Ulysses Reading Group 2023

[ValentineGreen]

Hi all, on the back of a thread currently in Chat 'have you read Ulysses' it seemed like it would be a good idea to form a Ulysses Read-a-long group here.

No experience required, this thread is open to anyone who fancies reading it for the first time or the 100th time!

I don't know yet the best way to structure it, as in how many pages we all agree to read given that some 'chapters' are far denser than others. I'm totally open to anyone who has set up something like this before and knows what will work well?

For some context, I did not study English Literature but have always been an avid reader. I read Ulysses once, many years ago and while I say 'read' I mean my eyes read each word but I cannot say my brain decoded them all whatsoever.

Now, nearly 30 years later, and after a lifetime of reading, including Portrait and Dubliners as well as a lot of reading around the meaning of Ulysses, I wish to re-read it. But I would love to read it with others where we can share our thoughts and interpretations and knowledge as we go.

I find myself growing ever more fascinated by Joyce and his life and I really want to 'know' this great masterpiece and understand it (if I can!)

Please don't be shy! Come and join me...

Between us we can work out the best way to structure this undertaking.

We did talk a bit about Scylla & Charybdis, still worth posting the schema for consistency i think??

Perfect
I'll do that in the morning so. Just out of the dubliners reading group. No further incidents thankfully. V interesting..we covered An Encounter, Araby & Evaline.

Episode 9: Scylla & Charybdis
Time: 2.00pm
Scene: Library
Colour: None
Technique: Whirlpools, dialectic
Correspondences: The Rock = Aristotle, Dogma; Stratford / The Whirlpool = Plato, Mysticism; London / Ulysses = Socrates, Jesus, Shakespeare / Telemachus, Antinous
Science / Art: Literature
Meaning: Two edged dilemma
Organ: Brain
Symbols: Hamlet, Shakespeare, Christ, Socrates, London & Stratford, Scholasticism & Mysticism, Plato & Aristotle, Youth & Maturity

I know it's been a ridiculously long time, but we're back! I'm excited to keep going.

I'm two thirds of the way through the episode now on a 'cold reading', by that I mean not looking up any notes etc so far.

There are lots of references I don't fully understand so far but I have been stuck by a couple of things already.

Firstly- the passage where he mentions the cells of the body renewing themselves entirely & therefore it was a different 'him' who owed the money. That was v funny but it also struck me as v advanced for the era. Admittedly I have no idea when this scientific breakthrough was discovered?

There's some absolutely beautiful writing. I'm particularly enjoying the repetition of words & phrases.

The discussion about Shakespeare's relationship with his wife is also super interesting. And the assertion that a great man's private life was just that & he should he judged on the merits of work. Made me think about joyces relationship with Nora & the differences between them. And also made me wonder what he would think of all the books written about their relationship & family life etc

I studied hamlet in school so I'm also enjoying thinking about it again too.

I'll finish the episode tomorrow & then I'll read it again with the companion notes & I'll be back with more thoughts

Scylla and Charybdis was my least-favourite episode so far. The dialogue is literary/writerly rather than natural, Stephen’s pretentious contributions in particular.

I personally didn’t find the over-long riff on Shakespeare particularly interesting, even looking past its deliberate obscurity. Ditto Aristotle vs Plato.

Some of the dialogue was funny, but overall I suspect it’s the chapter where a lot of readers may give up the ghost.

I agree that this episode was very dense with literary references. I read it cold and the read it using The Joyce Project online site and followed up on most of the references.

I think you may be right @BaronMunchausen and this is the breaking point for lots of readers.

Not for us though (i hope!)

I enjoyed reading and thinking about the role of Irish nationalism in this episode and Joyce's complicated relationship with it as it emerged. And the role prominent Anglo-Irish writers such as Yeats & Synge played in creating this particular notion of 'Irishness' and how Joyce rejected this, whilst still clearly feeling himself to be in somewhat of a competition with them.

They immersed themselves in Irish culture and fed off it (living on the Aran Islands etc) and Joyce went the opposite route, moving away altogether to allow himself perhaps the space to contemplate what he, an educated, impoverished, Catholic understood 'Irishness' to be.

