Ulysses Wednesday #16

Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


Status:  I AM FINISHED!  (Sound the chorus)


  Yep I am done!  I finished Molly's chapter/episode in one (long) sitting and though it was challenging I have to say that this part was the most interesting to me.  Molly is a saucy one, and in talking about her various conquests it was difficult to determine who it was she was talking about -- Bloom, Boylan, or someone else.  I would have liked to read more about Molly, as she was definitely a character

  Overall I can't say that I loved Ulysses, or even liked it very much.  It is not a novel that one can simply pick up and read whenever there are a few spare minutes (though apparently it was a popular read for train commuters);  it requires concentration, not to keep up with the plot (which I don't think exists), but rather to keep up with Joyce's style changes and his use of language.  If anyone is stupid  brave enough to try this novel, I'd recommend that you find an annotated edition -- my copy was not and I know I could have benefited from some background information.

  So I'm going to take a break from the weightier classics for now, but in November I will probably begin reading War & Peace which my classics reading group will be discussing in January.  Have any of you read this one?  Am I giving myself enough time to read it?  I haven't decided if I will blog about my progress through this one -- if I do, will anyone join me?

  And by the way, thank you to everyone who have left encouraging comments throughout my slog through Ulysses.  I was doing this for my own satisfaction (ultimately, though, not enjoyment) but it was nice to see that there were people paying attention along the way.

Ulysses Wednesday #15

  Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


  Status: page 738 of  783

  Just entering into Molly's stream of consciousness.  Funnily enough, I'm sort of looking forward to reading this (remind me when I start screaming about it!) because although Molly has been mentioned here and there throughout the book, I don't know much about her.  And it will be interesting to see how this chapter/episode differs from the others -- perhaps it will be more understandable because it is just Molly's thoughts? (again, remind me of this)

 

Ulysses Wednesday #14

Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


Status: page 700 of 783

ALMOST DONE!!!!

  So Bloom and Dedalus were last seen at the off-hours pub, and Bloom is deciding whether or not to take Stephen home with him so that he can sleep it off.  He decides in the positive, but when they arrive at the house poor Poldy realizes that he doesn't have his house key and must break in (lest he awake Molly). 
 
  The chapter I'm in now is in the style of an interview - a very scientific interview.  It is explaining quite a bit about Bloom, Stephen, and their families, which I wish I read before the rest of the book.  There's also some really weird stuff (weirder stuff, I should say) -- an implied connection between Ireland and Israel, for example, and a strange poem/nursery rhyme that I don't think I'd want to be singing with any children I know:

 

Little Harry Hughes and his schoolfellows all

Went out for to play ball.

And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played

He drove it o'er  the jew's garden wall.

And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played

He broke the jew's windows all.

 

Then out there came the jew's daughter

And she all dressed in green.

'Come back, come back, you pretty little boy,

And play your ball again.'

 

'I can't come back and I won't come back

Without my schoolfellows all,

For if my master he did hear

He'd make it a sorry ball.'

 

She took him by the lilywhite hand

And led him along the hall

Until she led him to a room

Where none could hear him call.

 

She took a penknife out of her pocket

And cut off his little head,

And now he'll play his ball no more

For he lies among the dead.

 

  A treatise against playing ball where you might break something, or an example of anti-Semitism?

 

  I have about 30 pages left in this chapter (oops - sorry - EPISODE) and then I'm on to Molly's stream of consciousness rant.  I feel I need to read that part all at once, so if I'm able to do that, I might just finish the novel within the week!

Ulysses Wednesday #13

  Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


  Status: page 650 of 783

  This week's slow pace is attributed to the fact that I essentially re-read 20-30 pages twice.  Bloom and Stephen are stumbling about in the streets after the bar, at first trying to find transportation but then they end up in an after hours place full of Italian sailors.  One of them remembers Stephen's father, Simon, but Stephen seems to me reluctant to acknowledge the connection.  I get a sense that I should have read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man first because Stephen is playing a larger role in the novel than I thought.

  I still plan on finishing by the end of the month, but I'll need to pick up the pace just a little bit.

Ulysses Wednesday #12

Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


Status: page 613 of 783
 
   Ok, I've FINALLY finished the play within the novel.  Way weird, and when this section started I thought it would be easier to follow.  The ghost of Stephen's mother appears, telling him to repent or face God's wrath; while he cowers.  I really must have what he's having.  Also some conflict between the English military presence and the Irish (with f-bombs a plenty - I can see how 1920s society would have been "scandalized).
 
