I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: Week of September 13, 2010] Ulysses

Episode 15 is a huge one, so I finished up that and 16 this week.

One thing I noted about Episode 15 is that in this section:

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rot, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI Dooooooooooog!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI Goooooooooood!

the texts that are printed backwards are played as the forward recording flipped in reverse.  It was a cool effect.

I really didn’t enjoy Episode 16 while I was reading it.  I felt it was overly long and perhaps too focused on the mis-named sailor.  Plus, I was really looking forward to Episode 17 (which is my favorite).  But this time, with someone else reading the hard words, I was able to appreciate quite a lot more about this Episode.

Lar’s comments about Skin-the Goat also helped to give some background to this odd character.  And this leads me to a question that I sort of thought about while reading, but which comes up a lot more for me in this listen:  Joyce’s opinion of Ireland and of Irish independence.  The Citizen in the earlier episode was all about the Irish language and Gaelic sports.  And now in this Episode there is a lot of talk about Parnell returning.  Was this all included because it is what old men in Dublin talked in Dublin in 1904, or was it something that Joyce had a vested interest in (even while he was living in Paris where he wrote the book).  [I could investigate this, but that seems like an awful lot of work.]

Parnell is mentioned in this chapter and there is a lengthy discussion about Parnell’s “affair” with a married woman (Kitty O’ Shea) [see a very brief description here].  But what I took out of the Episode was a parallel between Parnell’s affair:

that he had shared her bedroom, which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion)

and Blazes Boylan.  Obviously Blazes didn’t use a ladder, but this sentiment is presented:

Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch with nothing in common between them beyond the name and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home ties.

But the more interesting quote comes a little later.  He says that people have no right to gossip about the incident:

it being a case for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another’s arms drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones, with tears in her eyes, though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time, as quite possibly there were several others.

The final tie between Bloom and Parnell comes a little later:

His hat (Parnell’s) was inadvertently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity) who, panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time, being a gentleman born with a stake in the country, he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what’s bred in the bone, instilled into him in infancy at his mother’s knee in the shape of knowing what good form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and thanked him with perfect aplomb, saying: Thank you, sir though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course of the day…

I’m not entirely sure if these connections are supposed to really mean anything, especially since in the Parnell/Bloom case, Parnell is the cheater and Bloom is the cheated, but I found the parallels fascinating.

I also noticed this time that there is a comment (from Bloom) about Buck Mulligan and Westland Row:

you won’t get in after what occurred at Westland Row station

and

You could go back, perhaps, he hazarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third companion, were patently trying, as if the whole bally station belonged to them, to give Stephen the slip in the confusion.

Now I don’t recollect that at all.  (And I’m not entirely sure what the Westland Row Terminus is, well it’s Dublin Pearse railway station).  Just as I still can’t imagine what that cabman’s shelter is, exactly.

The Episode really seems to be about 5 short scenes that Joyce stretches out with increasing detail (and diversions).  Stephen and Bloom walking to the cabman’s shelter.  In the cabman’s shelter talking about the sailor.  Some talk of Parnell.  Then Bloom’s fantasies about Stephen and their walk home.

Bloom’s fantasies about Stephen was really enjoyable this time around too.  I feel like I must have missed a lot of this the firs time through.  I hadn’t noticed last time how Bloom really builds up the connection that he and Stephen make.  He also imagines that Stephen will be great intellectual companion for him.  The fantasy goes as far as Bloom seeing Stephen join them on a musical tour of England and beyond.   And while I know it’s just Bloom’s mind going in all conceivable directions (Stream of consciousness and all), it still seems incredibly unlikely given that they barely know each other (although it is rather touching that he sees Stephen’s mother in Stephen’s face) and that Stephen has barely said more than a few dozen words to him the whole time they’ve been together.

For me the audio was essential to my enjoyment of Episode 16, and I’m delighted by how much more I noticed this time.

I don’t know how many audio book editions there are of Ulysses.  I noticed that there is an abridged version (how do you decide how to abridge Ulysses?  So much of it is tangential (and yet significant) that what can you cut out?).  But my abridged version is 3 discs (as opposed to 40 in the unabridged).  I haven’t listened to it in quite a while, so I don’t even know what they bothered to leave in, but I’m curious to check it out and see.

The edition that I checked out from the library is this one.

Or, you can check out this free mp3 file which according to the site: “In the Bloomsday tradition, a cast of readers participated in the project, offering creative readings with “pub-like background noise.”  Obviously I haven’t listened to this one yet (and will I ever? who knows).  But it sounds interesting, although obviously less “authentic” than this official release.