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.