Ulysses Funmary # 9: Scylla & Charybdis

Ok– it is long past time for me to write this funmary, but admittedly I’ve been bogged down in the minutie of academia (not unlike our librarians here).  So, after far too much ado and many apologies, through the twin dangers we must sail.

Now, in The Odyssey, Odysseus knows what dangers await him.  He has advanced warning from Circe (remember her?) and chooses to lose a few crew members to the many-headed monster Scylla rather than to lose his entire ship to the whirlpool of Charybdis.  We see just an echo of this as Steven Daedalus sails cautiously into the librarian’s discussion: “A hesitating soul taking arms against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts” (184).  We also get our first hint of how heavily Shakespeare and Hamlet are going to feature.  Despite his hesitations, though, Stevie soon jumps into the argument with both feet (and several other body parts as well).

In fact, take a moment to Brush Up Your Shakespeare and your Hamlet, ladies and gentlemen.

Don’t we all feel better about things now?

Odysseus and his crew spend their time gawking at the revolving, churning, spewing, and generally attention-seeking Charybdis.  Meanwhile, Scylla sneaks up behind from her cliff and grabs up 9 of the sailors for a snack.  Our Joyce has pulled a similar trick with this section.  He has us all gaping agog as Stevie argues round and round about Shakespeare, Hamlet, Anne, and assorted other personages{few of Stevie’s arguments are new ones, and most are terribly outlandish, but doesn’t he describe them well!}, so we nearly fail to notice the crucial things happening in the background.

What exactly is happening behind the scenes, you ask?  Well…

I’m sensing a list coming on:

1. Our characters are all gathering: Stevie, Buck, and Leo are all together at the same time, and young Kinch has just been and gone.

2. We are finally getting to see Stevie away from the world that makes him so uncomfortable.  While firmly entrenched in his murky library, he feels like the master puppeteer– manipulating minds with his words.  It is only at the end of the section that he reemerges “into a shattering daylight of no thoughts” (215).

3. Stevie, though he claims not to believe in his own argument, is living proof of his own “ghosting” theories.  Having left Ireland as a young man, he has returned to its shores to act out his scenes without truely experiencing them.  He cannot connect with the world around him, and instead lives in foggy flashbacks of his mother, his father, and his regrets.

4. Though he feels most comfortable in their company, we get the distinct feeling that the librarians are mocking Stevie– winding him up and watching him go through his dance.

Yet, for all the foaming verbiage of this chapter, despite its hushed reading room setting, Our Hero (well… our boyo at any rate) navigates himself safely and ends the section in a peaceful place, free from any foreboding omens, and on his way to the nearest pub.

Up next… Our Namesake!

ULYSSES Funmary #4: Calypso

By LIZAANNE

All right, Folks, it’s time for another funmary!  Let’s hear it for Calypso!

The Calypso section serves as an introduction to Leopold Bloom, his family, his personal issues, and his role in the novel. 

In this chaper, Leo is the active character.  He’s the Energizer Bunny as he makes breakfast for himself, his wife, and the cat; goes to the butcher; gets the mail; defines a word for his wife; promises to return a library book; eats a kidney; reads a letter from his daughter; uses the outhouse; and throughout, he daydreams– particularly of lush gardens.  

Continuing with the Homeric parallels, the *Calypso* here is Molly Bloom.  She is still and quiet (except for her bedsprings).  She sits in her room as the queen bee at the center of her universe as Leopold buzzes busily around her.  Molly is the nymph of the title, holding Leopold to her; poor Leo is as effectively caught in a honey trap as Odysseus was.  The contrast, though, is that Leo is not desperate to leave [though he suspects her of cheating]. 

As Hermes arrives to Calypso’s island, so also several messages arrive to the Blooms, but unlike Zeus’s missive, these letters do not set Leopold free.  Instead, they tie him further to his family by reminding him of his and Molly’s daughter & their son. They also sour the honey a bit by reminding Leopold of Molly’s unfaithfulness.

Calypso gives us our first glimpse at Leopold in contrast to Stephen. To finish our funmary, let’s take a quick look at this awesome two-some: 

Stephen: is so over-educated that everything reminds him of a line of poetry; estranged from his father & uncle; Catholic; desperately single; poet who is teaching; booted out of his tower by roomate

Leopold: has trouble remembering history lessons and multiplication tables; strongly connected to wife & daughter; Jewish; married; salesman who is an aspiring writer; didn’t want to disturb wife in her room

Both: thinkers & daydreamers; have a dead family member & are both in mourning black; don’t practice their religion but are strongly influenced by it ; live on the edge of poverty; have no key to their homes 

Quite the pair.

Odyssey Funmaries #11: Hades (Book XI)

By JERRY GRIT

I will efficiently deal with this book in the 3 parts. Part 3’s most relevant to Ulysses.

PART 1: The Trip Down

Odysseus continues the long version of his story to the Phaeacians … he attempts to cut it short, but one of them claims that, “The night’s still young, I’d say the night’s endless”[11.422]. We’ve all had to deal with that guy.

Odysseus and the remains of his crew follow Circe’s detailed and bizarre instructions to get to Hades, where they need to find Tiresias, the blind prophet who will tell him how to get home.

They need to board a “black craft” which will pilot itself to their destination (the Knight Rider of the Mediterranean?). Odysseus needs to find where the River of Fire and the River of Tears meet, make some animal sacrifices, dig a trench, and fill it with the animal blood.

He then has to guard this bloody trench and wait for Tiresias to show. Blood is like coffee to the spirits. It gets them perky and chatty.

PART 2: Tiresias’ Prophecy

Tiresias the prophet shows up, drinks the blood, and basically tell how the rest of the Odyssey will go.

