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.