Ulysses recap, pp. 184-204 of “Scylla and Charybdis”

By LIZAANNE

Well, hopefully, my slow start on this section has given everyone a chance to catch up and make their way (in a nice, orderly fashion, of course) up to hushed reading room of “Scylla & Charybdis” (unfortunately presided over by some Quaker named Lyster, instead of Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian).

For your edification, here are the tweets thus far, with important themes helpfully illuminated:

• 184-We’re back in SD’s head as he talks to librarians, feeling superior. Amid literary jokes, conversation of poets, Paradise Lost & Hamlet.
• 185-Russell argues art=ideas a la Plato; SD is over-polite then thinks of holy trinity, eastern religions & literature.SD=sacrificial butter
• 186-J.E. tries to start debate b/w Plato & Aristotle, but no dice. Haines was reading Lovesongs but has gone.Guys think him “penitent thief”
• 187-Best revives Hamlet discussion & teases French; Hamlet ending foreshadows holocaust? 1st mention of 2x dangers (saxon/yankee; devil/sea)
• 188-SD prepares to defend position that King Hamlet =Shakespeare; sets scene, invokes muse, conjures images of fathers & sons (Ham & Shakes)
• 189-Anne Shakespeare guilty queen? Russell says “who cares?” SD holds his tongue b/c owes Russ cash.Typically, SD defends debt w/ philosophy
• 190-SD makes dreadful puns. Anne=SD’s momvia flashback. JE wonders if Anne was mistake best forgotten;SD says was “portal of discovery”
• 191-more puns; did Anne’s seduction of Shakes influence all his female characters? SD says it’s so. JE invites Best to party– of mysticism?
• 192-poets’ gathering; Haines invited.”necessity” defined.Moore & Mulligan=Quixote y Sancho.Cordelia=Dulcinea? SD gives Russ letter 2 publish
• 193-librarian asks SD if he thinks Anne was unfaithful; he agrees gracefully. Then imagines Shakes’ & his own women.ponders might have beens
• 194-JE says Shakes’s life is enigma & challenges SD to prove Shakes not Hamlet;SD says how past, present, & future become 1. Best confused
• 195-“There can be no reconciliation if there has not been a sundering” says SD. rejects Shakes=Bacon; Argues that birth of Marina is upturn.
• 196-Quaker urges SD to publish theories;SD says Dark Lady is wooed badly b/c Shakes lost confidence after Anne seduced him. SD poisons ears.
• 197-king’s ghost knows b/c of God; Shakes hides from self behind own creation then becomes ghost. Buck enters & SD goes dark.Trinity=Shakes?
• 198-Quaker tries to make peace. Buck teases. Actress is playing Hamlet; Wilde’s version of who wrote sonnets; “Of course, it’s all paradox”
• 199- SD jealous of Buck; Buck mocks SD’s telegram & asks if he drank away the money. Says Aunt will go to SD’s father. Buck keeps the tele
• 200-SD is blamed for Buck’s pranks; remembers France & meeting Faunman. Bloom enters library looking for newspaper & ad to copy
• 201-Buck teases Jew, then says LB knows SD’s dad. JE asks for more on Anne; SD talks of Shake’s London lovers. Anne=Penelope under doubt
• 202-What did Anne do? SD suspects Shakes loved a man at court; Anne took a lover. SD says case is proven by no mention of Anne by Shakes
• 203-JE repeats old explaination of Anne & Shakes’ will. SD rebuts that Shakes was not poor & deliberately neglected Anne b/c she broke vows
• 204-Other old wills used as contrast; Buck says Shakes died drunk. SD ignores interruption & says Shakes was tight w/ cash, like Shylock.

So, after all of the food and slobbery of the previous section, we find ourselves in what appears to be a nice, seemingly-random, academic interlude, far away from noisy, dirty ol’ Dublin.  English geeks, as I am, will easily recognize this literary debate, having participated in many like it.  Yet this prolonged conversation at this point in the narrative poses the twin dangers of its famous namesake: first, it threatens to suck Stephen Daedalus into a literary whirlpool of his own making, putting the kibosh on the rest of his journey through the city, and second, it poses a very real danger to the reader of getting utterly distracted by the gabble about Hamlet and Shakespeare and Anne and literary theory and the annoyingly chauvinistic double-standardness of it all, and thereby losing sight of how revealing the entire piece is about Stephen’s character.* [We apologize for the previous sentence.  It got a bit out of hand.  The people responsible have been sacked.  The rest of this piece has been written by highly trained llamas.]

As we have noticed many times throughout Ulysses, Joyce has carefully placed wormholes within the text, momentarily zapping us to the future.  (Note to self: be careful to avoid engaging the Borg.)  We had such a moment, way back in Telemachus, that Stephen “proved by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father” (18).  Buck Mulligan prevented Stephen from telling his theory at the time, though, because he wasn’t equal to “Thomas Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made to prop it up” without  a few pints in him (17).  Here, as it is now well into the afternoon, and Stephen, Buck, and probably the poets have all had their few pints (though I, sadly, have not), they are more than equal to the discussion.

Unless you have a particular passion for all theories Bard-related (bless you, my child!), let’s just hit the points that Joyce uses to highlight some key themes from the novel, shall we?

1.  The whole mess of Shakespeare, Hamlet, the King’s ghost, fathers and sons, etc. draws attention to Stephen’s own conflicted relationship with his father and Stephen’s difficulty in recognizing how he has (and hasn’t) changed since his days as an “Artist as a Young Man.”  We are also meant to think forward to our up-coming encounter with the ghost of Bloom’s son.

2. The whole mess of Anne’s possible unfaithfulness and Shakespeare’s many (and possibly multi-gendered) lovers casts a glow around Bloom and Molly and little Miss Penpal, not to mention young Stephen’s own indiscretions.

3. We may be tempted to overlook it in the middle of all this, but our main characters are all gathering.  The Englishman Haines has been and gone.  Our frienemy Buck has crashed the literary party, and most importantly, Bloom and Stephen are in the same place at the same time– FINALLY!  Athough they still have yet to meet, Buck does point out to Stephen that Bloom is a friend of old Mr. Daedalus.

4. Our old chum “consubstantiation” makes another appearance here, now with added back-up band (197).

More will be forthcoming in our final segment of this exciting adventure!

Now, it has been a long time since we have had questions for discussion, so here is a new batch for you (because there are not yet enough lists in this post):

a. Hands up all who agree that one more doubled verb/ adjective/ or adverb out of young Stephen gives us free reign to take drastic action.

b. Compare and contrast being “the sacrificial butter” to being the walrus.  Could you be the walrus, too?  Would you still have to bum rides off people?

c. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is a Car Talk pun and 10 is a Terry Pratchett pun, rate Stephen’s puns in this section.  Explain how you calculated the negative square root of pi.

In a Head’s Up for next time’s reading: your Money Quote is on page 205.  Can you find it?

*Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?

ULYSSES Funmary #8: Lestrygonians

By JERRY GRIT

We’re back with Bloom, who is for the most part alone here. Sensual guy he is, his concern for food is central. Especially since he’s looking for lunch. Unlike the narcotic somnolent effect food has on us (as depicted in the postprandial “Lotus Eaters”) we’re preprandial here. His mind is alert. He’s on the hunt.

So “Lestrygonians” is told in food. So if we follow the food, we get a pretty good idea of what’s going on.  Cherchez l’aliment, as no one would ever say.