He says that Odysseus and crew will get home if they practice self-restraint. They better not touch the Oxen of the Sun on Thrinacia Island. If they do, his men and ship will be destroyed.

Given the crew’s history with self-control, they’re doomed.

If Odysseus is able to escape, Tiresias, tells him of the troubles he will face at home with the slobs. Once Odysseus kills all the slobs, Tiresias says he’ll have to take an oar on a trip “to a race of people who know nothing of the sea.” Then he has to make a sacrifice. He then says Odysseus will grow old and die peacefully.

PART 3: The Parade of Dead

Hades is not exactly Hell, despite Mark Hoobler’s descriptions to the contrary. At least in the Odyssey, Homer doesn’t conceive of an afterlife with a heaven and hell.

But it’s definitely hellish. Hades is like a open-invitation liquor-less cocktail party, where the great and the not-so great mingle and mope. Life in antiquity must have been miserable already, without antibiotics or Twitter. And then, they only had to look forward to an eternal dry mixer with a bunch of Debbie-downers. How did these people get out of bed?

So Odysseus runs into a bunch of friends and family, and has an unrelentingly depressing series of conversations.

He sees his mom, who tells him she died from missing him. “Gee, thanks, Mom. I’ve only been lost for 10 years and killed my entire fleet, but now I’m also responsible for your death.” She also tells him his dad is still alive, but is wrapped up in rags, sleeping with his goats. Odysseus tries to hug her, but she’s bodiless, of course.

He then meets up with a bunch of famous women, basically mortals who hooked up with gods (the goomahs of the gods?).

There’s also a reunion of the Archaean Rat Pack. Agamemnon-Sinatra, who understandably has a touch of the old misogyny after getting betrayed by his wife, bitches about the undependability of women and warns that Odysseus should be very skeptical of Penelope.

So even your own wife–never indulge her too far.
Never reveal the whole truth, whatever you may know;
just tell her a part of it, be sure to hide the rest. [11.500-502]

Great advice. Who is this, Tom Leykus?

If you don’t know Tom Leykus, he’s a really, really awesome guy. 

There are also appearances by Achilles, who now is not so hot on honor anymore, preferring to be a living slave than staying any longer in Hades. Leykus must be getting to him.

There are also cameos from Ajax, Elpenor, Sisyphus, Hercules (who had yet to achieve his 13th labor).

They complain about their fate and beg for dirt on their living children.

Since he’s still living, Odysseus can leave this horrible party. He sneaks out.

Countdown to Bloomsday…

We read page 1 of Ulysses in 8 days!

Board our dark craft to Wandering Rocks!

Odyssey Funmaries #10: Circe (Book X.CXLVI-DCXXXI)

By MARK HOOBLER

Have you ever had a relationship end with someone telling you to “go to hell”? Count yourself lucky they were only being metaphorical. But our hero Odysseus has a funny way with the ladies.  So when Odysseus’ latest ‘island girl’ turns his shipmates into groveling swine at the beginning of the relationship, you probably could guess it will not end with “I hope we can still be friends.”  That’s right kids! Odysseus’ ‘black-hulled’ ship, aka The Love Boat, is making another island-hopping run!* Next stop: Aeaea**, stomping ground of the beautiful goddess/witch Circe***:

Wow! Stop staring boys!! If you could move your eyes for a moment just slightly to the right you will see our hero reflected in the mirror behind Circe!

Ok. Sorry for starting in media res. Let’s backtrack.

After losing the rest of his fleet, Odysseus charts a course for the Aeaean island. With the help of a god, Odysseus and the boys land on the island. Odysseus scales a raggedy height or commanding crag, as he is wont to do, to take visual stock of the situation and spies Circe’s lair. And here we are treated to some of that wily Odyssean logic that has kept him alive long after Achilles:

Mulling it over, I thought I’d scout the ground –

that fire aglow in the smoke, I saw it, true,

but soon enough this seemed the better plan:

I’d go back to shore and the swift ship first

feed the men, then send them out for scouting.  (the first emphasis is mine; the second O’s)

The great tactician at his best! Well, at least he is going to feed them first. 

So Odysseus sends his crew under Eurylocus (ancient Greek for ‘Unlucky’) to Circe’s palace. Almost as soon as they get there, Circe turns them all into pigs save Eurylocus, who had sensed a trap. Eury hightails it back to the beach and gives Odysseus the story. So Odysseus sets off on his own to save the day. On his way he encounters Hermes in the woods who gives him the much bally-hooed ‘Holy Moly’ that will protect him from Circe’s spells. The Gods love this guy! So Circe tries to work her dark magic on Odysseus, but her spell is as effective as trickle-down economics in the ‘80s: No luck. Odysseus draws his sword and Circe falls at his knees, begs mercy, says Hermes told her he would come, then implores him:

Come, sheathe your sword, let’s go to bed together,

mount my bed and mix in the magic work of love –

we’ll breed deep trust between us.

But Odysseus knows better! Hermes has warned him, Circe will ‘unman’ him (Circe-umcision!) unless he gets her to swear a binding oath. No more lies. Circe complies. Now – ‘at last’ – Odysseus gets his wandering rocks off. Soon thereafter he is bathed and oiled-up by Circe’s nymphy handmaidens who ‘perform the goddess’ household tasks’ (What is ancient Greek for ‘Playboy Mansion’?) At any rate, post rub-down Odysseus is sat down on a throne for a feast. I guess it is at this point that he remembers that his crewmates are still swine.  Here Odysseus draws the line. No winey-diney until the boys are men again. Circe works her magic in reverse. The crew are pigs no more. And all is well.

