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