reading Ulysses in an Irish bar sipping a Guinness. Seriously. It just seems so...lame, ya know? To remedy this, I have removed the dust jacket cover of the book to better hide its identity.

Thoughts of the Day

So, the slog continues…just kidding. I am enjoying the book for what it is, as I knew I would. It is true though, this one is not for the fainthearted. So I though I would work the old bullet point review this time as I have a few thoughts that are vaguely, if at all, related.

1) I’m working through Episode Six (Hades). Everyone’s in the carriage on the way to the funeral. You really, really have to pay attention here as the narrative jumps all over the place, from spoken words to thoughts, between the characters, like a beach ball bouncing in the summer surf and wind. One comment or thought yields to another in quick succession. It’s kind of a work out for the reader but I see what he (Joyce) is doing here, mirroring the way reality flits and flops around sometimes. I have noticed that if you stick it out and focus, you get into a flow and things do become clearer (like if you go for at least ½ hour of reading with little resting). It’s like getting your heart rate up on the treadmill: getting there is painful but once your up and running, you feel like you can go forever (runner’s high).

2) Lots of pieces here on death and dying. Much talk of funerals and suicides. Happy times! I’m not exactly sure where this theme is going (besides the obvious of course) but it is a strong presence in the book at this point.

3) The thoughts and words of each character, presented as stream of consciousness of course, are starting to feel personalized, especially in looking at Bloom versus Dedalus. You can start to tell who it is without being told, which is cool. Dedalus is the thinker, with witticisms and occasional high-mindedness. A teacher. A scholar. Bloom is more basic, more the everyman. This technique of characterization is interesting.

4) Still more grossness, this time in relation to death. Detailed and disgusting descriptions of corpses, burials, funerals, and more corpses. At this point, I am certainly expecting no less.

Episodes

So I've purposely been avoiding the Wikipedia entry on Ulysses, mainly the book summary (I have checked out some of the biographical and historical stuff). It just seems like cheating to get info before reading the thing. Also, I don't like spoilers (I like to head into a book completely clueless. Let it stand on it's own. As such, I try not to ever read the dust jacket summaries, reviews, or anything before beginning a book. Only after.) However, I will be using Wikipedia to help with the blog, namely to label and reference the different "episodes." You see, apparently I have the old school version of the book which doesn't label any of them (apparently Joyce didn't do so originally.) However, most other versions do. So I will be using Wikipedia to find the episode labels and use them to give you, blog reader, an idea of where I am in the book. Incidentally, and on a similar note, so far the episodes are very "digestible" in a single reading session. A close reading of each one takes no more that an hour (sometimes much less), which seems good. Like I said, I'm in no rush. So that being said, I just finished Episode 5, The Lotus Eaters. More of the same. We did find out that old Leo is cheating on his wife (or merely thinking of cheating?) and that his junk, as viewed while taking a bath, is a "limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower." Clearly too much information here.

Really Real Realism

How great is the opening to Part II, our introduction to Leopold Bloom?:

“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”

Hungry yet? I love it. Total honesty here, Bloom’s mind laid bare. Part II proceeds and you soon realize that you are living entirely in Leo’s head, hearing his every thought, desire, action, and instinct. And nothing is left out. Nothing. As a result, we watch, among so many other things, Bloom salivate over the glands and organs of animals, lust after a woman while at the butcher’s shop, consider the sexual activities of his daughter, and finally take a long, well-considered dump in the “jakes” out behind the house. And Joyce actually makes art out of this stuff. Really, he does.

One thing I like considering are different movements in the arts, especially transitions, like when late 19th century literary Realism gave way to early 20th century literary Modernism. Why is the new way new? What makes it different? Or, maybe as importantly, what make it the same? Part of what’s great about this book of course is that it “made” Modernism, it realized the entire movement and gave it legs. It was pretty much THE seminal work. No one had done anything quite like it before, which, in the world of art, is pretty much impossible.

What’s kind of cool is putting both movements side by side, comparing them so as to understand them better. One thing that immediately sticks out is that both movements are really after the same thing, that is, attempting to present to the reader “real life”, in all its ragged complexity, attempting to place reality on a page. What’s great is that they both succeed so well, but in completely different ways. Consider the opening lines to Eliot’s Middlemarch (I did I mention that I love this book yet?) as compared to the opening passage of Ulysses Part II, quoted above:

“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,—or from one of our elder poets,—in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper.”

So much…nicer, eh, but accomplishing the exact same thing. What a contrast, but interestingly, both styles, in their own beautiful way, capture the reality of the world perfectly, creating imagery that is so strong, complex, and real that it transports the reader entirely.

Stream of Consciousness

So, stream of consciousness. Great stuff, but takes some getting used tooo...wait, this O key on my keyboard keeps getting stuck. Damn keyboard. Pushbutton keys. Antiquated. Stuff of the ages. I should upgrade this damn thing. The whole lot. Boat anchor. Phrase from the 90's. Did anyone ever really use a computer as a boat anchor? Wouldn't really work that well. Damn keyboard doesn't work that well either. Upgrade. But I need money of course. Moooolah. More antiquation. Needs to buys the new computers he does. Use the money from the job. Ah, money from the corporate machine. Suckling from the corporate teat. Must have more....