So well, in fact, that Odysseus decides to hang with witchy Circe for a FULL YEAR. Eventually the crew brings him to his senses. It is time to move on.

So Odysseus begs Circe that he might take leave of her. But as the old song sayeth, breaking up is hard to do. Circe keeps good on her promise to help Odysseus get back to Ithaca, but she has one little errand for our hero; he needs to make a little stop in the port-of-call known as Hell to see the seer Tiresias.

Bet he wishes she had just kept his favorite t-shirt…

Countdown to Bloomsday…

We read page 1 of Ulysses in 9 days!

Holy Moly, indeed.

* = Poor Achilles! You spent your Homeric epic killing people and being taunted with epic epithets! Who knew you could have spent your 24 books knocking leather sandals with every goddess or virginal nymph in the Mediterranean?? Well, most likely wily Odysseus with his golden tongue convinced old blind Homer to make him the hero of the more ‘romantic’ epic….I guess the pen is mightier than the sword! (Amateur Freudians can remove one of the spaces in that last sentence for some hermeneutic fun!!)

** = For Andrew Cashmere, and readers of Fitzgerald’s translation, ‘Aioli’ and ‘Kirke.’ Homeric scholars and amateur adventurers have been trying to find the real places our hero visited for about 2000 years or more. I think one of the things that has thrown them off is everyone spells them differently. Isn’t aioli a type of garlic mayo?

*** = Circe or Kirke, has a long history in western culture, including both Homer and Joyce. What you may not know, is that one hot summer night in 1970, after eating too many lotus plants and reading book X of The Odyssey, Don Henley and Glen Frey came under her spell.

Odyssey Funmaries #9: Laestrygonians (Book X.XXVIII-CXLV)

By JERRY GRIT

A lot happens here, but Odysseus is suspiciously short on the details.

Odysseus continues his woeful story to the Phaeacians. After losing the magical whooppee cushion (no Vore-esque restraint here), Odysseus describes how his fleet rows dejectedly for 6 days and ends up of the land of the Laestrygonians.

In the calm cove, all of the ships in Odysseus’ fleet tie themselves together. Odysseus alone anchors his ship separately outside this cove … and doesn’t really explain why.

Odysseus sees a plume of smoke and … unlike on Cyclops … he doesn’t investigate, but sends some crew instead. Again, highly suspicious.

3 random crewmembers go ashore to find the king of the land, King Antiphates, and run into his “strapping” daughter. According to Mirriam Webster,  “strapping” means “vigorously sturdy.” If you don’t know much about a land, and you run across a vigorously sturdy little girl, it might give you some concern about the size of its grown men.

She sends them off to the big palace. In the palace, they meet the queen, who’s huge. Surprise, the Laestrygonians are giants. And guess what giants like to eat?

Little dudes covered in olive oil.

The queen freaks and summons the king. He bursts in and snatches up one of the sailors and “tore him open for dinner.”

The 2 other sailors freak out and flee. The king calls out to his big peoples. With the entire fleet trapped and tied together in the cove (all but for Odysseus’ ship), the giants “speared the crew like fish” and took them home for Archaean shish kabobs.

Only Odysseus and his ship’s crew escapes. No more fleet.

This part of the story really bothers me. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Why does Odysseus dock away from the fleet? Why does he not go ashore? And why does he seem to know so much about the island, but not that it’s inhabited by man-eating giants?

My hunch: Odysseus is probably pissed about his crew letting the wind out of the bag. Vengefully, he serves them up. Odysseus, mad about losing the wind bag, becomes a douche bag.

Countdown to Bloomsday…

We read page 1 of Ulysses 10 days!

Get hungry for it!

Odyssey Funmaries #7: Cyclops (Book IX.LXXI-DCXXX)

By JERRY GRIT

Here we have the worst house guests in all antiquity vs. the worst host, in a competition for last.

Odysseus continues his tale of sorrow to the nagging Phaeacians (who aren’t letting the poor guy go). After fleeing the Lotus Dopers, and still way off course, his fleet of twelve ships runs aground in the land of the one-eyed Cyclops.

He describes them as a lawless people, “each a law to himself” [9.127] and that they don’t plow their land, relying instead on whatever grows … failing to account that farming may be tough without depth perception.

He also describes how their land is rich with wild bounty, overrun with fat goats and sheep, and teeming with fruit and wheat. You can hear the expansionist’s greed in Odysseus as he rhapsodizes on the natural resources the Cyclops haven’t plundered and ruined like “advanced” two-eyed civilizations.

He decides to take a closer look with his own ship’s crew to “probe the natives” [9.194] to find out whether they were violent and lawless, or stranger-loving and god-fearing. Quite a risk here, Odysseus … wagering you and your men’s lives to see if these people like strangers? I don’t think Odysseus is being completely forthcoming with his intentions.

So Odysseus says he and his crew go ashore and immediately come across a huge cavern, which is obviously a giant’s liar, and a giant who clearly does not mix with the other giants, given its isolation and fortification. It’s also clear from the cave that he is a “grim loner” … which is saying a lot given the lawlessness of your garden-variety Cyclops. Do we have here a Cyclops Unabomber?

So they enter the Unabomber’s cave. And given the cave’s organization, he’s also like the obsessive compulsive of the Cyclops, with all his cheeses and goats are well organized and racked according to type. Odysseus decides to hunker down and start eating “the bulk” of this guy’s cheese while waiting for him to return. I wonder how an OCD Unabomber Cyclops is going to take this?

