Pages 259-300 and something

More Hamlet discussions in the Library, with (I think) some suggestion that Shakespeare might have fancied blokes, and also that he wrote his wicked brothers into some of his plays, Edward and Richard, as the respective villains of King Lear and Richard III, with some suggestion that Shakespeare's wife Anne was having it off with one or both of them.

Someone asks Stephen if he's going to publish his theories, and also whether he actually believes them. Stephen says no, he doesn't believe them, begging the question then as to why Joyce had to spend so many pages on it. Is Joyce poking fun at academia? If so it's going right over my head.

Perhaps I should write a novel in which one of the main character theorises for 50 pages about how they think Sir Christopher Wren started the Great Fire of London so that he could rise to fame by rebuilding the city afterwards? Then she could declare her own theory utter rubbish. I don't believe that theory myself, but it sounds good, doesn't it? Try it out at a party.

Then my character - I might call her Stem in homage to Joyce - could contemplate her navel for another 50 pages, then get up and go to the toilet, then eat a ham and cheese sandwich, contemplate the nature of daytime television for another 50 pages, think about a lost love for a while, and then go for a walk down the street where she bumps into various people who's eyes remind her of marbles. Then she could pick her nose for good measure. If that doesn't get me into the top 100 books of all time I don't know what will. Except everyone would probably dismiss it as derivative, I suppose.

Anyway back to Ulysses, after they've finished banging on about Shakespeare a new section starts, where we follow different characters for short periods of time, and nothing much happens. Someone (I forget who) describes to another person how they got to sit next to Bloom's wife Molly one night and how she was a bit of alright. (It is a universally accepted truth that Bloom's wife is a bit of alright, and he thinks about her a lot too). This section started to remind me of an episode of "The Monkees" (hey hey), where people run in and out of doors a lot. All I can say is that 1904 Dublin must have been very small, people keep bumping into each other all the time. This bit is extremely dull.

Oh, in this bit I also spotted one person in a straw hat (aha!) and another person in tan shoes (aha aha!). Is Joyce trying to plant some pickled herrings about? Who was the mysterious straw hatted and tan shoed person he fled previously?? I certainly am no closer to finding out.

I'm a bit crabby this morning...

Pages 196-258

Now we have left the newsroom (thank God) and are back with Bloom, walking around. He meets Mrs Breen, who has pastry crumbs on her frock, and who's eyes remind Bloom of eggs. (Everyone's eyes remind him of eggs, maybe it's got something to do with the water in Dublin). Mrs Breen is waiting for her husband, who recently had a nightmare about the ace of spades chasing him up the stairs (I wonder if that's where that band from the Young Ones got the inspiration for their song? The Ace of Spades! The Ace of Spades!). Mr Breen has also recently received an insulting postcard, inscribed only with the letters "P.O.". Apparently he is going to sue someone for ten thousand pounds about it. I'm not sure, though, I might have missed something here. I don't even know what the significance of "P.O." is, and can only guess it has something to do with Irish politics - only because Bloom then takes his leave and starts thinking a lot about Parnell (a politician) and Sinn Fein and so on, and suspects someone from the Irish Times as the sender. (I wouldn't put anything past those lads at the newsroom).

Bloom gets hungry and pops into the Burton restaurant. Unfortunately the sight of all the men eating makes him feel sick, with such quotes as "Table talk. I munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday" and "Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff." I think my Mum would approve of Bloom's sentiments on this matter.

He tries Davy Byrne's "moral pub" next, not sure what that means, something to do with kosherness? (Should have checked to see if the blokes at Burton's were eating meat and milk together). He orders a cheese sandwich, which he adds mustard to and cuts into fine strips. (Very significant, has anyone written a thesis on this?). He chats with Nosey Flynn, a fairly disgusting creature who keeps scratching his groin (fleas, apparently) and sniffling up "dewdrops" of "nosejam". When Bloom goes to the loo, Flynn and Byrne talk about him a bit, noting his mourning clothes and how he belongs to some elite society which allows him to stay cashed up. (I presume the Freemasons or something). Then, mysteriously, they make reference to "the one thing he'll never do" [Bloom], but unfortunately Bloom comes back then and I am left hanging, wondering what it is they mean. Eat a ham and cheese sandwich?