We begin with candy. Bloom sees a candystore sell “pineapple rock, lemon platt, butt scotch” to a teacher. These are those gross hard candies your grandma could not give away. Not an appetizing start. I’m sure the kids were thrilled. Bloom, a man with taste, does not stop.

Mmm...pineapple candy...

And then we’re on to the lamb blood and burnt offerings of the evangelical flier Bloom gets handed and at first misreads as his own name. The misreading suggests the identification of Bloom with Christ, himself a big piece of meat or bread or fish or lamb or whatever (however a divine miracle).

And there’s a bit with food as trick, as Bloom tries to get gulls to mistake the flier he balls up as food. (Bloom’s own failed attempt at–or a Joycean slagging of–the Eucharistic miracle?)

Guilty for his shenanigans, he buys the birds cake from the apple cart. Food is everywhere.

But also from all the food thoughts, we see how much our physical, emotional, social, professional, political lives are tied up with food. All Bloom’s reflections are food-associated. Whether it be the mutton and chutney he served to Molly during happier days (possibly the night Rudy was conceived). Or the strange tastes Molly had when pregnant are linked to Mina Purefoy’s troubled third day of labor. The Plumtree’s Potted Meat ad poorly placed on the obituary page gives us insight into Bloom’s marketing acumen. That Plumtree placement is about as bad as this one…

Or this one…

Or my favorite…

Along with food and eating, there are also the execratory parts. Enough said.  Poop happens.

The pinnacle scene in this book, is of course Bloom’s peak into the Burton. The Burton is a restaurant filled with this guy…

This intimately depicted gross eating recalls the man barbeque the Lestrygonians had of Odysseus’ fleet. And Bloom’s revulsion to the scene demonstrates a bit of his own snobbery. This is not a man we’ll find in line at the China Buffet. And it also shows the limits of his generosity. His nightmare vision of some kind of dystopia where we all somehow end up eating at the China Buffet suggests Bloom’s sensibly restrained politics. This is no socialist. Sure, he’ll help a dirty blind dude across the street, but don’t touch his potatoes.

Ulysses attempts to contain an entire life in one day. Here we get the full treatment of food’s role in our lived. How and what we eat/drink also says a lot about who we are.

The 6th beer that I’m having today says that I am an awesome dude.

ULYSSES Recap, pp. 163-173 of “Lestrygonians”

By JERRY GRIT

**********Wandering Rocks Alert**********

Some dude in Dublin is also tweeting though Ulysses! (I discovered this when I hashtagged Ulysses… apparently the old “#” can be helpful when it’s not abused). He’s way back in “Hades,” but he’s not really summarizing a page per tweet. So he could catch up!

We must all make a vow. We must beat JODedia to page 783.

But the good news: I got us 1.3% closer to finishing today!  Here are the tweets.

163. LB recalls run-in w/cops at antiBrit protest. Thinks Corny an informer, how Brits get youth 2 rat. Admires Sinn Fein’s cell structure.
164. LB thinks of diff’t approaches 2 Irish Home Rule movement, but politics don’t change anything. Rich get richer. LB feels eaten&spewed.
165. Coincidences. Sees lesser bro of famous nationalist Parnell & AE, famous poet & Lizzie Twigg’s boss. AE is vegetarian, which LB mocks.
166. LB recalls unsuccessful vegetar’n attempt. Poetic impulse might b caused by diet. Windowshops 4 glasses. Folks lose stuff. Looks @ sun.
167. Wants 2 visit observatory 2 ask about parallax. But won’t change anything. Thinks of happier times w/MB, then of Boylan & lovers codes.
168. Recalls how life changed after Rudy died, no sex w/MB since. Ogles ladies underthings in shop. Knows he can’t go back. Goes 2 eat.
169. Goes 2 The Burton, filled w/men eating sloppy food. Wonders if he looks as sloppy eating. Place is gross. Wants 2 leave. Men order food
170. More revolting eating. Decides 2 go 2 Davy Byrne’s instead. Thinks of the horror of a communal eating future, would make men monsters
171. LB now thinks vegetarianism may not b bad. Enters Byrne’s clean quiet pub. Flynn’s there. Sees potted meat on shelf, still mad about ad
172. Orders a gorgonzola cheese sandwich. Flynn asks about MB’s concert tour and Boylan. LB plays cool, pays 4 sandwich, puts mustard on.
173. Worries Flynn knows, but decides he’s dumb. Flynn praises Boylan’s boxing gambling. Flynn asks 4 horserace tip. Bloom eats, admires bar

Again not much happening. Bloom is still wandering and hungry. He does some window shopping. He steps into one restaurant, finds it gross, leaves. Goes into a cleaner one, orders a cheese sandwich. His thoughts are on his wife, their happier times, Irish politics, food, the difference in the apparent direction of an object seen from 2 points of view (parallax).

I’ll go into the larger themes in this section in my funmary. Here, I want to be helpful in another way.

Those facing difficulty with this book (which is all of us) should take comfort that reading Ulysses is also a process of learning to read Ulysses. By closely attending to the text we get really important clues and directions about how this book works, not just what it’s about.

In the case of this chapter (and specifically these pages), key phrases occur to Bloom that give us a clear understanding of what to pay attention to.

For example, while Bloom thinks about Dixon, the doctor who bandaged him up after his scrape during some anti-British protests, he also notes how Dixon is also the same doctor attending to Mina Purefoy in her 3rd day of labor. At which he thinks “Wheels within wheels” [163], a cliche about our interconnectedness, adapted from the biblical description of God’s creation as four great wheels. (Dante has a field day with this. And so does Mick…but it’s not as good.)

When Bloom sees both Parnell’s brother and poet A.E. just after having thought about the history and politics of Irish nationalism, as well as the response he got from Lizzie Twigg (assistant to A.E.) to his ad he placed in the Irish Times, he thinks

Now that’s really a coincidence: second-time. Coming events cast their shadows before [165]

This is essentially the definition of hysteron proteron.

As we’ve noted before, this book works a lot through its interconnections and foreshadowing. That Bloom draws attention to these phenomena in his life centralizes their function in the book. Life may be rife with instances of Kevin-Bacon-degrees and Nic Cage’s knowledge of numbers, but so is this book. By paying attention to these phenomena in the book, we have a much richer experience of the book and as well new ways to appreciate and think about how these function in our own lives.

We can also make terrible, terrible movies about them.

ULYSSES Recap, pp. 151-162 of “Lestrygonians”

By JERRY GRIT

First, this should have been your face…

Second, here’s the first part of my tweet-thru Ulysses‘ “Lestrygonians” chapter, minus the shameless hashtag exploitation (which was completely unsuccessful in inflating our follower number).

151. LB wandering, handed religious flyer. Recalls glowing cross they lived by before. Sees SD’s sister. Criticizes church on contraception.

152. Thinks priests r fattys. SD’s sis looks starved. On bridge, sees beer barge, recalls Dodd joke. Tosses flyer 2 gulls. Admires gull wit.

153. Buys cakes 4 gulls. Wonders about swanmeat, why saltwater fish ain’t salty. Sees floating ad. Recalls ad placed @ urinal by clap doc.

154. Worries Blazes will give MB the clap. Thinks about parallax. Admires MBs common wit. Sees bad ad from old job. Recalls boss’ stupidity.