Sorry about that. Anyway, I meant to say that the end of Part I really gets going with the stream of consciousness thing. It takes a bit of getting used to but after a few pages it works okay. I think the trick is just to let it roll over you while paying attention as best as you can. You have to let it pour through your brain, like, I don't know, a stream or something? Reading as thinking, it's cool to consider the three "players" at work here in, for example, the scene of Dedalus walking on the beach. We are each forming our own "reality" (I think I overuse quotes...and parenthesis...and ellipses...oh well). His thoughts, my thoughts trying to follow his thoughts (my thoughts on his thoughts), and perhaps most significantly, Joyce's thoughts, framed by the narrative. Each of us working it out, trying to understand what is before us. The faux reality of the beach for Dedalus, the blank page taking up the words from the pen for Joyce, and the published book, all these years later, splayed open on the table before me. How strange! All of us playing together like that, each one weaving our own stream of consciousness, at once both juxtaposed and separate?

Happy Birthday Ulysses!

So Wikipedia tells me, right on its home page, that on this exact date, back in 1922, Ulysses was first published as a whole. To quote:

"Ulysses is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris."

That makes the book...hold on...20 plus 80...carry the one...divide by five...add in the two...subtract by another five...to get...88 "published" years old today!

Art Imitates Life

When I was in college I had a friend who was terribly racist towards African Americans. Besides the occasional comment and disparaging remark, he would sometimes mock someone of African decent by secretly dancing around behind him, jumping up and down, scratching under his arms and on top of his head, monkey-like. Seriously. It was actually kind of scary. I had never seen such overt, deep animosity towards another person based solely on race. The bitch of it was that, besides this serious character flaw, the guy was as nice as you could imagine. I think he made it his mission to teach me, his Northerner friend, the true meaning of southern hospitality. Overflowing with generosity, he actually gave me the shirt off his back once (okay, it wasn’t a shirt, it was a jacket, and it wasn’t on his back at the time, but you get the point).

I finally had to say something to him about it when he told me that the KKK was coming to town and that he was going to watch “his friends” march (he personally knew and was friends with a few members. Really). I had to say something not so much to change the guy (although I hoped I could) but really just to let him know how stupid he looked to a lot of us. Well, long story short, it was all wasted breath. He just wasn’t convinced at all. I was wrong and he was right, end of story. So I gave up and just tried to stay away from the topic when we hung out. He did the same, toning his antics down when I was around.

I was reminded of this when reading Ulysses yesterday, specifically in the passages early in the book dealing with the anti-Semitism of Haines and Deasy. I thought the way Joyce handled this was so skillful and true to life. For example, with surprising subtly Joyce presents the ugly face of racism in a great scene between Deasy and Dedalus. Deasy wants Dedalus to get his paper on Foot and Mouth disease published and while describing the article, begins to have a sort of racist meltdown, lamenting the death of “Old England” at the hands of the “Jew merchant.” Joyce sets up Deasy’s outburst perfectly with the following sentence, right before his anti-Semitic speech begins:

“He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.”

I love this line (the first time I read it I thought it said that he beat the air “oddly,” which I liked, and then I realized that it said “oldly,” which I liked even better). Can’t you just see it, the man rising to his feet, nearly hysterical , finger shaking toward the sky, ready to launch into his tirade? When I read this, the image of my friend from school popped into my head, jumping up and down behind the backs of others, animated by hate and fear. The contrast Joyce creates in this scene adds force to the outburst and makes it all the more menacing. One minute, Deasy is describing a dry, academic paper he has written for publication, and the next minute he is up in arms, spouting about the end of the world at the hands of the Jews. Kind of like one minute sitting on the couch having a few beers with your pal and the next minute watching him jump around like an idiot behind the back of some guy he doesn’t even know. Full-on, in-your-face racism, in the book and in real life.

The Artist's Art Means What?!?!

So bear with me here but I feel like expanding a bit on yesterday’s post. Recently I was in an argument with a friend (you know who you are) who was suggesting that any meaning gleaned from art that is not explicitly intended by the artist is, by definition, invalid. In other words, if the artist doesn’t say it, then she doesn’t mean it, and if she doesn’t mean it, than it doesn’t matter. So, all the “sharp imagery” and “matronly metaphors” discussed in yesterday’s post become immaterial if Joyce did not explicitly mean to convey, well…, sharp imagery and matronly metaphors.