The Cyclops known as Polyphemus comes back to the cave, shuts it up with a massive boulder, and sits down to do his chores … organizing his cheeses and goats. Finishing up his chores, he sees the hiding freeloaders. Odysseus announces they’re Agamemnon’s men (the Sinatra of the Achaeans) and that they were hoping they would get a warm welcome and gifts … he even threatens Polyphemus for hospitality, announcing, “strangers are sacred — Zeus will avenge their rights” [9.305].

Polyphemus grabs two of the freeloaders, “knocked them dead like pups,*” [9.325] and eats them.

Odysseus: 0
Polyphemus: 1

Thus goes the first night in Chez Cyclops. At dawn, the Polyphemus, grabs another two sailors for breakfast, and leaves for work, this time closing up the cave behind him with the giant boulder.

Odysseus: 0
Polyphemus: 2

And this is just like one of those lame A*Team scenarios. The villainous construction company imprisons the A*Team in a garage with welding equipment, a car, and a nail-gun. Here, they’re locked up in a cave with fire, a huge club, and knives. This team builds antiquity’s nail-spewing-tank equivalent: A giant stake. I wonder where that’s going?

Polyphemus comes home again, does all his chores (impromptu hostage-taking won’t distract him from his schedule), and eats two more men.

Odysseus: 0
Polyphemus: 3

Odysseus then offers up some wine to complement the taste of his men’s bodies: “Try this wine to top off / the banquet of human flesh you bolted down” [9. 387-388] … Odysseus, the wine steward? And again he brings up Polyphemus’ rudeness to his uninvited guests by imprisoning and eating them two at a time.

Cyclops drinks the wine down, wants some more, and demands Odysseus’ name.

“Nobody,” Odysseus says he said, “that’s my name. Nobody / so my Mother and father call me, all my friends.”

Polyphemus essentially responds, “I like you. I’ll eat you last.”

A drunk Polyphemus throws up and goes to bed. Just like every night during Ben’s teenage years. Odysseus gouges his eye out. Odysseus indulges in a gross descriptive passage of the scene, which results in a “red geyser of blood” [9.442]

Odysseus: 1
Polyphemus: 3

Polyphemus calls out to all the other Cyclops, who run to this cave and ask what’s going on. And Polyphemus responds, “Nobody’s friends…Nobodys killing me!” [9.454]. Yuck, yuck. Get it?

Odysseus: 2
Polyphemus: 3

Now completely blind, Polyphemus devises a strategy … a kind of game of Red Rover to the death. He opens up the cave and sits at the entrance, arms outstreched feeling up all that pass through. Odysseus straps each of his men to the underbelly of the goats to escape.

Odysseus: 3
Polyphemus: 3

Odysseus and crew flee to their ship and escape to their fleet. As they’re sailing away, Odysseus can’t help but gloat, but while still within Cyclops boulder-hurling range. Odysseus calls out the that the blinding is Zeus’ payback for not treating his unwelcomed visitors well. Polyphemus throws a rock almost hitting their boat. Odysseus’ crew tell him to shut up.

But the trash talk continues, and Odysseus can’t help but give his actual name. And why not? His address, too. At which point, Polyphemus reveals that he is son of Poseidon, the god of the sea (whoops!). Polyphemus plays the daddy card and prays that Odysseus gets hell.

Odysseus: 3
Polyphemus: 4

Polyphemus wins! The crew reunites with the rest of the fleet. But good times are not ahead. Although Odysseus is fated to return to Ithaca, it will be not without a bumps in the sea.

Way for a plan to come together, Odysseus!

Countdown to Bloomsday…

We read page 1 of Ulysses in 12 days!

Be highly awesome and get involved!

* = What the hell kind of simile is this? Who’s translating this thing, Michael Vick?

Odyssey Funmaries … THE REVISED SCHEDULE!

A quarter of the way through, popularity for the funmaries is through the roof! And folks are hungry for a piece of the action. We are scheduled to have 4 new contributors to our fun review of Homer’s Odyssey in preparation for our reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Tad, Mark Hoobler (deuce!), Andrew Sweeney, and Brooke (it’s a lady!) have all volunteered their reviews of key events in the Odyssey. Here’s the revised schedule with our new funmarizers, but with the same ridiculous color scheme! 

Write a funmary…

You won’t know how fun they are until you do!

———-

* = You can still write one of Ben or Jerry’s Funmaries. Just let us know! Jerry’s totally freaking out!

** = Don’t expect much here.

Odyssey Funmaries #5: Nausicaa (Book VI)

By JERRY GRIT

The events of this next book play out like an eighties sitcom.

Odysseus washes up on the Phaeacian shore after Poseidon tries to kill him with another storm. He’s also butt-naked, that’s how strong the storm was.

While Odysseus recovers on the shore, Athena goes to Nausicaa, the young daughter of the Phaeacian king, Alcinous. Athena is of course in disguise, this time as one of Nausicaa’s girlfriends. And as girlfriends do, she teases mercilessly. While Nausicaa is still in bed, disguised Athena makes fun of Nausicaa’s dirty laundry, and says she’ll never get married with linens like those.

Low blow, Athena. Taking advantage of adolescent gullibility and soiled linen-sensitivities.

This of course makes young Nausicaa really self-conscious and she begs her dad the next morning to go to the shore to wash up. She takes two friends.

While they’re washing, butt-naked, brine-encrusted, and starving Odysseus sees them. Classy guy that he is, he

crept out of the bushes,

Stripping off with his massive hands a leafy branch

from the tangled olive growth to shield his body,

hide is private parts. [6.139-143]

First, “private parts”? Is Big Bird translating this thing?

Second, for a man of reputed inventiveness, is a branch seriously the best this guy could do for clothes? Couldn’t weave a grass skirt, man of twists and turns?

