Episode Fourteen, "Oxen of the Sun"

This one was a doozy. If I hadn't been writing this blog, I would have thrown in the towel, but I am, so onward, I trudged. I also had three reference guides to help me along, but, even with them, this was no fun.

Basically, Bloom goes to a maternity hospital, to visit Mina Purefoy, who has been trying to give birth to her 8th living child for the past three days. The hour is 10 p.m., and Stephen Dedalus and some of his rambunctious friends, including two fledgling doctors, are drinking and yakking about sex, childbirth and other topics in a room in the hospital, while the poor woman labors away. Bloom is shocked by the turn of conversation. Both he & Dedalus appear to be outsiders in the episode, Bloom moreso. The action moves on to a bar after it is announced that Mrs. Purefoy has finally had a baby boy. Bloom stays behind and leaves his respects for the new mother

That is it, action-wise, but the total impression of this long and bewildering episode is overwhelmingly of its difficult language - more appropriate for reading by a language scholar or a Ph.D. student of language and literature. Every few paragraphs, the tone and style change completely, supposedly the progression of the English language, starting with Latinate, then Middle English, then progressing to modern slangy (probably American) ad-talk. There are also sections which were written in the style of famous English writers, and the only one of those which gave me any understanding of what was being said was the Dickens bit. I only know about the language development and the different styles belonging to famous authors from reading the www.sparknotes site on the episode, as well as the Wikipedia entry and the entry in my "Annotated Ulysses." Otherwise, I would have been in the dark. I am hoping that my enjoyment level picks up on the next episode. Once again, I was picturing James Joyce, laughing in his grave at all of us, trying to make sense of his wordplay and oblique references.

By the way, the non-oblique reference to the "Oxen of the Sun" (and these titles are not used in the acutal book, but in my guides, based on James Joyce's instsructions) is to the sacred cattle belonging to Helios, which Odysseus' men slaughter for food after he has warned them not to. Odysseus is punished for this - having killed the sacred cows, so to speak - and the idea of profaning the sacred is seen in Episode 14 when the young men discuss pregnancy and birth in such a ribald fashion.

The men in "Ulysses"never go home, and almost no one does any kind of work. They drink; they talk; they carry on about women; the move to the next bar or meeting point. Bloom is avoiding Molly, because he assumes that she has had an assignation with Boylan while he has been walking around the city, musing and making people cranky with his fussy opinions. He just seems to drift from place to place, having done a tiny spot of work in the morning.

I've peeked ahead and see that, in the next episode, Bloom and Dedalus will be drawn together rather dramatically. Hope springs eternal that things will "come together" a bit better for me.

Episode Thirteen, "Nausicaa, pp.346-381

Based on an episode in "The Odyssey" in which Odysseus in awakend by Princess Nausicaa and her ladies-in-waiting at the mouth of a river, where they are doing the palace laundry (not a very high-class palace, if that is the case), this bit takes place at 8 p.m. on the beach at Sandymount, near a Catholic church where there is a temperance meeting going on. Three young women and their babysitting charges are on the beach, and the lusty Bloom watches them - especially Gert, who looks lovely to him and who knowingly arouses his lust. Bloom's emotional turmoil reaches a natural climax (aided by his own hand), just as a fireworks display bursts forth (obvious symbolism - very Hitchcock), causing the young women and the children to scamper off and leaving Bloom with a damp shirt. He has been obsessing about the probable affair conducted by Boylan and Molly, and he finds that his watch must have stopped at what he presumes is the exact time of the assignation. When Gert walks away, knowing that by revealing her legs and her hair that she has aroused passion in this foreign- and sad-looking man, we see that she is lame, and Bloom says some not so nice things about this. I must say, he is hardly admirable in any way at this point, but there are still 300 pages to go, so he may change in my eyes. Again, I googled "Spark Notes, Ulysses" and followed the action there, before and after reading the actual text. The notes helped to explain the very coy and arch writing style of the beginning of this episode - a parody of popular women's literature of the time. We are meant to see Gert's feverish brain through the lens of this silly language, as she contemplates a Perfect Mate, a Perfect Little Home, a Perfect Marriage, and then, the Stranger. Then, Bloom takes over the narative, and we can follow his thoughts about Molly and Boylan and about the lovely, but lame, Gert. He is a fellow with much free time on his hands, lolling on the beach at 8 p.m. But, I guess that if he did nothing but work, we wouldn't have anything like the minute-by-minute minutae of "Ulysses."

