"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.