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...