   At any rate, it's the home stretch -- three quarters of the way through and I'm still alive to tell about it.  Which is good because (segue) I just heard about another blogger - Isaac at The Tower of Stories - who is beginning a monthly discussion of Ulysses and since he's read it before I am sure that he will a lot more articulate and informative about the book than I've been and I look forward to reading his thoughts.

Ulysses Wednesday #11

 Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.

 Status: page 534 of 783

 Another short post today -- I'm still in the chapter representing a play, and as I read it I am convinced that Mr. Joyce must have been smoking some wacky tabacky while he was writing this.  Bloom has been declared a virgin, he has declared that "I so want to be a mother" and then he becomes a woman - or perhaps a girl - before turning back to a man in time to be beaten by a madam and some of her "girls".  I think. 

  It's interesting to discover how different Leopold Bloom's character is than what I perceived before I started reading the novel.  Since I thought Ulysses was about him, I just assumed that he would be in all the action and that he would be a much stronger character.  Not so.  The novel follows Bloom's wanderings through Dublin, but it doesn't entirely focus on him; and in fact when he is involved in the plot I sometimes don't notice that he's even there.  Perhaps that was Joyce's point? 

 

Ulysses Wednesday #10

Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


Status: page 474 of 783

  So I'm in a chapter now that is reading like a play, and it feels like a dream sequence.  Bloom is chasing after Stephen Dedalus as they walk down the street (in what seems to be a dodgy area) and then all of a sudden the scene turns into a courtroom and poor ol' Leopold is on trial for sexually harassing a maid and some society ladies.  I'm not finished with this chapter yet, but Paddy Dignam has returned from the dead to vouch for Bloom's character, so I wonder what else will pop up in this little fantasy.

Ulysses Wednesday #9

Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


Status: page 429 of 783.

  Again real life has hampered my reading progress.  I did finish the "maternity ward" chapter, which my friend Ed informs me is the "Oxen of the Sun" episode (my edition has absolutely no mention of chapter numbers, much less the names of episodes as they are called in the smart circles) but it continued to make absolutely no sense to me.

  I wonder if I need to read the whole book first without "thinking" about it, then go back to closely read and thus better appreciate what it's trying to say?

  I am heading out on a short vacation today and since I know I won't be in the right place to read properly I am not bringing ol' Ulysses with me.  I hope to read the next chapter/episode before next week's post, though.

Ulysses Wednesday #8

  Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.

  Status:  page 400 of 783.

  I've made progress!  I'm halfway done!  I still don't understand most of what I'm reading!

  There has been one - ONE - chapter (12 or 13 depending on which reference I consult, the edition I am reading does not mark them) which almost reads like a normal novel; in which Leopold is relaxing along the sea and encounters Gerty MacDowell.  At first it seems rather boring (though comprehensible) - a group of girls along with the young brothers of one of them are enjoying the pleasant evening within earshot of the Mass being held at the church nearby.  Gerty is bored with this scene, and notices Leopold watching her; they acknowledge each other and, well, let's just say their encounter is consummated from afar.  The description of course is very symbolic but leaves no doubt as to what is happening (Fireworks!).  It seems tame compared to how these scenes can be described nowadays, but I can see how this chapter would have caused an outcry back in the day.

 

  The next chapter (13 or 14) takes me back to confusion.  Joyce is apparently experimenting with styles of different authors in English literature in chronological order, and though I get that he has gone to the maternity hospital to visit someone I have no idea what else is happening.  *Sigh*  One step forward, two steps back.

Ulysses Wednesday #7

  Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.

  Status:  Unchanged from last week

  Real life has a great way of interfering with my reading time.  Work has been insane the last two weeks and I think I've been able to manage about 10 pages since my last post.  I'm going to have to re-read them because I just was not able to focus properly, so that's why I'm calling my progress stalled.  I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, though (did I say that last week?)

Ulysses Wednesday #6

Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


Status: on page 316 of 783


  Sadly, not a lot of progress this week, and not a lot of time to write a decent post about it (darn workload).  I just wanted to put up a post to keep up with the routine.  I promise to come back next week with some great insights (or just insights). 
   My goodreads friend Ed, who joined me in reading Proust last year, sent me some great notes on reading Ulysses so I'm hopeful that the lightbulb will go off soon.....

