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.