155. Recalls how hard it was 2 get nuns 2 pay. A nun invented barbed wire. Recalls happier days with MB before Rudy died. Walks along curb.

156. LB recalls better times w/MB, the night Rudy conceived. Runs into old flame Mrs Breen. Have small talk. Milly’s like a house on fire!

157. Breen asks about LB’s mourning clothes. Funeral talk. LB asks about husband. Mr Breen is nutz. LB smells food. Breen rummages in purse.

158. Breen describes Mr. B’s nightmare about dark figure & postcard rec’d w/only “U.P.” on it. He’s trying 2 sue. LB thinks about food.

159. Talk of Mina Purefoy’s troubled pregnancy, 3 days in labor. Another nut w/a long name walks by. Reminds Breen 2 get her nutty hubby.

160. LB thinks Alf sent U.P. card as bad joke. Passes Irish Times. Recalls ad placed 2 start sexy letters w/Martha C. LB bought ladys pantys.

161. LB pities Purefoy, Thinks about breastfeeding pain, that its time 2 invent painless pregnancy, how 2 promote savings. Heads 2 library.

162. LB recalls MBs pregnancy. Sees birds, covets aerial pooping. Sees cops, weak when eating. Poet statue @urinal. No public potty 4 ladys.

So we’re moving from the windy windbags of “Aeolus”, to hunger and food motifs. If you remember from my astute funmary of the relevant episode in The Odyssey, this was where Odysseus sets up his entire fleet to be eaten by a bunch of giants after they messed up the great bag o’wind.

We also return to Bloom’s internal monologue, which is my favorite place to be in this book. There are so many great lines here, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have the presence of mind to use them. Here are my favs from this reading:

• It was a nun they say invented barbed wire.
• Getting on like a house on fire.
• He’s a caution to rattlesnakes.
• Drink till they puke again like christians.
• Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she’s writing.

Hmm..."History is a nightmare from which I cannot wake"... Oh, no. That sounds self-indulgent and pathetic!

As usual, not much is actually going on in this chapter. (Seriously, you’d think by now someone couldn’t have punched this thing up with a car chase or zombies. Zombies eat people, right?) So far, it’s about 1pm and Bloom is just wandering around feeling a little peckish; runs into an old flame (Mrs Breen); has a short, pleasant conversation; decides to head to the library to look up a newspaper ad; Mrs Breen gets eaten by a zombie.

All the while Bloom is being eaten by his thoughts (get it?). He’s remembering better days with his wife, before the death of their second child ten years ago. He’s thinking about the things he’s seeing: birds flying, bad advertising, crazy people.

As a marketing-type person, I’m especially struck by his critiques of ad placements and messaging strategies. He thinks there are a lot of great places to put ads (urinals, showcarts, the river), pretty much prophesying the commercial drenched world in which we live. Where are the great humanitarian’s ethics here?

And this is not the only place Bloom’s shortcomings become apparent. Passing by the Irish Times, he remembers the ad he placed for a typist that started his naughty correspondence with Martha Clifford. He also got a response from a Lizzie Twigg, who apparently came across as too “literary” for Bloom… “No time to do her hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry.”

Real nice, Bloom.

Of course, this is coming from a writer who said about Gertrude Stein, “I hate intellectual women ”

That said, Bloom’s humanitarianism is also on display. He’s sympathetic to Mina Purefoy, who’s laid up in the the hospital on her third day of labor. (Purefoy’s labor will become of central significance in the “Oxen of the Sun” episode.) Which leads to his sympathies for women and the troubles they have in pregnancy. (These are pre-anesthetic times. Ladies were expected to bite on a stick and push.) He also has thought on the hypocrisy women suffer from the Roman Catholic Church’s rules on contraception and the utter lack of public ladies’ restrooms.

But underneath all these thoughts is the awareness of Blazes Boylan’s hook-up with his wife later that day. These thoughts serve to distract him from this realization, but even they betray him. Thinking about the urinal-adjacent ads about clap treatments triggers the fear that Boylan will transmit an STD to his wife.

If he…

O!

Eh?

No…No.

No, no. I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t surely?

No, no. [pp 153-154]

Of course Bloom’s habit of mind is to put such troublesome thoughts out of it, to “think no more about.” How long can Bloom keep this up? If he’s really worried about his wife getting gonorrhea (no joke during pre-penecillin days), shouldn’t he do more? What is it that’s holding him back? Will the zombies get to him first?

ULYSSES pp. 55-59, “Calypso”

By LIZAANNE

Hi, folks!  Welcome aboard “The Odyssey” section of the novel–please have your tickets ready to be stamped.  Thank you.

This fourth section [Calypso] introduces us to the man who will be our second central character of this novel, namely Leopold Bloom.   Our narrator has backed the timeline up to the morning again, so that we meet Mr. Bloom at the beginning of his day.  After reading the first 5 pages of this section, we’ve learned quite a bit about him.  First, however, here are my tweets:

55-Leopold Bloom is introduced by his love of organ meats, how he makes b-fast, & talks to the cat–he anthropomorphizes as pretty but cruel

56-LB watches cat drink; decides on kidney for b.fast; checks on wife- she mumbles; considers loose bed springs; puts on hat w/ hidden paper

57-LB leaves key behind so won’t have to disturb wife, wanders down street in good mood; daydreams about exotic East– knows is just fantasy

58-LB greets shopkeeper after considering property values-wonders how he made his money; passes by school– hears lessons; arrives @ butcher

59-LB oogles meat & servant girl in shop; reads ads from cut sheets-thinks of cattlemarket; places order, wants to hurry so can follow girl

So, what have we learned on our first foray into Bloom-land? Well…

1. Leo is an advertising businessman who has a head for making money, property prices, potential clients, and a good land bargain.  Despite these talents, though, he seems to be living at the lower end of the spectrum. 

2. Leo endears himself to the reader through his fanciful daydreams (He is a good deal more cheerful in his thoughts than Stephen, which is a welcome change for us) and his kind treatment of his wife and his cat.  

3. Ah, on the subject of Molly (whose name we don’t learn until 3 pages into the chapter)–when we first meet Leo, he is putting together a breakfast tray for his wife, who is still in bed.  She’ll be there for the rest of the section.  Like Odysseus with Calypso, Leopold is tied to his love.  Unlike Odysseus, Leo doesn’t seem to mind much, at least we have seen no signs of it yet.  He is a devoted husband; in fact, we get the idea that he might be just a bit afraid of her.  According to the Bloomsday book, we should pay particular attention to her noisy bed-springs, which make their first appearance here.

4. Leo is not nearly as well-educated as our friend Stephen and is considerably older and more comfortable in his environment (not to mention in his own skin).  Leo knows Stephen’s father, Simon, well enough (probably in the pub) to have heard his impressions of the shop-keeper O’Rourke many times.  There are two things Leo and Stephen share at the moment: 1-that neither of them possess a key to their homes [however, Leo has only propped his door closed, and he fully intends to be back after his trip to the butcher]; 2- that both men are dressed in black because they are showing respect for the dead [Leo has a funeral to attend this morning after breakfast]. 

5. Leo has an eye for the ladies, particularly well-rounded ones.   He also loves organ meat.  These two ideas are probably connected.

6. Leo also appreciates the scatological elements of blood, guts, etc.  We shall shortly hear more about this than we ever wanted to know.