The girls freak out and run, but for Nausicaa. She stands still b/c “Athena planted courage within her heart.” Whatever.

Odysseus lays it on thick with compliments, which must have been pretty sweet to hear, especially after getting an ear load about her linens. Although Odysseus has no such intentions, too focussed on survival and all, he unintentionally smites the little girl’s heart.

Thus smitten, she agrees to help Odysseus, giving him clothes and directions to dad King Alcinous’ palace. She said she would take him on her chariot, but what would the neighbors say?

The assistance Nausicaa provides Odysseus on the beach is paralleled in Ulysses, along with the dramatically different consciousnesses (i.e., old resourceful dude and impressionable sentimental girl).

Nausicaa directs him to enter the palace and grasp her mother’s knees and beg for help. I hope the queen’s sitting down!

Countdown to Bloomsday…

We read page 1 of Ulysses in 14 days!

If you think funmaries are fun,  just wait for the joy in Joyce!

Odyssey Funmaries #3: Proteus (Book IV)

By JERRY GRIT

Let me start this funmary by saying … and this probably doesn’t have much to do with our Ulysses reading (but a helluva more relevant than Ben’s Nestor, the Long-Eared Donkey reference) … that this Helen of Troy person is one piece of work.

This lady…yeesh.

Events proceed according to Athena’s most ridiculous plan ever (Athena, *not* the goddess of efficiency optimization).  Telemachus and Nestor’s son Pisistratus (who was probably itching to get away from the old windbag) arrive in Sparta to visit with Menelaus and *maybe* learn about Odysseus.

If we apply the Rat Pack schema to the Trojan War Archaean military leadership, it goes something like this…

Menelaus?

• Menelaus is like the Nat Benchley of the crew (dupe and historian) 
• Agamemnon is Sinatra (conniving and greasy pack leader)
• Achilles, Peter Lawford (whiney pretty boy)
• Odysseus, Humphrey Bogart (wit and PR guy) … or maybe Sammy Davis, Jr.? (clown, wily dancer)
• Ajax … Dean Martin … maybe? (self-destructive dope).  

Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Ajax…Live at the Sands!

So Telemachus and Pisistratus show up at Menelaus’ palace while he’s hosting a double wedding feast for both his son “hardy” Megapenthes (quite a name)  and his daughter. And in ancient Greece, when you have uninvited guests, you’re pretty much expected to drop everything. Double wedding feast plans be damned.

The film reputedly inspired by the road trip Telemachus and Pisistratus take to the kingdom of Sparta.

So Telemachus and Pisistratus derail this double wedding, and instead of celebrating the the brides and grooms, Menelaus throws a dinner honoring the wedding crashers. Athena is still with them, and still dressed like a dude.

At the dinner, Helen comes prancing in from her “scented, lofty chamber.” This lady ran off with Orlando Bloom to Troy, which was used as a pretext to start the largest war in all antiquity, with countless lives, years, and resources wasted, and who is basically the reason Odysseus is stranded on some island with a horny nymph and Ithaca is without its king. 

How does she act, now that’s she back with Menelaus? 

Like a piece of work.

At first, she seems to show the appropriate shame for all the death and destruction, by denouncing herself  a “shameless whore.” But before they can really grasp the scope of loss she is responsible for (just as Pisistratus breaks down in tears while retelling the story of his brother’s death at Troy), she loads them all up on “magic to make us all forget our pains” (valium?). More appropriately, it’s magic to make them forget all the pains she caused.

With everyone strung out on valium, Helen tells everyone that at Troy she knew all about Odysseus’ horse trick, but decided not to tell the Trojans or her lover because, “my heart had changed by now…I yearned to sail back home again!” And then she blames Aphrodite for luring her out to Troy.

Whatever, lady.

And Menelaus, good sport that he is, seems to call her b.s. (well-acquainted with it as he must be by now), telling another story about how when the Archaeans were hiding in the wood horse after it was brought into Troy, Helen paraded around it calling their names out, putting at risk the entire mission.

What do you want, lady?

The night ends, the guests are oiled up and bedded.

The next dawn (which is invariably rose-red fingered I’m finding) Telemachus and Menelaus get some alone time. Telemachus asks if Menelaus knows anything about his dad (like does he really have to ask?). Here, Menelaus tells him the story of Proteus, which is of essential significance to Ulysses.

On the trip back from Troy, Menelaus says that his ship was stranded by a calm sea and everyone was starving (I’m sure old Helen was doing fine). They go onshore to a nearby rocky island Pharos, where Menelaus runs into, and starts complaining to, Eidothea, daughter of Proteus (some sort of sea God that sleeps with seals). She tells him if he’s able to hold down Proteus when he comes out of the sea (to go sleep with his seals), Proteus will tell him why he’s stranded and anything else he wants.

So Menelaus dresses like a seal and and gets the drop seal-loving Proteus.

Proteus begins turning into things: a lion, serpent, panther, torrent of water (huh?). Exhausted, Proteus finally gives in. (Note: The notions of a mutable identity and shape-shifting through time characterize chapter 3 in Ulysses.)  

Proteus starts spilling the beans on the post-Trojan War deaths of Ajax and Brian Cox…er, Agamemnon (i.e., the Clytemnestra fiasco), and tells him about Odysseus stranded with the nymph.

Doomed Agamemnon (Brian Cox) and cuckolded Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) give each other face time in 2004’s “Troy” (which was not that bad, btw).

Proteus also tells Menelaus that his own future is secured. Since he has Helen now (who is a daughter of Zeus), the gods will make sure he lives on easy street. No wonder Menelaus puts up with Miss Thang. 