Episode 12, "The Cyclops"

It is 5 p.m., and Bloom joins a group of men who are drinking in Barney Kiernan's pub. This blathering claque includes an unnamed narrator and someone named "the citizen," who, supposedly helped revive Irish sports (based on the historical character Michael Cusack, founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association), but who proves to be a bigot, who soon picks on Bloom for being Jewish and a big talker. The entire group also comes to mistakenly believe that Bloom has given a winning tip on the day's big horse race and has also won lots of money for himself, although he neither drinks nor buys rounds of drinks for these miserable lay-abouts, who resent Bloom for both things. Bloom has dropped by the bar to meet Martin Cunningham, to discuss Dignam's insurance, which seems to have been squandered on drink., leaving his widow and children penniless. Bloom takes much abuse from the fellows at the bar - especially the citizen - who ends up throwing a biscuitbox at the car bearing Bloom and Cunningham (who saves him from a rapidly escalating threat of violence) and two other men away from the bar. And while in the bar, Bloom seemed oblivious to the growling, resentful response the group gave him when he expressed his long-winded opinions. The men's resentment quickly built up to anti-Semitic slurs and attempts at violence. We are meant to see Bloom as the Messiah or Elijah, but instead he seems totally hapless to me. The bit of the ongoing myth which we are meant to see as the basis of this episode was Odysseus' escape from the one-eyed monster, the Cyclops. Interspersed with the dialogue between the characters are long paragraphs of mock-heroic or mock-journalistic prose, which do nothing to move the story forward, as they are based on extraneous characters and useless historical trivia. We are now on page 346, out of a total of 783 in the book, and we are about to start episode 13, out of a total of 18. I am reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" at the same time, and I must say it is much more fun than "Ulysses," but it does have its challenging moments too - keeping the long list of Vanger relatives straight, for instance. But, I digress...

A Link to a Wonderful Newspaper Article

My friend, George, just sent me a link to a piece by this year's National Book Award-winning author, Colum McCann ("Let the Great World Spin") which pretty much sums up why any of us struggle to understand "Ulysses" or any other finely observed piece of fiction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opinion/16mccann.html

The piece was published in the New York Times on this year's Bloomsday - July 16 - the day in 1904 when James Joyce set the action of his novel and the day which Joyce lovers all over the world re-celebrate his confounding, but magnificent, work.

As I count down the pages until I am finished with "Ulysses," reading this article gave me a correction to my mean-spirited approach. Newly inspired, I read on.

Bloom has his eye on Boylan

In Episode 11, "The Sirens," the emphasis is on music - specifically music sung in the Ormond Hotel by Simon Dedalus, and others, at the prompting of the customers in the bar. Listening to their impromptu recital are various hotel diners and bar customers, including two winsome barmaids and Bloom, plus his dinner companion, a lawyer named Richie Goulding. They are all transfixed by the beauty of the men's voices and the emotion of the moment. All the while, Bloom is watching out for the dastardly Boylan, who nips into the Ormond for a drink on his way to his assignation with Bloom's wife, Molly. It is 4 o'clock, and Bloom is quickly out of the Ormond and on his way to see about insurance for the poor Dignam family, but still keeping an eye out for Boylan and dreading what must be about to happen between him and Molly. In this episode, there are counterpoints of tappings by a blind piano tuner's cane and other noises, along with the songs in the bar of the Ormond. In the original Greek poem, Odysseus is tempted by the songs of the Sirens, but is lashed to a mast, so that he may sail past them. And, onward sails Bloom, through is day, past all of the songs & noises of Dublin.