So, here are some questions for discussion as this train pulls into the station for refueling:

— How are the cat and Molly similar?

–Why does Leo carry a lucky potato?

–How does the idea of “Homerule sun rising up in the northwest” connect to our previous discussions of Irish-Anglo relations?

— Why is Leo buying pork sausage when he is supposed to be Jewish?

ULYSSES Funmary #3: Proteus

By JERRY GRIT

With “Proteus,” we come to the end of Ulysses‘ Part 1, its Telemachiad (the chapters focused on Dedalus-Telemachus). Although, it was a short chapter, it was long on confusing, headache-inducing obscurity. 

Not very much happens in the chapter. Stephen walks on Sandymount Strand along the polluted Dublin Bay, thinks about a bunch of stuff (past experiences, people he knows, philosophical and historical observations). He rests on a rock. Sees a floating dog’s corpse. Gets scared by another dog running nearby, owned by the gypsy cocklepickers picking cockles in the bay. Gets inspired and works out some poetic lines on a piece of paper ripped for Deasy’s letter. He (maybe) masturbates, pees, and picks his nose.

If we recall from the Odyssey, Proteus was a smelly, shape-shifting god who would tell you stuff only if you were able to pin him down. (He also had a thing for seals, but who doesn’t?)

The difficulty of the chapter has a lot to do with this homeric parallel. The reference to the Odyssey is not made with characters or plot, as it was primarily achieved in the first two chapters. Rather, the chapter’s style–Stephen’s internal monologue–is the Proteus. (This will not be the last time we’ll see the homeric reference in the chapter’s style.) And it is by pinning down this protean flux and flow of thought, memories, and observations are we able to gain some insight. This blog and your comments is our collective wrestling match with this chapter’s (and book’s) slippery mutability. Check out these takedowns…

Change is evident throughout. Stephen walking on the Sandymont Strand, along the flowing waters of Dublin Bay. It’s about noon, right at high tide time. Gypsy cocklypickers are a transitory people. So a lot about the physical setting Stephen finds himself is shared with his own fluctuating thoughts and inability to concentrate. (BTW…don’t mean to unnecessarily pathologize, but is Steve ADD or are we experiencing the typical flow of thought as best represented in text?)

Another move. Fathers and sons. Before, the focus has been on moms. Here, we get introduced to Stephen’s dad through his not very kind thoughts and willful disowning of him. And there are other fathers and sons. You have Stephen’s thoughts about the bedridden Uncle Richie abusing his stuttering son Walter, and then there’s the absinthe-drinking forgotten Kevin Egan and his neglectful milk-drinking son Patrice. All of these display pretty awesome dad-son dynamics…No, they’re awful. We get a very clear sense of the directionlessness Stephen suffers in the absence of a father or even a father figure. 

Speaking of fathers, Bloom is once more foreshadowed in dream. This time, its Stephen’s dream (p. 47). While Haines was freaking out about stalking panther, Stephen was being led around a “street of harlots” by a melon-salesman to visit an unseen third person. You could see this as foreshadowing and/or as a manifestation of Stephen’s own unconscious desire for direction and/or melons. 

Stephen ends his Telemachiad motherless, fatherless, and now homeless. He’s heading off to his 12:30 meet-up with Buck Mulligan at the pub called (not incidentally) the Ship. He’s still engaged in his art, however vampire-obsessed it might be. There’s still hope for Stephen, but the mast-crucifixes he sees on the horizon suggests he won’t be having it easy anytime soon.

We did it! We have made it passed where so many have fallen short. And now our efforts will truly begin to pay huge dividends. Next, we launch into the Odyssey where we follow Leopold Bloom and the fun really begins.

And find out how many more wrestling references I can make!

ULYSSES pp. 37-40, “Proteus”

By JERRY GRIT

I only managed 4 pages tonight. I forgot how, although short, “Proteus” was one of the more difficult episodes in Ulysses and how it’s usually at this point most Ulysses readers become Ulysses readers no more. 

If you take anything from this post, let it be simply this: don’t give up.

Here’s the twreading I managed for these pages, and it’s hopelessly incomplete:

• P37. SD walking on strand, attempts 2 reach essence of reality beyond protean sight&sound. A lonely egghead. Sees nurse who delivered him.
• P38. SD thinks: umbilical as phone line 2 Eve; the inconsequence of his parents. Remembers: Deasy’s letter; 12:30 meet @bar; visit w/aunt.
• P39: SD imagines dad mocking aunt’s family. Recalls past visit. Uncle Rich a bedridden opera-loving drunk, son Walt studders. SD’s ashamed.
• P40. SD still lost in thought, mocks own rebelliousness, earnestness & ambition. Recalls own perverted prayers 2 see naked ladies.

We are at the last chapter in Ulysses’ Telemachiad, the 3 chapters focused on Stephen Dedalus. And in this culminating chapter of the first part, we get a very up-close experience of Stephen and his machinations of his mind. 

Instead explaining the protean hodgepodge of esoterica that constitutes Stephen’s thoughts (everything from Aristotle, heretics in the early Catholic Church, Italian mystical views of history)–which I don’t think I could do competently, anyways–I find it far more worthwhile to think about this chapter more in terms of  how it develops Stephen’s character. 

His thoughts on Aristotle, Church history, all his studies in Paris, all add up to convey his sense of disconnectedness and isolation. He can’t get past sight and sound to penetrate the eternal essence, to connect. 

He can’t even find connection to his own family. He thinks of his father as  (in Blamires’ words) “a meaningless physical coincidence.” And he’s ashamed of his mother’s sister (Aunt Sara) and her sad family. 

He realizes he can find no inspiration or beauty in what’s he’s studied or his own family, and devolves into a torrent of self-mockery. 

And because he’s an egghead, his thoughts, his mockery are all constituted by arcane references. He’s trying really hard to be clever, and we shouldn’t be intimidated or turned off by this cleverness. We should instead understand how he makes it difficult for anyone to like him.

The takeaway for us should be: he’s a lonely, smart, sensitive dude who is unfulfilled by his studies, alienated and ashamed of his family.

You can try to throw your life away and try to figure out all the references, but it may drive you nuts. I would advise to give it a good effort and turn the page. There is so much more ahead which won’t require you caring about a heretic who died of bowel trouble in 336 AD.

ULYSSES Funmary #1: Telemachus

By JERRY GRIT

First, an administrative matter.

We need episodes adopted. “Proteus” doesn’t have anyone, and that could start as early as Tuesday. (It’s only 14 pages! It’s only a baby!).

If you plan on reading Ulysses with us, please find it in your heart to call one of these episodes your own. You will get to dictate the pace we read it, put up a tweet* for each page you read, post on your reading, and funmarize the chapter. 

For the bigger babies (over 40 pages), I’ve cut these into smaller baby pieces. (“Circe” poses a unique problem. I’ll talk about my special rotation for that one when  we get closer…let me know if you want to be involved in this, as well)

Feel free to adopt as many episode (or episode parts) as you can! They need you. I need you.

You won’t be alone. We’ll be there all along the way to help and to applause.