Telemachus is grateful for the story and announces he needs to get back to Ithaca. Menelaus gives him a bowl.

Back at Ithaca, the couch-surfing slobs realize Telemachus has been away. (Why this is a surprise after Telemachus announced that he was going away is further evidence of their doomed ineptitude.) They decide to get a ship together and kill him on his return. 

Penelope finds out and is worried. But Athena has the message delivered that Telemachus will be fine.

Are we allowed to feel any suspense reading this thing?

Countdown to Bloomsday…

We read page 1 of Ulysses in 16 days!

Be a good person and join Wandering Rocks!

Odyssey Funmaries #1: Telemachus (Books I-II)

By JERRY GRIT

So how does an epic poem begin? With an invocation to the muse, of course. The writer (or more properly, the singer) asks for the strength to tell the story of “the man of twists and turns”…i.e., Odysseus. I wonder how Ulysses will begin?

The singer catches us up on how things are. Things are crappy. After defeating Hector and conquering Troy with his Trojan horse trick (seriously, how do you fall for that one?), Odysseus is still not home since leaving Ithaca 20 years ago. The singer tells us King Odysseus’ crew is dead, he’s the only survivor, and he’s homesick on some  island, where the bewitching nymph Calypso spends all day trying to get in his draws.

On top of that, a bunch of freeloaders (calling themselves “suitors”) have overrun his palace in Ithaca, drinking and eating his wealth, threatening his kid Telemachus, and trying to sleep with his ever-faithful wife Penelope.

Also, the sea god Poseidon has it in for him. Because Odysseus blinded his one-eyed son (ha!). 

However, Poseidon is now “worlds away.” Which means, what, Saturn? Nope, Ethiopia, which is only like a couple hundred miles from Greece. Couldn’t Fagles have revised this thing to give us a more appropriately distant place…like Indiana?

With Poseidon away, Athena (Zeus’ sparkling-eyed daughter and goddess of wisdom, war, the arts, industry, justice, and skill…a real Type A goddess) recognizes an opportunity.  As the rest of the gods are complaining that mortals wrongfully blame them for miseries in the wake of the Clytemnestra fiasco, Athena tactfully points out Poseidon has been serving up a shit sandwich to Odysseus. The gods (recognizing an opportunity for damage control?) agree to support her helping out. Athena, also the goddess of PR? 

So she teleports Odysseus home to Ithaca and slaughters all the suitors.

Of course not. Instead, she goes to his son, Telemachus, in some gender-bending disguise (which doesn’t fool anymone) and encourages him to sail off to Pylos and Sparta where he *might* learn something about a dad that he doesn’t know.

Way to lend a hand, war god.

We also learn that Penelope has been successful putting off the suitors who are spend all day at her house, eating her food, drinking her wine, while trying to marry her (what kind of courtship is this?). She tells them she’ll marry whoever after she finishes sewing a shroud, which she begins everyday and secretly undoes everynight. She gets away with this FOR THREE YEARS. Holy moly, the detachable thumb trick would have these people on the floor.

No wonder Penelope is holding out for Odysseus. It’s been a lonely 2 decades, but that’s no reason to slum it with one of these numbskulls.

Telemachus announces his travel plans to an assembly of Ithaca elders, who are all pretty disgusted by what’s happening at Chez Odysseus. And they support him, but he still gets beef from the freeloaders. They demand if Telemachus is unsuccessful in finding any information, he has to give up his moms to one of the couch-surfing slobs.

And then (and I think this comes up in Ulysses), two eagles “wing to wingtip” fly over the assembled crowd and then start fighting each other. Old man Halitherses recognizes this as a symbol that Odysseus will be coming home and that he will kill the slobs.

The slobs respond, “flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun’s rays / not all are fraught with meaning” [2.204-205]…i.e., a cigar’s just a cigar…meaning they’ll die horrible deaths.

Telemachus once more announces his plans to leave. If he finds out that his dad is dead, he’ll give Odysseus the proper funeral rites and gives his mom away to one of the douchebags. If not, he’ll wait *another* year.  

Why does it take this guy 20 years and divine intervention to get the rocks to simply find out what happened to pops?  

Athena secretly puts together a crew and fully supplies a ship so Telemachus can sneak off to Pylos. Maybe she should have told Telemachus that it was going to be a secret trip before he announced it to the entire kingdom?

Great job, Athena.

Countdown to Bloomsday…

We read page 1 of Ulysses in 18 days.

Join THE FUN!

Odyssey Funmaries…THE SCHEDULE!

By JERRY GRIT

Tad’s comment yesterday made me realize that I needed to be clearer about what and when we’re funmarizing from the Odyssey.

As I mentioned, Joyce plays it pretty loose with the events he uses from the Odyssey to structure Ulysses. The events Joyce uses in Ulysses do not occur in the same order as they do in the Odyssey, although the 3 major sections are the same. He also uses multiple events from a single book in the Odyssey to frame entire chapters. If you’re not familiar with Ulysses, confusion may abound.

 So to help all those playing along at home, I’ve created this helpful and colorful fun schedule! Print it and keep it in your pocket!

*You are sincerely encouraged to contribute a funmary. Ben and I are already burning the candle at both ends here, and he’s totally freaking out. Pick one toward the end, let me know, and it’s all yours. Learn how fun a funmary can be!

 

**An event involving some Wandering Rocks does not occur in Odyssey. It’s only referred to. Not sure what’s going to happen here.

Odyssey Funmaries Begin THIS FRIDAY, May 28th!

We Read Page 1 of Ulysses on Tuesday, June 16th!

We’re Coming for You!

Ultimate Army: Nathan Jones and John Heidenreich (UPW – NJPW)

Odyssey Funmaries…THIS FRIDAY!