Bloom heads off to the Library, but on the way sees someone in a straw hat and tan shoes that makes his heart "quop" (word for the day) and who he hurries to avoid. I thought he dodged into the Museum, but maybe it was straw hat man heading that way.

In the Library, we now we return to Stephen Dedalus, who is chatting with Mr Best and John Eglington about his theories about Hamlet. I think Stephen's great theory is that Hamlet is really Shakespeare's own son, Hamnet (who died), making Hamlet's mum really Anne Hathaway, meaning that Shakespeare reckoned she was having an affair. I don't know, I could have misunderstood this whole bit. Buck Mulligan turns up again, and then Bloom comes in to ask the librarian for copies of the Freeman's Journal (aha!) and the Kilkenny People. Buck tells Stephen that Bloom known his Dad, and calls Bloom a "sheeny". I don't know what this is; perhaps all will be revealed on page 259. Perhaps Zombie Dignam will come back from the dead.

Bit to turn you to vegetarianism:
Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and squeak. Butcher's buckets wobble lights. Give us that brisket off the hook. Plup. rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashes going out. Don't maul them pieces, young one...Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed. Insidious. Lick it up, smoking hot, thick sugary... (Page 217).

Pages 146-something

I forgot to look at what page I was up to this morning; Bloom has finally left the funeral after about 60 pages. In any other book 60 pages at a funeral would be at least a quarter of the whole novel.
 
Now Bloom has gone to the local newspaper office, where he seems to work as an ad man. We are not in his head anymore, so it is difficult to figure out what he's on about; he seems like a stranger. He seems to be very intent on getting the look of an ad for a guy called Keyes right. (He want a picture of crossed keys in the ad as some kind of pun on his name).
 
The entire male population of the town seems to be hanging out in the newspaper offices this morning, just talking about stuff. I am finding it very difficult to keep track of who is who. Stephen Daedalus (of Chapter 1 and the snotrags) has turned up, to ask if they can publish Deasy's letter about Foot and Mouth. Someone else has also put in a bit about the funeral, and a list of who showed up.
 

Joyce uses headings in this section

All the time. My theory is he realised he needed to break up the text so that people like me would feel like they were getting somewhere. I'm finding this bit really tough going, and am even wishing we were back at the funeral.
 

A discussion on whether Joyce is a genius

At the moment I'm thinking maybe you had to be there to get all excited about Ulysses. I guess it must have been pretty outrageous and different for its time; it certainly may have freed other authors from the obligation to use punctuation and to make sense. I think TS Eliot's quote "it is the work to which we are all indebted" is a bit ambiguous, really, he could have been thinking "because it makes us all look good in comparison". Or maybe Eliot was just totally over commas and quotation marks and saw Ulysses as a revolutionary act in that regard.
 
I'm starting to think that the genius of Ulysses is that when something does actually happen or a fact is revealed (like when we found out Bloom's Dad had committed suicide) it seems totally amazing because for most of the time nothing much is going on. For exmaple, I think I may be reading too much significance into the death of Bloom's father and the mysterious man in the mackintosh, but I've got to get my kicks somehow.
 
Joyce does also use a lot of pretty language. I don't hate Ulysses or anything...I'm just finding it very easy to be distracted.
 

Bloom seems an outsider

Again, this might be me reading too much into things, but I'm thinking that Bloom is on the outer of the male bonding group in the newsrooms because he's Jewish. Perhaps that's why he seems like a stranger in this section. They don't seem to include him in much, and seem to think he's a bit of a pain. There were a few non-favourable remarks about Jewish people too, from what I can remember.
 
Sigh...better get back to it...

Pages 105-145

So much for my plan to read 30 pages a day - I've only got two weeks left of the Readathon and over 700 pages left! Egad.
 
Well, not much has happened in the last 40 pages, Leopold is still at the funeral and they've just buried Dignam's body. We have found out, though, that Bloom's father committed suicide by poisoning himself. Bloom thinks a bit about how all the blood and maggots and other lovely things in the soil must benefit the Botanic Gardens over the fence. Also, a strange man in a mackintosh turns up in the churchyard to watch the coffin being buried, but disappears before the caretaker can take down his name. (Bloom notes that his presence makes the number of people at the funeral an unlucky 13; I have vague hopes some kind of Return of Zombie Dignam storyline may occur as a result but am not holding my breath).
 