Now on to the funmarization…

I’ll hit the main plot points:

• Stephen Dedalus has been back in Dublin, having been recalled from Paris (and his attempt to become a profligate artist) when his mother is dying. His mother has since died, and now he’s living in a tower with Buck Mulligan (plump, profane smoothtalker). They have a houseguest named Haines, a rich Brit in Ireland conducting folklore research, who also has night terrors. Stephen’s father is still alive and living in Dublin, but we’ll get to that.
• Stephen hates being back. He feels oppressed by family, church, and state. He longs to be free so as to be an artist again, but finds himself stuck.
• Stephen is haunted by his dead mother, and his guilt surrounding her death. She asked him to pray for her at her deathbed. He refused. For whatever his Jesuit education and demeanor, Stephen is not a practicing Catholic. He rejects the Church as an imposition on his art. Yet, he nonetheless feels guilt for his disobedience to his mom at her death. He’s a conflicted dude.
• Buck Mulligan and Haines have probably been colluding with each other to get Stephen out of the tower, so Haines can move in. And Stephen has caught on. Mulligan is Stephen’s friend, but he’s a bigger friend to Haines’ money. 
• Mulligan has gotten the only key to the tower away from Stephen (even though Stephen has paid the rent). Although, Mulligan and Haines have not made their move to boot Stephen out, Stephen knows what’s coming.
• Stephen leaves Haines and Mulligan to collect his paycheck, to wander, and to figure out what to do.   

We’ve finished the first chapter (of three) that constitute the Telemachiad (the chapters that focus on Stephen-Telemachus).

Any questons?

———–

* = This is actually really fun. Reducing Joyce to 140 characters is empowering.

ULYSSES p. 14-23, “Telemachus”

By JERRY GRIT

Seriously, these twreads are pretty awesome. I’m not missing a thing. You’re all suckers if you’re still reading the book.

• P14. BM patronizes milkmaid. SD’s sympathetic to her but resents her submissiveness. Haines (Brit) speaks Gaelic, but maid doesnt understand.
• P15. Haines guilts BM 2 pay milkmaid. BM underpays. Maid leaves. BM begs SD 2 bring money 4 drinks. BM 2 swim with Haines. SD doesn’t bathe.
• P16. SD quips agn. Haines wants 2 collect SD’s quips. BM tries 2 get SD 2 ask Haines 4 $. SD refuses. BM resigned, says SD needs 2 play them.
• P17. All get dressed 2 leave, SD takes cane & tower’s only key. All 3 walk together. Some tower talk. Haines asks 4 SD’s Hamlet theory.
• P18. BM makes fun of theory, SD lets him. Haines says tower recalls Elsinore, one-ups w/another theory. SD feels odd as the only 1 in black.
• P19. BM sings his own song about a joking Jesus, dances away. Haines laughs but says 2 SD he shouldn’t. Asks if SD a believer, SD rebuffs.
• P20. Haines criticizes personal god idea. SD says SD’s misunderstood. SD knows they want 2 take the key. SD says SDs servant 2 church&England.
• P21. SD’s esoteric thoughts about Church heresies, links thm 2 BM. Haines’ an antisemite. They watch boats. Mention Milly Bloom’s dirty? pic.
• P22. BM gets ready 2 swim w/another dude already in sea. Old dude jumps out of sea. Redheads are horny liars. BM says he’s Adam, asks 4 key.
• P23. SD gives BM key & money. BM extols theft & swims. Haines says theyll meet later. SD leaves knowing he’s been screwed & can’t come back.

So that brings us to the end of the “Telemachus” chapter. So far so good. 

Just a few more notes. I want to call attention to the subtle parallels to the Odyssey’s 1st books. We start with absent fathers (there are no dads here, but possibly for the old dude who pops out of the sea). There’s a milkmaid recalling Athena’s disguise, when she went to Telemachus to get him off his duff to find out about Odysseus. The maid shows up just as Stephen-Telemachus is usurped from his home, to begin his journey.

There are also a lot of references to the Irish Renaissance which was all the rage in turn-of-the-century Ireland (Yeats, Synge, and that crew), which meant to celebrate authentic Irish country folk (of the west, east was more cosmopolitan and British-influenced). The British rich guy Haines is there to collect Irish folklore and knows Gaelic. The old Irish lady is unfamiliar with Gaelic. It suggests Joyce’s dubiousness about this movement.

There are also references to what will be developed later: Stephen’s Hamlet theory, the “photo girl” picture of Milly Bloom (Leopold’s daughter), the drinking later that day.

My favorite word from this reading: dewsilky.

NEXT: Onward into “Nestor”! The “Telemachus” Funmary (huh?)

There’s still time to join the fun and recruit for more fun!

ULYSSES p. 4-13, “Telemachus”

By JERRY GRIT

The Ulysses twreading (my* awesome neologism for “tweeting while reading”) is going pretty well, apart from the horseface fiasco (Buck has equine features, not Stephen…as I confused in my twreading on the first page). I read 10 pages for today, tweeting a summary after each page. Here’s how they went, all under one forty:

June 16

• In preparation for tomorrow’s post…I will tweet once per page tonight. Starting now…
• P 4. Stephen complains about 3rd roommate Haines (eccentric rich Brit), worried about living with a dude with night terrors and a gun.
• P 5. D’oh! Buck has the horseface! Buck guilts Stephen about his mom’s death & his refusal to pray beside her. She haunts him in dreams.
• P 6. Stephen wears only black b/c in mourning. Buck holds up a cracked mirror, repeats rumors of Steve’s insanity. Stephen quotes Hamlet.

June 17

• Busy day banging head against wall. Will twread now. Will use abbreviations SD=Stephen Dedalus; BM=Buck Mulligan (ha!); UA=Ulysses Annotated.
• P7. BM senses that SD is fed up with BM’s bs. BM asks for SD’s trust. Also asks SD to try to borrow money off Haines. Brit-bashing ensues.
• P8. SD tells BM that he overheard BM call his mom beastly dead after her funeral. Embarrassed BM plays off, espouses irreverent lifeview.
• P9. SD says he was offended, BM tells him not 2 b. Haines calls up 4 breakfast. BM leaves singing. SD alone recalls singing same song 2 mom.
• P10. SD broods on mom. Recalls dreaming of hr ghost. SD begs mom 2 leave hm b. BM yells breakfast ready & Haines is sorry for night terrors.
• P11. SD dont want Brit’s money, says he’s getting paid. BM says theyll get drunk. SD thinks about bringing BM’s bowl down. Doesnt wanna serve.
• P12. 3 towermates sit at table 4 breakfast. BM wants milk. Milkmaid is sighted coming up. BM makes strong tea, refers 2 SD’s stay in Paris.
• P13. Irish folklore inside jokes. Old milkmaid comes in. BM makes fun of her reverence. SD recalls Athena’s milkmaid disguise, Odyssey I-II.

Although I feel strongly that these summaries pretty much capture the depth of meaning on every page (and that you could probably read them in place of the actual book and not miss a thing), there a few points I want to make. 

When we last left Stephen Dedalus in the final pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he was ecstatic and set to flee Ireland for Paris, to escape the pressures of family and the oppressive moral culture of Ireland, to spend all his days drinking wine in cafes, sleeping with prostitutes, and other impious writer fantasies.

But from the beginning of Ulysses, we know that flamed out. The beginning of Ulysses continues the structure in Portrait, where each chapter ends on a high, and begins on a low. Where Portrait ends with Stephen on his biggest high, Ulysses begins with Stephen at his lowest low yet. He’s was called back to Ireland as his mother was dying.  He’s displaced from his father’s home, and about to be displaced from a ghetto tower by people he can’t stand. And now he’s haunted by his mother’s death because he didn’t pray for her when she begged him to.