I reject this notion for a number of reasons. Generally speaking, I think being open-minded when consuming art personalizes the experience, which in turn gives it meaning, real meaning, meaning to the viewer, not the creator, which is kind of the point, right? As long as it is well considered, supported, and presented, I say why not? Even if the artist has absolutely no intention whatsoever of conveying meaning X, this by no means invalidates meaning X as long as meaning X is well reasoned (ah Reason, my old friend, glad you could chime in). And perhaps most importantly, when considering the artist as creator, who’s to say that the creator, any creator, can actually fully control the truth of their work. Who’s to say that the artist can actually make their art say something exact and the same for everyone in all contexts. It can’t be done of course. Besides, it’s fun to consider everything, to look everywhere, to leave no stone unturned. Makes the world go ‘round, ya know?

“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.” - Oscar Wilde

Indeed.

Breakfast, Anyone?

So, I was just able to get into the first few pages of the book and am currently watching (and hearing, and seeing, and feeling…) our hero have breakfast. I really like it so far. A couple of things right off the bat:

1) The prose is excellent. Tight, ultra-descriptive, and somehow feeling very different from your typical narrative. Although it is kind of gross at times, eh? This part describing the bowl in his mother’s sick room is downright revolting: “A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.” Nice!

2) I like the idea of this blog more and more as a companion to reading the book. Reading while trying to think of blog-worthy topics makes you like, pay attention and stuff. My desire to look like something other that a complete blithering idiot on these pages drives me to be the model reader. Imagine that.

3) Joyce weaves some great thematic references to motherhood in the opening pages, from the emotional bits about the death of Dedalus’ mother to the delivery of the “mother’s milk” by the milkmaid (the “wandering crone”). In a rather skillful way, he reiterates this theme (not sure what it means yet) tightly and with purpose, letting each reference set up the other, over and over, but not too much. Good stuff. It should be very interesting to see this play out.

Speaking of the milkmaid, how about this bit of prose describing her morning milking duties: “Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs.” What’s with all the sharp imagery?

And...Begin

Well, here’s the book. Although mainly a library guy, I figured I’d buy this one because 1) it gives the project a little more weight if I drop thirty bucks and 2) I plan on thoroughly defacing the thing with written comments and such. So, let’s begin. To start out, I’d like to post a positive quote and a ominous note:

A positive quote:

“‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book.” – Emerson

An ominous note:

“The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.” – James Joyce

Seriously dude?

Literary Modernism Redux

In preparation for this project, I figured I should do a little research into the life and times of the man and his greatest work. This has led me to look into the artistic sensibilities of the day, which of course would mean Modernism. From what I can tell, Modernist literature is basically a rejection of Realism (think Middlemarch, one of my favorites) for a more disjointed, twisted, and ambiguous worldview, with a bit of pessimistic disillusionment sprinkled in for good measure (fun times!). Plot, character, and themes are mixed and mashed so as not to be as clear cut or, er…, realistic. The article I was reading basically pointed to T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock as one of the seminal works of Modernism (another one of course is Ulysses). This poem, if you recall, thrives on ambiguity, presenting a puzzling yet beautiful poetic narrative that raises more questions than it answers. Who is the narrator really? Who is he talking to? What is literal or symbolic? What is actually going on? This of course hints heavily towards what I will find in Ulysses and should, in a lot of ways, frighten me thoroughly. One thing I would say, though, is that the very questions I just listed and will undoubtedly wrestle with in the months to come are certainly relevant to my reality, on a daily basis. I think it is interesting that, although seen by some as a rejection of Realism, the Modernist writer may actually be moving closer to “reality” that any writer before or since.

Some Pregame Thoughts

So, as I prepare to begin (i.e., find time to get my lazy a - - over to the bookstore to buy the book), I figured I'd post a few “pregame” thoughts just to get into the swing of things. First off, I ran across something really interesting today, something I’m taking as a sign that this project was meant to be. Apparently, among other great and rare manuscripts and books, the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia has in its possession a handwritten version of Ulysses. Not only that, but they have a reading group devoted to Ulysses that meets once a month, starting on Feburary 4th. This of course fits perfectly into the spirit of this whole thing so I think I’ll pay the place a visit and perhaps join this kind of scary sounding reading club.

So Here We Go....

Okay everybody, so here goes. Stick with me here as I am about to try something kind of different, a fine project bloated full with literary pretention and nerdyness. Over the next four months I plan to finally read all of James Joyce’s Ulysses and blog about it in every way possible (sky’s the limit here folks). Why? Because I have always wanted to read this much hyped and heralded book. Why not do so with the added support of a blog? Also, it could turn out to be kind of fun, right? RIGHT?

The blogging here will, I’m sure, end up all over the place, which seems appropriate given the topic. However, in some way, I want to consistently use this blog to relate to the book and to place it firmly in the context of a middle-aged American dude looking for meaning in the year 2010. Certainly don’t look for any sort of expert (ha!) analysis and/or detailed literary dissection. I guess I just want to enjoy the thing and figured that this blog could help. So expect some pretty atypical comments as I move through the text, with some “alternative” interpretations (at best) and embarrassingly incorrect analysis (at worst). So be it. If you don’t like it then you can just take your ball and go home.

So let’s get this party started! Check back often for updates as I plan on posting often and most importantly, wish me luck! Hidey-ho!

"I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day." – James Joyce