Again, I referred to Spark Notes, Ulysses, for a basic understanding of what was going on. I should also note that I've changed the name and address of my blog to www.UlyssesReadingProject.blogspot.com. I'm hoping that helps people find the site.

My Mind Wanders During "The Wandering Rocks"

In this tenth episode, various Dublin characters go about the business of their almost incomprehensible lives at 3 p.m. on June 16, 1904. We see Dedalus and Bloom briefly, but there are nineteen vignettes or scenes in all, each with different characters and each one seeming to be very minor and described in a soup of gibberish. Seemingly they have nothing to do with each other. Again, luckily, I have Sparks Notes on-line to refer to and my "Ulysses Annotated," although that latter volume is as much trouble to decipher as the novel, itself. We are told in the notes that this is a kind of interlude between two sections in the novel and that Dedalus and Bloom will, hereafter, start to draw together.

The minor characters are virtually impossible to remember and keep straight, but I am keeping my eye on Dedalus and Bloom, as much as possible. Blazes Boylan, the popular but sleezy cad, who will start an affair with Molly Bloom later in the book, is another important character, who reappears in tiny bits & pieces and is in this episode, looking down his secretary's blouse. I suppose that Buck Mulligan and Haines are two more figures to keep an eye on, and they continue to gossip about Dedalus in this section. Everyone else is swimming around in my head - priests, drunks, motherless or fatherless children.

I can't say that I was knocked out by the sheer poetry of Joyce's words in this episode, but onward I trudge. I know that there is some powerful writing ahead.

Struggling With Episodes Eight and Nine

By googling "Sparks Notes, Ulysses" and opening up that webpage, you can then click on Episode Eight, "Lestrygonians" (named after a tribe of cannibals, whom Odysseus runs into, in Book Ten of "The Odyssey") and Episode Nine, "Scylla and Charbydis" (denoting issues which put Stephen "between a rock and a hard place," but originating from adventures in The Odyssey) and find out the bare bones of the "action," and I do use that term loosely. In Episode Eight, Bloom finds a quiet place to have lunch and is gossiped about. And in Episode Nine, Stephen debates his theory about Hamlet with some intellectuals and librarian types at the National Library. Stephen is treated badly, and, when Bloom happens upon the group in the library, as he does research for an ad he is trying to sell, Buck Mulligan, who has come to find Stephen, makes fun of him to Stephen, referring to Bloom as a probable homosexual. Neither one of these hapless characters - Stephen or Bloom - commands much respect from anyone so far, but their paths are starting to criss-cross. We are told in the commentaries that the search for a father/son is a major theme, as the father-son angst of Hamlet, a figure very like Stephen, who talks about him incessantly. And we are told that Bloom is the father figure for Stephen, and a replacement for Bloom's son, Rudy, who died in infancy. So, these two characters should be drawn together in upcoming chapters. There is no such relationship yet. What there was in Episode Nine was pages and pages of undecipherable talk among the intelligentsia in the Library - enough to make me lose my sense of what was happening. Most of it has to do with Irish literature and literary figures, but it is so nonsensical that it is maddening. Even so, if read out loud, many of these passages and their made-up compound words sound wonderful. They are more like poetry than prose. But, on I read, hoping that "Ulysses" will all come together for me in a kind of miraculous combustion.