Also an interesting insight into perhaps homoerotic nature of Stephen and Buck Mulligan's friendship?

In the interest of keeping things moving along I will post the scheme for the next episode now too.

Episode 10: Wandering Rocks
Time: 3.00pm
Scene: Streets
Colour: Rainbow
Technique: Labyrinth
Correspondences: Liffey = Bospherous; Viceroy = European Bank; Conmee = Asiatic Bank; Groups of citizens = Symplegades
Science / Art: Mechanics
Meaning: Hostile Environment
Organ: Blood
Symbols: Christ and Caesar, Errors, Homynyms, Sychronization, Resemblences

Just reading the little piece with Blazes Boylan in the fruitsmelling shop - does anyone else remember a single that was based on this vignette?! It was released a long time ago and I think I bought it in Dublin at the time. I can’t remember the artist, but do recall the catchy tune and some of the lyrics: “Blazes Boylan took a red carnation from a tall stemglass”, and “Send them at once will you, it’s for an invalid” - with the blond girl’s “Yes sir, I will sir” as a repeated refrain. I think the title may have included 'the fruitsmelling shop'. I thought it was great!

It will have been a wee bit niche at the time to say the least, and I can’t find any reference to it online.

Found it!

https://www.discogs.com/release/13413619-Sonny-Condell-The-Fruitsmelling-Shop-Down-In-The-City

...and the song! Possibly a re-recording:

Thanks for sharing this @BaronMunchausen ! I'd never heard it before.
I also listened to Giorgio Joyce singing Bid Aduieu on you tube . I'd heard it before but always find it strangely moving. It makes me feel very melancholy.

I've read Wandering Rocks now & i loved it.

It was perfectly pitched after the far more difficult previous episode.

I really loved all the little vignettes & how they also intersected with each other & the recurring themes threaded through such as the 'elijah is coming' pamphlet that leopold threw away in an earlier chapter.

That was surely incredibly innovative in 1904 (or 1922)?

It's such a beautiful snapshot of all those characters.

On my way to work now but I'll be back later with more thoughts.

Looks like I should read through this thread before I try to re-start my reading of Ulysses. I have the audiobook (narrated by Donal Donnelly & Miriam Healy-Louie) and the Cambridge Centenary version (1922 text with notes and essays- Ed Catherine Flynn). The more I read around, the more it looks like a hard slog but my journalist friend has been encouraging (badgering) me to read it for a while. I read the first few pages and thought f* - what is this!?

Hi @larkstar - welcome!
I definitely recommend reading it & please do read this thread. We stated off v strong & there was a good group of us but for various reasons it's petered out a bit but I'm determined to stick with it & read the whole book.

We divided it episode by episode & I have posted the schema that joyce created for it.

In my experience its an engrossing experience & I am loving it & always happy to chat about it. Its not like anything else!

@ValentineGreen Having listened to the first chapter twice and ready it once I decided to step back and do a bit more preparation and research first. My wife admits to skimming through the descriptive pages in books and is only interested in "what happens next" whereas I am the polar opposite - I have to understand every little thing otherwise - I think - what's the point!? So, I'm fine about not just bludgeoning my way through it. I re-read Zen and the Art of... when the lockdowns started and given that I'm a physicist, worked, taught, researched in the area and was involved with a Buddhist meditation group for over 5 years you'd think (I thought) this would be well within my grasp: I had to re-read some chapters 9 times (Greek schools of philosophy related, for instance) - I thought - I'm one coming this way once (more) and never again - I finished it - and there are some lovely descriptive sections, pleasing prose, meaningful narrative but OMG - I think Pirsig made heavy weather of many things - I'm all for not dumbing down complex and difficult discussions but he could have made more effort to write in a way that would have made so many points far easier to understand. So.. I'm reading around first.. I've just got hold of Patrick Hastings "The Guide To JJ's U". I think it's going to be a long journey and I have other books on the go all the time - I never read one at a time and often read books in conjunction with friends - one in particular who lives in another European country. I heard a couple of things on R4 the past year or so that reminded me to think about reading U - one was about his life in Paris - I'll have to dig that out but TBH too much reverence and adulation grates on me.

