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.