"Aeolus" - Episode Seven

Now that I've discovered http://www.sparknotes.com/ and its entry on Ulysses, I'll put the link to the episode I am blooging about in each blog entry. No need to hash over the plot, as that will be taken care of. The link to Episode Seven's explanation in Spark Notes is:



http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ulysses/section7.rhtml



I must say that this Episode Seven just about did me in, before I discovered the Sparks website. I was unable to get any traction - no forward motion - in the story. The elaborate layering-on of allusion and elliptical thought - that darn interior monologue - created such a bizarre mishmosh that I had to wonder if Joyce was either a madman or a total genius. This "word soup" kept me from being able to decipher a single simple sentence, or so it seemed. And the headlines, which Joyce inserts rather playfully throughout the episode, didn't help one bit. I couldn't tell for awhile that the men were assembled in a newspaper office. And their buffoonery and silly oratory really threw me off (just whom were they referring to? - now I know, thanks to Sparks Notes and to my "Ulysses Annotated" guide ), not to mention not being to identify the characters - the newspapermen and their friends, who are joined by Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. The latter two are together for the first time in the book, and they are to become like father and son, in one of the continuing themes of this Ulysses-Telemachus parallel...or so my newly beloved Spark Notes tells me. Stephen gives the editor the ridiculous essay or op ed piece on Hoof and Mouth Disease, written by the equally ridiculous Mr. Deasy, and they all adjourn to a pub. That much I got. And I understood the bit about Bloom trying to sell the liquor merchant Keys an ad based on the House of Keys - the ruling body of the Isle of Mann, which had self-rule, while Ireland still did not - an ongoing issue in this book. I can see Bloom being treated as an outsider and being made fun of by the newsboy urchins, but I can't quite grasp why the men seem to like wimpy and moody Stephen Dedalus so much and defer to him. According to the notes, he is a thwarted poet and genius, last seen in "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man," when he quit medical school and went to live a Bohemian life in Paris. He is shattered by his loss of faith and by the death of his mother and is, supposedly, looking for a father figure while Bloom is looking for a son, since the death of his infant son, Rudy.



I've workd my way up to page 151 (out of 783 pages) and am about to start Episode Eight or "Lestrygonians." I'm hoping that it's more easily deciphered than Episode Seven, but, at least, I now have my Sparks Notes to refer to. I think I can hear Mr. Joyce laughing from his grave at my heroic efforts.

Finally! REAL Help for the Thoroughly Confused!

I'm back in California, after a summer in Maine, and I've opened my boxes of books, which I mailed from one coast to the other. In one box was my copy of "Ulysses" and the copy of the guide I am trying to use without too much luck: "Ulysses Annotated" I have muddled my way through episode Seven, "Aeolus," and have finished it with great difficulty, literally falling asleep several times while trying to read it. My little Wikipedia outline for "Ulysses" gives this episode very short shrift, and my huge reference book was too detailed to make much sense. I was puzzled from start to finish - about what was going on, what was being talked about. Lo and behold, I just found a FANTASTIC GUIDE TO ULYSSES ON-LINE - something called Sparks Notes, which the rest of the world may know about, but I just had to blunder onto in my desperation for some clarity. I recommend it to all of you who are trying to read along (and I know that there are a few of you, although you are invisible.) Start at the beginning and read on through. It is a dream. Every character, every bit of mythological background or bit of Irish history is clearly and briefly explained, should you need it, but, mostly you get a clear over-view of what is going on at all times. Lordy, Lordy, who is this Sparks and where has he been all my life? I will post my summary of Episode Seven shortly, but I did want to share this very helpful site with you: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ulysses/

Episodes Five and Six, with Help from an Expert

I seem to be doing this by myself, but it is a good discipline. In the absence of any other kind of help, I've broken down and bought the frighteningly thick "Ulysses Annotated" by Don Gifford, and that has actually slowed me down, as I now need to check anything that I don't understand in "Ulysses" with this very detailed guidebook.

However, I am about to pack both my huge copy of "Ulysses" and this even larger, new guidebook in one of the boxes I am shipping back to California from our vacation home in Maine, and this means that I won't be reading either or reporting on my progress for about two weeks. Somehow, I don't think this will be a hardship for anyone, as I don't have a single blog-follower so far.