By JERRY GRIT

Ben Vore and I are hard at work practicing our body slams and drilling our analytical skills, to get ready for our countdown to Bloomsday…The Tag-Team Odyssey Funmaries! Super fun summaries of each of Odyssey’s 18 books Joyce uses to structure Ulysses…culminating in day 1 of our reading of Ulysses, when we read page 1 on June 16th, Bloomsday (we’re starting slow, so no worries).

Ben Vore and I look like this! 

The Dynamic Dudes: Johnny Aces and Shane Douglas (WCW)

We’ll begin posting Funmaries THIS FRIDAY. We’ll focus on only those 18 books (and the events therein) that Joyce uses to structure Ulysses (not all 24 books of the Odyssey). And we’ll post them in the order in which they appear in the Odyssey, not the order they occur in Ulysses, for the sake of those reading along. Joyce loosely uses the events in the Odyssey to structure his book, and he also plays it pretty loose with their order. For example, “Nausicaa” should come in 5th, after “Calypso”…but in Ulysses, it happens 13th.

Head spinning? Splash some cold water on your face!

If you have a chance to read the Odyssey before we begin Ulysses on June 16th, I strongly recommend you read along with us. Knowing the Odyssey won’t leave you completely clueless during the Ulysses, but it will deepen your experience. It helps to come to Ulysses with some outside knowledge, and the Odyssey is a key “knowledge piece.” 

For those following the stomach ache-inducing Eastern Conference Finals, think of it as a coping strategy. Here’s to Hedo Turkoglu getting a charybdis in his eye!

Odyssey Funmaries Begin THIS FRIDAY, May 28th!

We Read Page 1 of Ulysses on Tuesday, June 16th!

Brace Yourself for Rad Awesometimes!

Announcing Odyssey Funmaries … BEGINNING MAY 29th!

By JERRY GRIT

In order to get AMPED for day 1 of our Ulysses reading project (launching in 26 days!) Ben Vore and I thought it would be pretty rad to reread Homer’s Odyssey (specifically, the Fagles translation). And while we’re rereading, we’ll blog about it! Sound cool?

Ben and I will tag-team write summaries, alternating authorship, focusing only on the 18 books Joyce used for each chapter of Ulysses. We’ll use Joyce’s chapters as the template and elucidate on those characters/events from The Odyssey that will frame our reading of Ulysses.

If all goes to plan, we will finish these summaries the day before we begin Ulysses on June 16th. It’ll be our countdown to Bloomsday! 

And I mean, it will literally be like an eighties-era WWF tag team writing these things…like two muscled mullet dudes in tight matching spandex underwear sitting down to a computer, trying to find something to say about antiquity’s greatest epic poem.

The Killer Bees: “Jumping” Jim Brunzell and B.Brian Blair (WWE)

“Jumping” Jim sez, “Odysseus is going to kick suitor ass!”

In order to lessen the burden the task, we’ve decided to focus on the more fun aspects of the Odyssey. So instead of lame plot summaries and banal commentary (where you can get anywhere in these internets), we’re giving you…that’s right…FUNmaries. We’ll be angling for laughs and joy, not insight!

If you would like to contribute a funmary or two, that would be awesome! But not as awesome as these guys…

The Midnight Rockers: Shawn Michaels and Marty Janetty (AWA)

Marty sez, “No one can beat the Toxic Telemachus Torso Flip!”   

Odyssey Funmaries Begin Next Thursday, May 28th Friday, May 29th!

We Read Page 1 of Ulysses on Tuesday, June 16th!

Join the team!

And check out this tag team gallery. Holy moly.

 

 

 

 

Some Stuff To Know About Ulysses Before Reading It, Part 1: Ulysses and the Odyssey

By JERRY GRIT

I may have oversystematized “Ulysses.”
–J.J. to Samuel Beckett

To help everyone who’s preparing to read Ulysses beginning on June 16th (and even for those few eager beavers who started early), I will tell you about stuff that might help. And I will do so with slick levity, utilizing my marketing career-honed bulletpoint skill, to ensure–respectively–fun and easy-reading.
 
I’ll contain my first set of bullets to Ulysses’ tangled relationship to the Odyssey. 
 
Caveat: I am no expert. So take my information with great suspicion, or lax scrutiny.

• The Odyssey takes place over years. Ulysses is just one day.
• The Odyssey follows Odysseus all over the Mediterreanean. Bloom just wanders through Dublin.  
• Leopold Bloom is a comic Odysseus. He’s an advertising salesman, not an exulted king/military leader. He can’t go home, not because a cyclops or a charybdis or a sea is in the way, but because he knows his wife (Molly Bloom) intends to boink a douchebag (Blazes Boylan). He’s also looked down upon by most his contacts because of their anti-semitism (Bloom is Jewish, furthering his identification with exiles…more on that later). And he has major paranoia and self-consciousness issues concerning his wife’s adultery and his own feelings of impotence. 
• Leopold Bloom is a real-deal Odysseus. Whatever laughs J.J. intended with Bloom’s homeric parallel, it also amplifies Bloom’s more tragic and heroic characteristics. Much like Odysseus, Bloom is also motivated by the same love of home. But unlike Odysseus, his wife is unfaithful, his child died very young. His return to a loving home is irrecoverably lost to him. He also displays similar heroic qualities such as presence-of-mind and paternal protectiveness, generosity.
•  The Odyssey is used to structure Ulysses. Although Joyce didn’t explicitly title his chapters based on the Odyssey, he did lay out the Odyssey-system in letters to various critics at the time (each chapter also has its own color, symbol, body organ, style, etc…we’ll get into that later…or not). Now it’s customary to see the book in three parts: Part 1. “The Telemachiad”–The first three chapters focusing mainly on the Telemachus-like character, Stephen Dedalus. Part 2. “The Odyssey”–The next 12 chapters (and the majority of the book) focusing mainly on Bloom’s wanderings, culminating in Bloom’s and Dedalus’ meeting in Dublin’s red-light district. Part 3. “The Nostos”–The last 3 chapters depicting Bloom’s homecoming and the infamous  “Penelope” chapter (an unpunctuated stream of Molly Bloom’s consciousness as she drifts to sleep).
• Homeric references recur throughout Ulysses, to both comic and dramatic effect. There are cameos from a cyclops, sirens, a Nausicaa-like hottie. If you have the Odyssey fresh in mind, you can have a pretty satisfying time picking out the subtle (and not s0) correspondences.  