Book Beginnings on Friday

  Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by Becky at Page Turners. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence.

  My sentence this week comes from my summer reading project, Ulysses by James Joyce:

Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. 

 
  So from sentence one, I was already confused, because I had always assumed that Ulysses was all about Leopold Bloom -- who is this Buck Mulligan guy?  The confusion has not let up, but Joyce does have an amazing way with words; and though Bloom is walking around the streets of Dublin, it is everything that goes on around him that is the focus of the book.  

Ulysses Wednesday #5

Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.
Status: on page 292 of 783


My head hurts. 

I didn't read very much since my last post, but it still takes me a long time to read 10-20 pages at a sitting.  In this week's reading I'm not sure what is going on, really.  Bloom has gone into a pub to have dinner, and there are all kinds of characters carrying on.  I think they are writing a letter (as a group or each person individually, I cannot determine) and to show you what I'm up against, this is a section of what Bloom has written (and yes, this is exactly how it appears!):

On.  Know what I mean.  No, change that ee.  Accept my poor little pres enclos.  Ask her no answ.  Hold on.  Five Dig.  Two about here.  Penny the gulls.  Elijah is com.  Seven Davy Byrne's.  Is eight about.  Say half a crown.  My poor little pres:  p.o. two and six.  Write me a long.  Do you despise?  Jingle, have you the?  So excited.  Why do you call me naught?  You naughty too?  O, Mairy lost the pin of her.  Bye for today.  Yes, yes, will tell you.  Want to.  To keep it up.  Call me that other.  Other world she wrote.  My patience are exhaust.  To keep it up.  You must believe.  Believe.  The tank.  It.  Is.  True.

Umm, yeah.  I don't know who he is writing and I can't begin to imagine what this is about, although Elijah has come up several times in the book so far but I haven't yet figured out why.

  Some more interesting wordplay, and one particular passage that reminded me of Dr. Seuss (any Joyce scholars are likely reeling with the comparison):

One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul de Kock, with a loud proud knocker, with a cock carracarracarra cock.  Cockcock.

  So I hope this week's reading will move along better.  The one reference I'm using (and I use the term reference loosely), Beowulf on the Beach:  What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits, says that the next part is worth it.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Ulysses Wednesday #4

  Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


  Status: on page 225 of 783

  This week's reading was much more interesting than what I slogged through last week.  There is a fine discussion in the library about Shakespeare and how autobiographical his plays may or may not have been; and in the midst of this talk turns for a minute to an anticipated gathering of "young poets' verses" and what I thought to be an interesting statement: 

Our national epic has yet to be written.

Could Joyce have believed that it was up to him to write such an epic?

  In this section we also see Leopold Bloom go into Davy Byrne's pub for lunch.  The descriptions of the meat and other foodstuffs eaten by other patrons is rather off-putting, so I can see why Bloom decides to order a (gorgonzola) cheese sandwich.  After lunch he goes to the library - the location of the above mentioned Shakespeare discussion - to look up something for an advertisement he is trying to sell.

  You know, I thought Ulysses was all about Bloom and nothing but Bloom, but I was wrong.  In my reading thus far he appears for a chapter here and there and then sets off to let others participate in the action.  I knew there were other characters, of course, but I didn't realize that they had as much of a role in this novel as Bloom.

  What I also found interesting was Joyce's use of the word Holocaust:

All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York.  Holocaust.  Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pikehoses. Dear, dear, dear.  Pity of course:  but somehow you can't cotton on to them someway.

and then later on a reference to a dreadful catastrophe in New York, which was an actual event - a passenger ship disaster on June 15, 1904, the day before the events described in Ulysses.   Even though his use of holocaust in this instance is accurate, it is certainly not a context in which I am familiar in seeing that term used.

  So am I getting it yet?  Probably not entirely, but I do have glimmers of understanding here and there. It is definitely not a book to be read casually though.

Ulysses Wednesday #3

  Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.


  Status: on page 162 of 783

  Nothing of interest has happened since my last update.  Bloom and his fellow pallbearers continue to the funeral and burial, socialize, and then Bloom goes to the newspaper office where he sells advertising -- in this chapter Joyce uses bold-print headlines to break up the action, even though (to me) the headlines don't relate to what is happening. 
 
  I probably should look for a good reader's guide to help me through; I'm hoping that this is just a dull section because I didn't get anything out of it.

Ulysses Wednesday #2

  Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.