So...in Episodes Five and Six, also called "The Lotus Eaters" and "Hades" in guidebooks, Bloom opens a letter from his secret love interest, has a bath in a public bath, then joins several men, including Stephen Dedalus' father, Simon, in a small cortege of funeral carriages, on its way to Paddy Dignam's funeral. There is a great deal of detail revealed about Bloom en route, including the fact that his infant son, Rudy, died shortly after birth; that his wife, Molly, was known to the Dublin public 15 years earlier as Madame Marion Tweedy, a noted soprano. We also learn that Bloom's father commited suicide via poison. Bloom's Jewishness and "outsider" status is hinted at, as is his actual profession as a "canvasser of ads." Stephen's father reveals that he greatly mourns the recent death of his wife, Stephen's mother, and we already know that Stephen is haunted by her death. Simon Dedalus also says to the men sharing the funeral carriage with him that he actively dislikes Stephen's room-mate (or tower-mate), Buck Mulligan.

During the burial in the grave-yard, Bloom muses ghoulishly about death and the decomposition of the human body, in keeping with his lusty and almost blood-thristy love of food and life's dramas and passions.

This brings me to Episode Seven, "Aeolus" in the guidebooks. This works out to be approx. page 114 in the original text, page 116 in my Vintage Edition.

That's it for a few weeks. Happy reading along, if you are doing that and have decided to remain silent.

Moving forward...

I'm back from a road trip around Canada's Gaspe Peninsula, and I've gotten back to reading "Ulysses." I've just finished episodes three, four and a bit of five. Epidose Three ("Proteus" in my Wikipedia guide) was enough to make me consider researching & buying a good concordance or guide, as it is almost entirely Stephen's stream of consciousness while he is walking on the beach, then urinating, then picking his nose. Episode Four introduces Leoopold Bloom, seemingly Stephen's opposite, as he is lusty, carnal and action-based, as opposed to Stephen's moody passive aggressiveness. Bloom, a kind of advertising salesman, starts his day by going to the butcher to buy kidneys, then fixing breakfast for himself and his wife, Molly, who lies in bed, waiting to be waited on. She seems to have a singing job lined up...and there is a funeral which they will both attend at 11 that day - a fellow named Paddy Dignam. Bloom is occupied with feeding Molly and himself and the cat, reading a letter from his daughter, Milly, who is only 15 but is living away from home and training for a job. Then he defecates in the outhouse, an acitivity which Joyce carefully and lovingly describes, and then he takes off for a walk by a deliberately circuitous route, to pick up a letter from a lover or "love interest," a woman who uses the pseudonym of Martha Clifford, while she addresses him as Henry Flower.

I've fallen into the pattern of reading for plot content and just glossing over the stream of consciousness language - treating those parts as poetry. I am clearly missing things by doing this, but am enjoying the sound of the language - and what language it is! Joyce seems to have created some words, but his prose is also awash with all kinds of language. I am trying to revel in it, too, but will probably have to break down and buy a guidebook from amazon.

Pushing on, into Episode Five...

Starting Bloomsday with Buck, Stephen and Haines

This really wasn't so hard.

I read the first 36 pages of "Ulysses" last night and stopped at the end of the second episode. I met the plump and bizarrely talkative med student, Buck Mulligan, who spouted Catholic Latin even while shaving early on the morning of "Bloomsday" - June 16, 1904. And I met his flat-mate (or tower-mate), Stephen Dedalus, whom I first encountered 40 years ago when I read Joyce's "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man," and who, in this book, is sharing rooms in the Martello Tower, overlooking Dublin Bay with Buck. Stephen is a passive-aggressive, deeply moody school teacher, haunted by the recent death of his mother. Then, I met Haines, a foppish Oxford-educated Brit, who seems to be Buck's house guest and a constant irritation to Stephen, although he swallows his irritation and mutters to himself.