I’ll probably add to this list. I just started rereading the Odyssey (this time, the Fagles edition!). 29 days before we start our voyage, just enough time to do your own reading of the Odyssey!

Plan for Action, Suggested Reading List, Note on Editions

By JERRY GRIT

PLAN FOR ACTION

We’ll read the first page of Ulysses on June 16 (to commemorate the date upon which Ulysses takes place…June 16, 1904). I’ll lead the discussion with a post on that day. Then we’ll rotate…alphabetically? age-wise? arm-wrestling contest-wise?…and the next person will decide how much we read and what we’ll discuss next. And we’ll try to do it on a weekly basis.

Before June 16th, do what you can to at least familiarize yourself with Homer’s Odyssey. It’s not essential to reading Ulysses, but it does help. The Odyssey is the framework used by Joyce to give shape to the encyclopedic mass of allusions and plot, and it does add deeper significance to your own reading experience to be familiar with the tradition Joyce set his tale in. Maybe we can do some preliminary postings on the Odyssey before the 16th?

And you are absolutely encouraged to invite anyone you think might be interested in participating. 

SUGGESTED READING

Suggested reading before June 16th, in order of importance:

• The Odyssey, Homer
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce
• Joyce, Ellman
• Hamlet, Shakespeare
• Dubliners, Joyce
• Divine Comedy, Dante
• Faust, Goethe (I dare you.)

Suggested Films: Hamlet, Nora (based on Joyce and Joyce’s wife), Michael Collins, Wind That Shakes The Barley (these last 2 films are set more than a decade after 1904, but they give a good depiction of the political tensions in Ireland…and Joyce wrote well after these events took place), and Red Dawn. 

NOTE ON EDITIONS

Finally, for Ulysses, I’ll be reading from the “Complete and Unabridged Text, as Corrected and Reset in 1961” put out by Vintage. There’s also the infamous “Gabler Edition” put out by Knopf Doubleday (with the lame modernist rendering of the title on the cover). I strongly recommend the former, for reasons I’ll give if you really want. Reason 1: Gabler’s a douche.

Get this one!

Wandering Rocks

By JERRY GRIT

I chose “Wandering Rocks” to title our endeavor to collectively read Joyce’s Ulysses for both its multiple layers of significance and because it is a lame pun, which is all very Joycean. I was going to call it “Wandering Cephallenians” (don’t ask)…but I think this is a little snappier. 

“The Wandering Rocks” is the title of book 12 of Homer’s Odyssey. Joyce uses the Odyssey to structure Ulysses, which depicts the day in the life (June 16, 1904) of 3 main characters: Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom (whose Homeric parallels are Telemachus, Odysseus, and Penelope…and whose names also have multiple layers of significance). “Wandering Rocks” figures as “chapter 10” in Ulysses.

In the Odyssey, this chapter’s action-packed. Odysseus sails through Scylla and Charybdis, dangerously listens to the sirens, and gets his entire crew killed. But no actual wandering rocks. They are apparently too scary for Odysseus to take on. Here’s the summary from the Gifford Ulysses Annotated:

In Book 12 of The Odyssey, Odysseus chooses to run the passage between Scylla and Charybdis rather than attempt the Wandering Rocks, which Circe describes as “drifters” with “boiling surf, under high fiery winds,” remarking that only the Argo had ever made the passage, thanks to Hera’s “love of Jason, her captain” (12:65-72; Fitzgerald, p. 223). Thus the episode does not occur in The Odyssey. The Wandering Rocks are sometimes identified with the Symplegades, two rocks at the entrance to the Black Sea that dashed together at intervals but were fixed when the Argo passed between them on its voyage to Colchis.

(from Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, “Ulysses” Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s “Ulysses” [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], p. 260

So in the Homeric parallel, our endeavor represents what is extremely difficult, often avoided, but which can be managed with a little love (from each one of us…aw). It also portrays Odysseus’ lame leadership skills, which should be warning to you all about me and my nominal role here. Don’t bother with what I say, or you will probably die…but I guess the sailors do die because they don’t heed Odysseus’ warning. So maybe it’s the opposite. Listen to me and you won’t die. Whatever.

I’m more excited about the lame pun. We’ll be like “wandering” through the text, as we follow Leopold and Stephen as they wander through Dublin, and as Molly wanders through her own mind. We should also be “wondering” at the text (both in the “wow” and “wtf?” senses).

And “Rocks” could be read as both a plural noun and a verb. As a noun, we’re like the rocks (“dumb as a rock”; “that dude is a total rock”; etc.) reading through Ulysses, trying to make sense of it with our limited training in classical literature and familiarity with the Dublin street grid circa 1904. And our endeavor will also “rock” in with Twisted Sister-esque loose, transgressive fun!

Won’t you rock and wander/wonder with me?