I hope the funeral finishes soon, I'm a bit over it. I might write another thesis on Ulysses, because you can never have too many, proposing a new structure to replace that boring old one about the Odyssey. Chapter 1 would be the Shaving Chapter, Chapter 2 the Funeral Chapter and, well, we'll have to see what excitements Chapter 3 brings.
 
I'd better read a bit more now...
 
Ooky bit:
I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpse manure, bones, flesh, mails, charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink, decomposing. Rot quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, treacle oozing out of them...(p137)
 
Phrase to bring into popular usage:
It's as uncertain as a child's bottom (said about the weather, page 112)
 

Pages 65-100

OK. So now (Chapter 2) we meet Leonard Bloom. It is still early morning. He thinks a lot about his wife and daughter (wife Molly in bed upstairs, daughter away somewhere but writing him letters), and walks to the shops to buy a kidney for breakfast. (Mmm...kidney...). He gets back home, cooks the kidney, taunts the cat and goes upstairs to ask Molly if she wants anything for breakfast. (She doesn't). Then he smells the kidney burning and goes back downstairs, eats the kidney and then feels "a loosening of his bowels" and so goes to the toilet. Bloom likes to read on the toilet; don't forget to put that in your essay.

Now he is off to a funeral. On the way, I think he does something sneaky and pops into the post office and picks up mail that is supposed to be for someone called Henry Flower. (He has one of Flower's cards, which he gives to the postoffice person as proof of identity. He keeps this card in the band of his hat when not in use). Molly has written this Mr Flower a letter, it sounds like she might be having an affair with him - it's all very personal; she asks him what perfume his wife wears. Certainly if I was married I wouldn't want my wife to be writing letters to someone called Mr Flower; that sounds very suspicious.

I almost didn't realise that this had happened because Bloom was doing all that interior monologue stuff and the post office trick is just popped in there casually as though it doesn't mean much. Later though he does tear up the letter and throw it away; this could indicate he's upset.

I hope I'm right about the names - I don't have the book in front of me and Henry Flower suddenly seems like an unlikely name for an illicit lover.

Pages 38-64

I watched a documentary on Ulysses last night and I didn't even understand that - and still over 900 pages to go. Still, now I know to expect less punctuation and some rudey bits as I get further into the book. There was also an appearance by Declan Kiberd, the dude who wrote the intro in my copy, which was very exciting.

I think I might write a thesis on Joyce's use of the word "snot" - snotrags, snotholes (hang on, maybe that was nosehole), and an excellent quote on page 64 - "He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully." Yep, he likes his snot alright. Who thought high literature could include snot jokes? Or at least, just snot.

Reading Ulysses is like reading poetry, just arranged differently. I am finding I have to take it very slowly, and make sure to read every word carefully - instead of just skimming over the "shape" of the words, which is apparently what we all do a lot. Unfortunately, taking it slowly still isn't helping me much.

Stephen Dedalus (I spelt it wrong yesterday, sorry) gives a class to some kids (about Greek mythology, from the sounds of it), and then has a long conversation with Mr Deasy (senior teacher) about various things. They disagree about Jews (Dedalus for, or at least open to the idea they might be OK, and Deasy against), which seems to make Deasy think that maybe Stephen isn't cut out to be a teacher at all. Deasy asks Stephen to take a letter to some journalists he knows, in hopes of bringing the problem of Foot and Mouth disease to the attention of the public, a topic about which Deasy is quite passionate. (There you go, you vets and farmers, a literary hero for you!).

Then Stephen goes on a long walk, ending up at the beach, and there's a lot of stream of consciousness stuff here which quite frankly I didn't get much of, but I'm pretty sure he's not a happy guy and thinks a lot about the cosmos and the pointlessness and anonymity of life and so on. Stephen seems to have some unconventional ideas about God, too, and spends some time thinking about Paris, from where he was called back to his Mother's deathbed. This is now the end of the first chapter; Stephen searches for his snotrag, can't find it and so leaves said snot on ledge of rock (see above).

Good bit:
Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. (Pg 62)

And so it begins

First of all, happy Bloomsday!

Today I read pages 1-38. Only 900+ to go.