 

(Obvious, I know, but I couldn’t help it.)

There’s also something to be said of the towermate situation. It’s an important dynamic, with larger significances. With Buck Mulligan as the typical Irish bourgeois and Haines as the crazy, rich**, armed British visitor, we have a picture of British occupation and Irish submission. When Stephen thinks of returning the bowl of lather Buck left on the roof, he fears becoming “a servant of a servant” (p.11)  

Stephen’s longing to be free of the nets of country and family is still in tact, however entangled he now finds himself.

 And finally, we have our first quasi-sighting of Leopold Bloom! Any guesses where? It’s on p. 4…

Any questions?

NEXT: I will *try* to read 20 10 pages for tomorrow.

Follow the twreading!

And Adopt-An-Episode before it’s too late! You’re encouraged to tag team!

——-

* = I was curious if I could really claim this word as my own. I found that I might be able to claim my definition as original, but not the word. You can get tarot twreadings. People twread their tweets (that’s just stupid). Just so there’s no confusion, on Wandering Rocks, twreading means tweeting while you read.

** = In the Ellman biography, he recounts how when Joyce was living with Gogarty in the tower, they also had a British house visitor, who was also armed and had night terrors. It is assumed that Joyce left the tower after he was shot at by the Brit during one of his episodes. I’m sure Joyce wields the “lancet of his art” (p.7) to settle some scores here. 

ULYSSES p. 2-3, “Telemachus”

By JERRY GRIT

I read the first page* of Ulysses today. Hopefully, you did too.

I tweeted while I read it, which was not easy. Keeping “insights” to under 140 characters at a time is not conducive to literary analysis. It also took me less than 2 hours to read the page. I do not recommend this at all. Going forward, I’m going to tweet just once after every page I finish. 

For what it’s worth, here’s all the tweet action today, with some links added.

1. I’m going to read page 1 of Ulysses now. I’ll give myself 1 hr to finish. I’m starting with 16 followers in twtr. Will probably end with 2. [12:17 pm] 
2. Have to find a copy online first. Had to loan gfriend my copy since I lost hers. No idea what happened. This whole thing has me frazzled. [12:20 pm] 
3. Alright. Here we go, (deep breath) “Robert Langdon awoke slowly.” Wha?! Hey, that’s not right. [12:25 pm] 
4. Now here we go. Starts with a big “S” in “stately” and then “plump” and that’s all for page 1! Easy. [12:32 pm] 
5. Should read next page. Before I do, checking Don Gifford. S stands for Stephen, Subject (1st part of syllogism, there is a logical structure). [12:41 pm] 
6. 2 other parts of the book start with a big M (Molly, middle) and P (Leo-Poldy, predicate). Medievals regarded S-M-P as the order of thought. [12:48 pm] 
7. If S=M, and M=P, then S=P. M, the middle term drops out, combining the subject and predicate. Molly brings together Stephen and Leopold. [12:51 pm] 
8. Moving right along to word 2…nothing on “plump”…though funny to think of someone stately and plump, I guess. Are we getting satire here? [12:53 pm] 
9. Reading the full sentence. Buck Mulligan is coming from the stairhead with a bowl (which will become a chalice according to Don) and razor. [12:55 pm]
10. “Yellow dressinggown, ungirdled”? Gross. Did dudes girdle? I will never finish this page. Been reading for 30 mins. Need to power thru. [12:57 pm]
11. 1st line of dialogue, Introibo ad altare Dei means I will go up to God’s altar. Said in Catholic Mass. Like Homer, an appeal to divinity. [1:05 pm]
12. Also, Buck is having a laugh at Catholic ritual, & poking fun at his tower-mate (they’re living in an actual tower), Stephen. [1:08 pm]
13. He gets Stephen to the towertop, calls him Kinch & fearful Jesuit. To Don, Kinch sounds like a cutting sound. Sounds a like stupid nickname. [1:10 pm]
14. This guy is putting a lot into his shaving ritual. Why hasn’t Gillette optioned this for a commercial. The Mach Mulligan. Ba-dum-bump! [1:15 pm]
15. There’s our boy, Stephen Dedalus. Displeased & sleepy. But I can’t tell who has the equine face, untonsured (!?) hair, pale oak complexion. [1:18 pm]
16. Looking it up…and not finding it. I’m 65% sure it’s Stephen with the horseface. Been at this an hour. Need to pick up the freaking pace. [1:30 pm]
17. Back to barracks…a military command. Buck has both national and religious significance. It’s tuff to do this under 140 characters, btw. [1:41 pm]
18. To Don, the genuine Christine is jokey reference to black mass (and not Applegate), where a woman’s body is used as an altar. Weird joke. [1:45 pm]
19. Chrysostomos is not a sentence! Is this the narrator speaking? Word means golden-mouth, referring to Buck’s gold-capped teeth and big mouth. [1:51 pm]
20. Who’s he’s whistling to? And what’s the current? Looking it up… [1:53 pm]
21. No idea who whistles back. Don & the comic are no help. Current seems to be the wind, which he’s telling god to turn off. What a jokester. [1:59 pm]
22. If the plump shadowed face=Buck, then Stephen must have the horseface! Mystery solved! Can you have just one jowl? Checking… [2:01 pm]
23. According to Webster, jowl just means slack flesh, usually associated with cheeks, lower jaw, throat. Buck probably has a double chin. [2:02]
24. To Don, face description suggests Pope Alex VI, corrupt Renaissance leader/arts patron (good call?). Anyways, a symbol of decadent power. [2:07 pm]
25. Buck makes fun of Stephen’s name. Stephen=1st Christian martyr; Dedalus=ancient Greek artificer, killed his own son with the wax wing plan. [2:08 pm]
26. Stephen still hasn’t said anything yet. Just follows Buck onto the towertop, sits on the gunrest. Is he the resting gun? I’m going nutz.  [2:10 pm]
27. And that’s it! Read page 1 in less than 2 hours. This is going to be a breeze! [2:11 pm] 
28. Signing off. Need to do some actual work, even though this completely exhausted me. Maybe will take a nap. I end with all 16 followers! [2:13 pm]

So, let’s take stock of what happens on page 1. Buck comes to the top of the tower, where he’s living with Stephen. He brings a bowl of lather, a razor, and a mirror, supposedly to shave. He’s still in his yellow(ed?) pajamas. Before he begins to shave, Buck makes fun of Catholic ritual and Stephen (with a bunch of weird, not-funny jokes) while posing as a loud-mouthed, decadent authority figure. He intonation to God parallels to invocation to the muse at the beginning of the Odyssey.

He calls horsefaced Stephen up to the top of tower. Stephen just stares, probably just waking up, and probably annoyed that he was woken up to watch this dude shave. This is probably the roommate situation from hell.

Their residence here is based Joyce’s own brief unhappy residence at Martello Tower, built a century earlier to defend Dublin against a possible Napoleonic invasion. It was 40 ft high with thick walls. It’s single door was 10 ft off the ground, only reached by rope ladder. Sounds like fun, but that rope ladder would get old quick.

Martello Tower.

Joyce lived there with Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty(who is now immortalized as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan). According to the Ellman biography, Joyce had a pretty unfortunate roommate situation living with Gogarty, who was sarcastic, a drunk, and probably really disrespectful of Joyce’s space. I’m imagining Taco Bell wrappers everywhere.