They all go down to the rocky beach so that Buck may swim after his shave. I must say, he certainly leads these two around by the nose. Following this, they share breakfast in their tower rooms. Then, in the second episode, Stephen is facing his classroom, trying to get them to concentrate on a boring bit of classical history - the victory of Pyrrhus of Epirus (the fellow who said "another victory like that and we are done for" and gave the world the phrase "Pyrrhic victory.") The boys can't wait to be released so that they may play hockey and are cranky when Stephen tells them a truly weird riddle - totally incomprehensible. Stephen, who tortures himself over his refusal to pray with his mother at her death bed (probably due to the fact that he no longer believes in the Church), sees in one pitiful little student, whom he tries to help with his sums after the other boys have left for hockey, a child whom only a mother could love, thereby reminding himself of his own mother's love. Stephen is clearly a fellow who knows how to torture himself. The headmaster, Mr. Deasy, calls Stephen to his office and proceeds to lecture him on how to save the wages he is paying him, gives him a very strange article on hoof and mouth disease he'd like Stephen to give to his contacts at the local newspapers and then sets forth several vile anti-Semitic pronouncements and one anti-Semitic "joke," and that ends the second episode.

There is plenty of the stream-of-consciousness, which I was warned about in the Wikipedia article, and I understand that the book will become more and more "streamy" as it progresses.



I have not yet met Leopold Bloom, around whom the book is structured, but I see from my Wikipedia notes that he will be introduced in the fourth episode. The same Wikipedia notes explain the classic references and the original classical headings to the episodes. Not being a student of the classics, I never learned any of these allusions, so I am having to refer to the notes for help.


We're told that Bloom, when he is introduced, will represent Odysseus or Ulysses; Stephen, his questing son, Telemachus; and Molly Bloom (Leopold's wife), Penelope - all from the "Iliad". The first three episodes are named "Telemachus," "Nestor" and "Proteus," characters whom I find nicely explained in Wikipedia but whose links to the text remain to be made clear to me. It is Leopold or Ulysses we are to follow through "an ordinary day" in Dublin on June 16, 1904, and we are to see the classical parallels throughout. This is where I need help.


That, and the Latin/Catholic phrases throughout.

And, of course, like so many people before me, I am wondering if James Joyce wrote "Ulysses" just to torture generations of English professors, English students and the like. He is said to have chuckled over the "puzzles" he planted throughout the book.

However, if I read the text quickly, looking for the bits and pieces that move the story forward, this seems to work, so that is how I will proceed. I'll check in with this blog after I've read the next two episodes. I'm hoping that some of you will want to read along with me and share your thoughts or explain any of the Latin and classical references as well as the "puns and parodies and allusions" we are promised in the Wikipedia article. My husband and I are planning a little road trip in a few days, so it may be a while until my next posting.

Conquering the Classics

I am starting this blog to help me, and hopefully others, finally conquer those classics of literature, which have seemed to me to be too long, too difficult or too complex to read on my own or in book groups. I was an English major at Duke University, and I have my masters in Journalism from Columbia University and am currently the member of three book groups, but, even with that background, I have never worked up my courage to tackle "Ulysses" by James Joyce or "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann. I am completely intimidated by these two, which are considered masterpieces by so many academics and book editors.

I'll start reading "Ulysses," armed with my newly printed Wikipedia entry on the novel, which explains each chapter. I'll post my reactions and questions as I work my way - slowly - through "Ulysses," and I'll see how it goes.

I hope that this inspires others to read along, so that I end up with a kind of virtual book group. I will keep the number of pages I read between postings down to about 30 pages, and see how that works. The edition that I am using, if this helps you, is the Vintage International 1990 edition (a division of Random House), a paperback. There are 783 pages of text, so that would mean I'd be making at least 26 postings, if I hold to the 30-pages-at-a-time idea.

I look forward to hearing from you with answers to my questions or opinions or helpful hints, as I work my way through "Ulysses." Then, after "Ulysses," I hope to conquer a few more English language classics. Join me, won't you?