@larkstar I too came to reread ulysses after a long circuitous route of reading all around it. I became fascinated by jsmes & nora's relationship & started reading biographies etc
That resulted in a growing desire to read the work & to understand it.

I'm really really enjoying reading each episode & delving into as many references as I feel like doing.

I'm also signed up for an online reading group for dubliners through the james joyce center in Dublin & its super interesting

I'm loving the whole experience & find myself thinking about ulysses at odd moments throughout the day!

I hope you read it & even more I hope you enjoy it!

I'm always happy to chat about all aspects joyce & would love to know more about the book about their time in paris if you feel like continuing posting here

I've been neck deep this past two weeks. Will be catching up with 'Scylla and Charybdis' and 'Wandering Rocks' this week.

We were talking upthread about 'twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off'. According to a friend who knows Shakespeare back to front, the two times that 'creaking' is used in Shakespeare relates to shoes.

So - is 'twicreakingly' used as meaning 'in a way that makes his two shoes creak'? That would fit with the dance reference too!

Thanks for the lowdown on 'twicreakingly' @SerafinasGoose. Still can’t make sense of the word ‘analysis’ bunged into that description! I appreciate the way the narrative style shapes around characters' voices, but Scylla and Charybdis was too close to Stephen’s pretentiousness.

As was, consequently Joyce. A portent perhaps of what was to come, in the solipsism of Finnegans Wake?

Stephen is pretentious. A lot of the literary jokes in A Portrait were certainly at his expense. But if Joyce had been poking fun at his own youthful exuberance, the older, more cynical Stephen certainly doesn't seem to have improved in temperament by the time we get to Ulysses. His deeply intellectual incursions into Aquinas, and the half-baked aesthetic theories arising from them which were supposed to mark the final stage of his trajectory from 'jejune Jesuit' to The Artist, hasn't taken him any further than a two-bit teaching job he hates and (yet another) sojourn in a brothel.

The parallels with Dante in Portrait are also interesting. To me, the clue's in the title of Comedia. Stephen's perambulations through Dublin are every bit as ridiculous as the mock-journey through hell of his literary predecessor.

For someone with Joyce's intellectual capabilities (and arrogance in some ways) he was sure self-deprecating. Stephen is in no way a likeable character: he's more than a bit of a buffoon.

I'm also scratching my head as to where 'analysis' fits into that strangely anachronistic dance. I'm off to read more notes in my scholarly edition ...

Wandering Rocks: halfway through the 18 chapters of Ulysses and we have 19 short intermeshing vignettes of different people across Dublin. The writing style is relatively straightforward, as are - with Stephen retreating to the margins - the people. Yet the intersections and interpolations create a puzzle for the reader, not just within the episode but also reaching back and forward across episodes.

So for example Conmee passes the funeral parlour at 164 North Strand Road where Corny Kelleher (the undertaker from Hades) is doing his books while chewing a blade of hay. Conmee salutes a police constable. The very reverend has been on and off the tram within his vignette and blessed the flushed couple emerging from the hedge on the Malahide road when Corny’s own vignette opens - he’s spitting out that hay, and the constable stops to talk. Minutes after Conmee has passed - as he boards the Dollymount tram. As Kelleher spits archly, so elsewhere in the city “a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin”.

Eccles Street is a mile away from the funeral parlour, but these vaguely similar motions are united by happening at the exact same time. In the final chapter, Molly recalls throwing a penny to a ‘lame sailor’ at 3:15pm while waiting for Boylan, who is late, looking at his watch in the fruitsmelling shop. Molly also recalls seeing the Dedalus sisters at the same time: in the third vignette a one-legged sailor swings himself past the Dedalus sisters on Eccles Street, and a woman’s hand flings a coin from a window. In Penelope, Molly recalls the sailor’s growl “For England, home and beauty”. As the sailor passes the sisters, we get a flash - a mile away again, but again united by the moment in time - from Lambert and O’Molloy living in vignette 8.

We leave Kelleher’s idle chit-chat with the constable just as it gets interesting. Bloom sees Kelleher in Circe, again liaising with the RIC.