I started reading Ulysses once years ago and was expecting the story to begin in a monastery, with someone who had a bad toothache. It does begin on the top of a "tower", which Buck Mulligan (medical student?) rents with Stephen Daedulus (teacher?), but there is definitely no monastery and no toothache - just goes to show how much attention I was paying at the time. Buck Mulligan is shaving (it is morning), and they are talking of Stephen's Mum, who died recently of "a rotted liver". I think I must have got the monastery idea because Buck Mulligan calls Stephen a "jesuit" and quotes a few bits in latin; no idea where the toothache thing came from, maybe I had one at the time.

So. Stephen is not surprisingly quite broody, and doesn't seem to like anyone much at the moment. I think he also feels guilty because he "refused to kneel down" (to pray) when his mother begged him to - her dying wish. Stephen is annoyed with Buck for being flippant about his Mum's death (I think); Buck also thinks Stephen should have kneeled.

There is a third character - "Haines", an Englishman - who neither Mulligan nor Stephen seem terribly fond of - seems he wigs out a bit when he's drunk and talks about black panthers, and he is an Englishman after all. Haines is keen to hear some theory Stephen has about Hamlet.

There's a lot of talking; Joyce indicates dialogue with dashes rather than quotation marks, which makes it difficult to tell what is said out loud and what is stream of consciousness.

-Like this?
-Yes

He also runs words together, which reminds me of Salman Rushdie's writing, but I guess Joyce did it first - e.g. "the cold steelpen" and "fair oakpale hair". This must be one of the things people took umbrage at at the time (editors especially, I would imagine); that and the use of the word "bloody" (how rude!!) and describing things like the milklady's "old shrunken paps".

So far I am finding it a bit difficult to figure out what is going on, but there are some beautiful descriptions and occasional moments of deep emotion, which are even more startling because they come in the middle of a lot of waffle about Greek gods, snotrags and where their next guinea is coming from.

Word for the day:
omphalos - a conical stone (esp. that at Delphi) representing the navel of the earth; a boss on a shield; a centre or hub.
Definition from The Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus
Use it in a sentence today!

Good bits:
Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. (Pg 4)

He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:
-I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.
-Of what, then? Buck Mulligan asked.
-Of the offence to me, Stephen answered. (Pg 8)

Phrases to bring into common usage:
Give up the moody brooding (Pg 9)
Snotrag (nearly every page, it seems)

The penultimate day

Yes, tomorrow is "Bloomsday" - and not only that, it's the centenary of Bloomsday! What's Bloomsday? June 16, 1904 - the day "immortalised" in Ulysses, which details the life and times of one Leopold Bloom, on this particular day.

Only one more sleep...

Who was James Joyce??

Vital statistics:

Birthday: 2 February 1882
Star sign: Aquarian
Siblings: 10
Sibling status: Eldest
Schooling: Jesuit schools, then University College in Dublin, then Medical School in Paris, but he skived off lectures and wrote poetry instead
Married: Nora Barnacle
Favourite food: Unknown
Favourite colour: Not specified
Children: Two, son and daughter
Ulysses published: 1922 (in Paris, on his birthday)
Other works: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Exiles, Finnegans Wake
Died: 13 January 1941

My copy

Actually it's Jo and Simon's copy really - did I mention that? Thanks Jo and Simon...now, just in case I quote bits of Ulysses you'd like to use in an essay but don't want to spend too much time actually reading the book, here are the details of my copy:

Joyce, James, (1922)[1992]. Ulysses. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, The Bodley Head.

(NB: If you are basing your essay on this blog I would advise you to check the current preferred referencing style because it's been a while since I've done this. Also, naughty naughty!! Also also, don't expect to get an A).

Welcome

Ulysses - a regular contender for "best book of all time", the topic of far too many a thesis and over 900 pages long. Should you spend valuable hours of your time reading this book, just so you can say you have? Is it really all it's cracked up to be?

Well, I'm going to read the thing (to raise $$ for MS research) and tell you all about it in this blog. Tune in regularly to see which of these quotes I think is true:

It is the book to which we are all indebted and from which none of us can escape - TS Eliot

Ulysses is unquestionably one of the supreme masterpieces, in any artistic form, of the twentieth century - The blurb on the back cover (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics Edition)

Ulysses is an endlessly open book of utopian epiphanies - Declan Kiberd (wrote the intro in my copy)

...the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples - Virginia Woolf

Should be fun...starts on June 16
Cheers,
A

PS Thanks to Jo and Simon for lending me their copy so I didn't have to buy one