The setting of the top of the tower also recalls Hamlet (act 1, scene 5), where Hamlet confronts the ghost of his father.  Stephen definitely thinks of himself as a more Hamlet figure than a Telemachus one. And just coming off our funmaries, so would I. 

Some questions for discussion:

• Who whistles back to Buck? Is this just the wind?
• Who’s the narrator here? It’s definitely 3rd, but not necessarily omniscient or objective. Definitely seems to have it in for Buck.
• What exactly does it mean to have *untonsured* hair?
• What are the significance similarities/differences between Hamlet and Telemachus?
• Is Buck’s reference to the feminine Christ a subtle nod to Dan Brown’s work?

Adopt-An-Episode Update: We’re only have a little over a third of the episodes in Ulysses adopted. Please find it in your heart to become a parent!

NEXT: I will read 10 pages and post tomorrow!

Adopt-An-Episode or they will die!

—-

* = Technically, I read the first 2 pages of Ulysses. Page 1 just has a big letter and 2 words.

Odyssey Funmaries #18: Penelope (Book XXIII) **FINAL!**

By BROOKE JACKSON

As the first lady to contribute to Wandering Rocks, it is of course appropriate that I be the one funmarizing about our hero’s first lady, Penelope.

So as we know by now, back at the ranch, Penelope is on year 20 of same sh*t, different day. She has waited, weaved, unweaved, weaved again, unweaved again, wailed, whined, weaved some more and waited some more. I mean, it has been a really long freaking time.

Let’s put this in some perspective here: Remember Castaway? You know, Tom Hanks gets stuck on a tropical island, loses 140 pounds, learns how make fire and becomes BFF with a volleyball. All the while Helen Hunt keeps the search going for him, is told she’s crazy to think he’s still alive, holds a funeral, then finally gets over it and ‘lets him go.’ By the time Tom finally makes his odyssey back to Memphis, she’s married, has a new house, and even has a kid with the guy (a.k.a. “the suitor”). (But hey, at least she kept the car!) All this, in only FIVE YEARS, people. Five.

You can’t wait 5 years for this guy?

I guess when you look at it from this vantage, it’s not so difficult to understand that Penelope was in bed and depressed, deep in an Athena-induced-Vicodin-like sleep, when Odysseus came home. Penelope literally slept through the genocide of every Ithacan prince who has bothered her for the last two decades. Now they’re all heaped in a burning pile out back, and Odysseus is softscrubbing the whole bloody palace. And when her faithful, lifetime nurse comes upstairs to tell Penelope that her husband finally got home, Penelope gets ticked off that she was awoken from the best sleep she’s had in ages.

When she learns that the suitors have been slaughtered, she’s pretty excited, but she still refuses to believe that her husband has returned. It must be the gods, she explains to her loony nurse. But they still go downstairs to check out the scene.

Odysseus, long-enduring though he is, is probably pushing 50, which is no small thing given the life-expectancy back then (50 was the old 90). Plus, he still looks like a bum, smells like the doghouse, and just washed off gallons of blood with more gallons of household disinfectant and whatever he used to “purify” the castle. So, again, you can’t begrudge Penelope for being a little apprehensive.

Telly throws a hissy-fit that mom and dad aren’t getting along, so dad delegates him to take the wait-staff and throw a fake wedding party, to cover up the groans coming from the pile of mostly dead guys. I mean, we can’t have the neighbors talking. Better to have them first feel bad about not being invited to the wedding, and then have to hear it through the grapevine that the “party” was actually a mass murder.

So off they go, leaving the old lovers to chat. They go back and forth—half flirting and half fighting about who is more stubborn, and eventually Odysseus, master of tactics, simply threatens to go sleep in the guest room.

Of course, Penelope’s got a few tricks up her own sleeve. And they all involve the bed. (Cue sleazy porn music… now.) Penelope, calls the maid in, and asks her to move the bed out of the bridal chamber for their strange guest to sleep on.

Odysseus calls her bluff and proceeds to tell all about his mighty craftsmanship in building their unmovable tree-bed. An original, DIYer, Odysseus built the bedroom himself–around a big olive tree. But since left no room for a BED (hello!?), he chopped off the top of the tree, and carved a bed right into the trunk. Alright, it’s pretty cool, but it’s no treehouse:

Complete with tree-toilet!

He responds:

Woman—your words, they cut me to the core!

Who could move my bed? Impossible task,

Even for some skilled craftsman—unless a god

Came down in person, quick to lend a hand,

Lifted it out with ease and moved it elsewhere.

Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength,

Would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no,

A great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction.

I know, I built it myself—no one else…

Ah yes, the great bed. This is an important symbol in our main attraction, Ulysses readers, so wake up, wipe the drool off your desk, and write this in your moleskine: Bed.

So Penelope finally believes that it is Odysseus after he spills the beans on the big tree-bed secret. And it MUST be him, since the gods can’t read blueprints, no one else could possibly know about this crazy bed that Odysseus, ever the talker, so mightily crafted. But I digress. They are happy, and eventually make their way to the big soft bed to “delight in each other.” But not before Odysseus tells Penelope that he’s going to have to leave again on a dangerous trip and kill a bunch of farm animals in order to apologize to Poseidon. If he does that, though, then they get a long, full life together.

Athena keeps it dark out (making this the Longest. Night. Ever.), and they make their way to bed, and now “rejoice in each other,” and then get caught up on the last twenty years, eventually falling asleep.

And great Odysseus told his wife of the pains

He had dealt out to other men and all the hardships

He’d endured himself—his story first to last—

And she listened on, enchanted…

Sleep never sealed her eyes till all was told.

Wandering Rocks starts Ulysses To-freaking-day!!!

Follow along in real time as Jerry tweets his way through page 1!

Starts at noon-ish!

Odyssey Funmaries #17: Ithaca (Books XVII-XX)

By MARK HOOBLER

 

For all of our 4 books to funmarized below, our hero, the wily Odysseus, Sacker of Cities & Goddesses, goes about incognito as a beggar. Why does he do this? Why not just run into his home, or castle, and shout that he is back? Why does he not run up to Penelope and plant a big wet one on her lips? It’s been 20 freakin’ years after all. Why delay even more? It was the German Homeric scholar, F.A. Wolf, who first identified this as Die Odysseusverkleidetalsobdachlosebettlerverzögernthema. [The Odysseus disguised as a homeless beggar delaying theme]*. This funmarizer read the whole of Wolf’s 1,300 page opus, Identity and Otherness in Homer in an attempt to get to the bottom of this narrative mystery, only to find this on the last page: “Here I can go no further. I have identified this theme in Homer: I leave it to those who shall come after me to explicate it.” Well. I am afraid I am going to have to be content to funmarize these books, and leave the analysis to others.

Let’s get on with it, shall we?

Book 17 opens with a funmary of its own! Telemachus leaves Odysseus with Eumaeus in the country and heads to the palace. (The suitors are hanging around the palace as usual, watching dvds, ordering pizzas, making crank calls, drinking milk right from the bottle in the fridge, etc.) When he gets there Penelope (“Mom”) has Telly funmarize his trip. He does a decent job, but he is no Ben Vore. (Luckily he makes no reference to Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey.)

