Ahh, hubris. Having recently read Ulysses, thought processes much as follows. “Dubliners? Short stories,” thinks I, “this’ll be a doddle.”
Having suffered a mighty fall from this position of ill-judged pride I hesitate even to retrospectively assert that no Joyce is to be undertaken lightly, but it may be a fair assumption.
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“Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls!”
The first thing to say is that I tried not to, really I did, but there were occasions when Ulysses put me forcibly in mind of Father Ted. That would be the not taking Catholicism altogether seriously bit. I don’t know. Maybe it is a valid comparison.
The second thing to say is, that should this post publish itself as planned, I shall by that point have climbed at least one Scottish hill. Continue reading
“maggie and millie and molly and may”
In the last episode of Ulysses we make the proper acquaintance of Molly, Bloom’s wife. The intimate acquaintance of Molly, that is. Molly also shows us how stream of consciousness is really done. Some forty pages with no punctuation. No commas, no full stops, no nothin’. Unless you like to count the odd, apparently random, capital.
But what is it about? What is it for? I’m not entirely sure, but Molly seemed to make a lot more sense than Bloom, despite her non-stop monologue, and in a book that has its sexist moments it was pleasing to see the last word go to the oft-spoken of wife.
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“Inchoate Corollary”
One week, two episodes. One story, two styles. The two wildly divergent styles were to be expected, but the continuity of the story line running through episodes 16 and 17 was surprising. In the first Bloom encounters Dedalus and sobers him up. In the second he takes him home and endeavours to house him for the night. So far so good. Episode 16 is almost disappointingly readable. Having become accustomed to Joyce’s extravagant forays into elaborate writerly experiments, any literary tricks here were so comparatively subtle as to escape my notice.
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My pencil has vanished, as writing implements in our household are wont to do, and so I have been forced into the use of a pen. Didn’t realise it was a slow drying gel pen until I noticed that my notes, scribbled onto post-its and inserted into the book, were leaving an incomplete and fractured mirror image on the actual page. Should I ever part with my copy of Ulysses (perish the thought) I leave for my predecessor some marginalia which are slightly less comprehensible than the text itself!
“Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls…”
Episode 15 is the Circe episode, and I know this because Nancy at Silver Season wrote this enlightening and fascinating analysis. When I add her insightful piece to Daryl’s knowledge of archaic vocabulary and structure, as demonstrated here… I see that I don’t have the tools to meaningfully critique a novel of this sort.
Some time ago I read a proposed definition of lowbrow and highbrow literature. In the former the reader identifies with the characters, in the latter the identification is with the literature. ‘Huh?’ But I am beginning to grasp what that might mean. Doesn’t mean I can do it.
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After last week’s craziness the first of this week’s two episodes was a breath of fresh, sea air. Well, not so much fresh as pampered and perfumed, but air nonetheless, as opposed to quagmire.
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I would usually hope to express myself with more elegance, but when faced with the incoherence of Ulysses any claim I might have had to lucidity is fled without a trace. Do I get danger money for exposing myself to this dangerous stuff?
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