  

   Status:  on page 97 of 783

   It doesn't seem like much, but I am rather impressed by my progress in the first week.  I can follow what is going on in the story, though I have had to read several passages more than once to fully understand them (or better understand them), and - dare I say - I'm almost enjoying it.  I was surprised to see that Leopold Bloom, the novel's main character, does not appear until the fourth chapter (which aren't labelled as such).  I'm not quite sure what the point is of the first three chapters:

• A few men are eating breakfast in what seems to be some type of monastery tower on the Dublin seaside, then they go down to the sea to have a bath;
• Stephen Dedalus (a character in other Joyce works) is teaching a classroom of schoolboys
• Stephen is wandering around Dublin

but perhaps this is laying ground for something that happens later on.

  So when we meet Bloom, he is off to buy a kidney for his breakfast.  While at the butcher, he is in line behind a young maid who is buying sausages for her masters and becomes quite taken with her; he tries to follow her but loses her in the crowds of the Dublin street.  Upon returning home, he prepares the kidney while also making breakfast for his wife, Molly.  After breakfast and a visit to the outhouse (yes, it's described), Bloom begins walking to a funeral of an acquaintance, stopping on the way to pick up a letter at the post office addressed to "Henry Flower", stop at a Church to hear Mass, order some lotion for Molly and buy soap at the chemist's, and have a bath at the public bathhouse.  When I leave Leopold, he is in a carriage with the coffin of the deceased and a few other men (pallbearers?) heading to the cemetery.  As this novel is set in one entire day, and the funeral was to begin at eleven o'clock; I'm going to guess that I am now somewhere between noon and one o'clock in the afternoon.

 

  What has struck me most about what I've read is not the story, but Joyce's play with the English language.  He uses alliteration (".. scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new sockets." ), and rhyming ("Met her once in the park.  In the dark.  What a lark"); and he seems to have invented various words & phrases with no apparent meaning ("nebeneinander"??) which with me had the effect of paying close attention to the words surrounding it.  His descriptions can be quite vivid, and at times stomach-churning; when describing Bloom's preferred breakfast food, he says:

Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Tasty, no? 

 Joyce also uses a lot of foreign phrases -- French, Italian, Latin -- and because there are no annotations one can be at a loss in comprehending these passages (thankfully I know some French).  Joyce must have been incredibly intelligent, and he seems to want to give his readers credit for intelligence as well (either that, or he wanted to scare them off).

  I do hope the story takes off, but I am quite content reading Ulysses just to appreciate Joyce's writing. 

 

   

Ulysses Wednesday - #1a

  So is there a Ulysses curse or something that I need to know about?
  Yesterday, day 1 of my Ulysses reading project, I thought I was doing well -- I wrote a post in the morning and scheduled it to post later in the day, and I was actually excited about doing this.
 Then the rest of the day began --
         At work my computer got infected with a virus and it took over two hours to clean it. 
         I wasn't feeling well most of the day, and on the way home, I got very very sick.  In the car.  In rush hour traffic.  Suffice to say that it was not pleasant.
 
  Hopefully the duration of this project will not be as troublesome.

Ulysses Wednesday - It Begins!

  Happy Bloomsday everyone!  This day in 1904 is the day described in detail in James Joyce's epic novel, Ulysses, and on this Bloomsday I have chosen to begin my quest to read it; ideally before next Bloomsday (hey, I just thought of something -- maybe I could spend next Bloomsday in Dublin! But I digress ....).  I plan to read a little bit every day and each Wednesday write about my progress here:  a) To prove to you that I am actually reading it; and b) to encourage others to read along with me.

  So the edition I am reading says that its the complete and unabridged text "as corrected and reset in 1961".  One problem though:  it is not annotated, so I am going to be using the web (and other readers) to help me along.

  Ready?  Let's go!

      Today I did dip my feet into the novel and made it to page 23.  It is morning, at a tower on the sea-side of Dublin; and Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus are preparing breakfast.  It sounds to me like it's some kind of monastery - they describe a tower - but I can't be sure.  They are joined by an Englishman, known only as Haines, and after breakfast the men all go down to the sea to bathe.  Not much, really, but I am already enjoying the way Joyce uses witty dialogue (though sometimes it is difficult to tell who is speaking) and his descriptions of the sea-coast are quite lovely:

Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet.  White breast of the dim sea.  The twining stresses, two by two.  A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords.  Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

  We'll see how the day progresses .......