Soon thereafter Eumaeus with the disguised Odysseus leave the country and head into town. They are not on the road long when Odysseus earns the ire of one of the suitors’ swineherds, Melanthius. (In addition to having really bad houseguest manners, the suitors and their swineherds do NOT like beggars; the next time Odysseus comes back to his homeland after a 20-year odyssey, I would advise him to disguise himself as a king, hell, maybe a god.) So Odysseus has to suffer these outrageous slings & arrows from this guy, and all the while we are thinking, ‘If this dope only knew who he was insulting! It’s King Odysseus, Most Wily of Men and Sacker of Cities!!’

We will get many more chances to think this same thought in the course of the next 4 books.

When Eumaeus and Odysseus reach the palace there is a heartfelt moment when Odysseus’ old dog Argos recognizes his master. Our hero must fight back a tear. Then the dog dies, foreshadowing the fate of every dog in Western Literature from here on in. Then it is time for the crazy Greek gods to meddle in human affairs yet again. Athena commands Odysseus to go around to all the suitors and ask for food to separate the wheat from the chaff. A real annoying suitor, Antinous, not only heaps abuse on Odysseus, but also heaves his wooden stool at Odysseus, whom it hits square in the back. You just know things are not going to end well for this Antinous guy. When Penelope hears of the abuse this beggar has suffered, she invites him to come speak to her. Odysseus-beggar has Eumaeus tell her he will come at night-fall when it is safer.

But first Antinous stirs up trouble between Odysseus and a real beggar, Arnaeus. He proposes a boxing match between them for a fat, sizzling goat sausage. Odysseus ‘belts up’ and the suitors notice he is stacked, cut like like a UFC fighter. No one seems to think this is strange. Odysseus dispatches the real beggar with one punch and gets the sausage.

Just give him the sausage.

Then Athena descends from the heavens to give Penelope a royal-makeover, a mani-pedi good enough for a queen. She inspires her with a plan, and Penelope goes to talk to the suitors. When they see her royal hotness, the suitors are entranced. Penelope tells them they need to start bringing her gifts. And so they do. After this, the suitors really party. You can almost hear the C&C Music Factory and smell the wine. Things get out-of-hand, there is more stool-tossing, and Telemachus shuts the party down, kicking everyone out (sort-of) except for Odysseus.

Telly and Odysseus use this opportunity to hide all the weapons in the palace. But lest we forget Odysseus-beggar has a date with Penelope. You would think, knowing this guy’s libido, he would toss off the costume and, er, announce himself, to his wife. You would be wrong. He goes through a whole charade, weaving a story for the weaver, of how he met Odysseus many years ago on his way to Troy. Penelope buys it. She then tells her maids to make a splendid bed for the beggar and bathe his feet. When she is washing his feet, Penelope’s maid recognizes Odysseus by a scar on his foot. She exclaims out loud that it is him, but once again Athena saves the day by making sure Penelope does not hear. Then Odysseus tells the maid if she tells anyone he will kill her. Oof. Bet she isn’t too glad he came home.

Now Penelope tells us something strange:

When night falls and the world lies lost in sleep
I take to my bed, my heart throbbing, about to break,
Anxieties, swarming, piercing – I may go mad…

Penelope has Restless Leg Syndrome!

Penelope tells Odysseus she is going to have a contest to win her hand in marriage; the suitor who can string O’s bow (not his oboe; many people do not know Odysseus was a world class oboe player) and shoot an arrow through 12 axe heads will win her hand, if not heart.

Not so much happens in the next book. Odysseus has some restless sleep. Penelope has some restless sleep. They both pray to the gods. Odysseus asks Zeus for a sign. Zeus sends him one (thunder & lightning; not very original for Zeus, but Odysseus buys it.). Odysseus-beggar goes to see his old stableman who comments that he looks a lot like Odysseus. We get another raucous feast with the suitors in which Odysseus-beggar gets a cow’s foot tossed at him, along with more verbal abuse.

Jeez! These suitors are real JERKS! Someone needs to teach them a lesson!

I wonder what will happen next…

Wandering Rocks starts Ulysses tomorrow!

Follow along in real time as Jerry tweets his way through page 1!

Starts at noon!

——

* = Wolf spent the rest of his life trying to establish this trope in other works of art but to little avail. In his twilight years Wolf claimed to have found it in several episodes of the OC on the WB, but he was mocked by his colleagues with a strain of vitriol that was excessive – even by German standards – and forced to recant. He was found dead at his desk in 1998 clutching a photograph of Misca Barton wearing a magic marker beard he had doodled in.

Introducing … ADOPT-AN-EPISODE!

By JERRY GRIT

Odyssey Funmaries #16 is being delayed one day. Tad Smith is being overwhelmed by the Scylla of traveling and the Charybdis of family obligation. Don’t worry, we’ll make the 16th.

But this is gives us all an opportunity to think to ourselves on the brink of the beginning, “Have I put my Best Foot forward?” 

Have you brought in new readers? Are you prepared?

Go to the mirror and look hard. Real hard. What do you see?

Me, too!

If you see a lion, you have won. If you don’t see a lion, yell at what you do see. Ask why it’s not a lion. And beg for it to do better to become a lion. 

And then, think about this … in order to spread the wealth once we get start on Tuesday, I am posing that we each adopt an episode in Ulysses. For whichever episode you adopt, you will set the pace for the reading and initiate the discussion on the blog. It will be your show, however, we will all be along to help and contribute. 

I’ve created a new multicolored Adopt-An-Episode table with my space-age table-making technology. I’ll take the first episode to serve as a kind of an example (which you will be under no obligation to follow).  

I will ask for you to do the same, to adopt an episode. Pick whichever one appeals to you. First to claim it, gets it. Just post a comment below.

We should have just enough readers to have a different parent for each episode. Which would be awesome.

Roar like a lion, adopt an episode!

New Ulysses Resources

By JERRY GRIT

It’s been some time since I’ve read this book, and in that time a ton of new resources have come out that may actually make this thing much more of a breeze than anticipated. 

In addition to the book of annotations I mentioned, I’ve come across a few other tools. I’ve posted them below and under the “Ulysses Resources” on the right nav menu of our page. We’ll update this menu as we find helpful things.

• Bloomsday Book: First off, you should all check out an oldie (recently rereleased as a newbie). Harry Blamires’ The Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Joyce’s Ulysses offers great coherent summaries of the plot and themes. It’s meant to be a companion for the general reader (i.e., for the slobs, not the snobs). Amazon is selling it for nearly $30, which seems to me to be a complete rip (Ben’s bookstore doesn’t even sell it, though). Get it from the library, or you can see the majority of the text online here.
• Ulysses “Seen”: There’s also a Ulysses comic book online, Ulysses “Seen”. Right now, they only have the first chapter posted, but it looks really good. Could be helpful if the rest of it gets posted soon.
• DifficultBooks.com: There’s another online reading group that’s currently reading it, and attempting some online annotations on difficultbooks.com. Could be really good to collaborate with these folks.
• Reading Ulysses Series on RTE: There’s also a radio series meant to accompany your reading, produced by an Irish radio station. I’m having some trouble getting the audio to work. But if possible, might be good to put this series on your zune.
• Sparknotes: There are also plot summaries on Sparknotes (a ghetto Cliff’s Notes). They can be helpful and they’re short, but they’re really incomplete. Blamires does a much better job.  

I think these resources collectively amount to our very own Magic Wind Sack that will blow us safely through this thing. You kids won’t know the hell I went through.

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.

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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.