Phew! And so it goes on. Gerty McDowell from Nausicaa, and Misses Douce and Kennedy from Sirens pass by too. The cockle pickers from Proteus, eleven cockles in the bag. The sailor is ‘a sailor’ even if he’s been mentioned before. There’s been stuff written about Ulysses as hypertext, but is there an actual implementation??

The fragmentation of Wandering Rocks might be seen as alienating, or the intermeshing as uniting people, independent of a single narrator - I feel the episode gives a really strong sense of everyday life and ordinary place, one summer afternoon in 1904 Dublin. Dublin and Dubliners. I guess the recurrent face from the poster of Marie Kendall does contribute somewhat to the sense of alienation! Either way, I really like the episode.

Wandering Rocks kind of reminds me of the Beatles’ Penny Lane.

FYI
On iPlayer Arena from Sept 22
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001bvp2

plus there are quite a few podcasts on BBC Sounds - I'm working my way through a few.

Peter Whites (R4 In Touch broadcaster prog for blind and visually impaired - my wife sat next to him on a train once and had a very interesting conversation with him) 30min podcast "Blind Date with Bloomsday" gives yet another interesting way to interpret some parts of the writing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b011tynw?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

While the basic writing style of Wandering Rocks is straightforward, the frequent interpolations and cross-references can make it structurally challenging. Another difficulty compared to previous episodes might be the wide topographical range of the episode and the large number of characters. They are not introduced or labelled - they are seen in their environment and anything we know about them is picked up from context. Many of them we’ve met before in Hades and other episodes (and will see again) - and several have come in from Dubliners. Tom Kernan for example is the central character in Grace (he's still boozing), but the reader of that story (@ValentineGreen) is also acquainted with Martin Cunningham and McCoy.

The elements than snake through the vignettes - the cavalcade, the Elijah leaflet on the river, the HELYS men, and to a lesser extent the bike race and the band members - add to the synchronicity but don’t necessarily make it easier to follow?

The episode is notably bookended by Stephen’s two masters - Irish/Roman Catholic and British imperial - and (though Joyce is rather scathing about it) a perhaps surprising amount of cap-doffing goes on in relation to the latter.

An interesting moment comes when Mulligan tells Haines that Stephen “will write something in ten years”: Joyce started Ulysses in 1914.

I'm back! I've been travelling with work.
I agree with what you say about wandering rocks @BaronMunchausen what i really loved about it was all the multi-layering of both references of characters and the playing with space & time.

Some of these events could have happened in real time and others are palimpsest layering of many things happening at the same moment in different places. It's simultaneously really simple & really complicated!

I also love the idea of processions through the city, the pomp of the officials contrasted with the invisible, overlooked parallel journey of the elijah pamphlet and of course Stephen & Leopolds journeys.

And, to our contemporary minds, the alien notion (now) of Dubliners doffing to the british administration. As an Irish person that's so strange to me & yet its so recent really.

I love how characters evolve (or don't) & reappear here. It adds to the sense of a real & complete world he was creating / revealing.

The 10 year reference is also really interesting. 👌

I'm really enjoying reading this & so glad I started!

It's interesting that Master Dignam sees Blazes Boylan as a toff: "In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff’s mouth and a swell pair of kicks on him". Paddy Dignam worked for the solicitor John Henry Menton, so like pretty much all the characters in Ulysses he was middle-class - but a clear notch below either his solicitor employer or the lecherous entrepreneur jingling his way to Bloom’s marital bed. Add his father’s drinking habit and death, and Master D’s economic status is in further decline. Stephen faces a similar relative decline in middle-class fortune.

The observation - in a moving stream of consciousness from the bereaved boy - reminded me that we’re dealing with middle-class men here, and Dublin's working classes and poor are very much in the background.

Tom Kernan also serves up a thread between episodes. In the 12th ‘rock’ we share briefly in his stream of consciousness, reflecting on 1798 (‘the troubles’) and thence on Ben Dollard singing The Croppy Boy. In Hades the mourners talked about Kernan’s obsession with it, and it’s a major running theme throughout the next episode, Sirens.

I hadn’t twigged a lot of the Croppy Boy references previously BTW, because it’s not at all the version I grew up with as sung by the and the !

For completeness, uses the same lyrics as Joyce.

Time to move on to Sirens yet @ValentineGreen??