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.

There’s an interesting (to me anyway) transition just after that “Get up! Last day!” stream of consciousness. We remain with Bloom’s thoughts, now focused on the undertaker Corny Kelleher along with the conversation he hears, when without warning John Henry Menton is asking Ned Lambert who Bloom is.

I could be wrong, but it seems that up until this point the narrator has been in the company of the protagonist (be it Stephen or Bloom)? Now the narrative shifts abruptly away from Bloom, outside of his earshot. It carries on for over a page, until we’re back where we left off with Bloom still admiring Kelleher’s physique.

That song has been bouncing around in my head since reading the chapter.

This is early-twentieth-century music hall fare. My granny used to sing this, as well as 'love's old sweet song' which Molly sings for Boylan.

This amazing novel really is a time capsule: a snapshot into a day in a life that's moved on.

That passage from Hades is, I agree, so powerful. And Molly and 'Poldy' seem to do an about-face of the roles of Odysseus and Penelope in more ways than one.

Anyone still reading?

Yes, but had a lot of irritating little tasks to complete - which I've dragged my feet over - on what should have been my research time.

I have a horrible cold today so am off back to bed in a moment with my kindle and a nice hot honey and lemon to read Aeolus!

Correspondences for this week:

Episode: 7. Aeolus
Time: 12:00
Scene: Newspaper
Colour: Red
Technique: Enthymemic
Correspondences: Crawford = Aeolus, Journalism = Incest, Press = Floating Island, Mentor, Ulysses, Telemachus
Science/Art: Rhetoric
Meaning: Mockery of Victory
Organ: Lungs
Symbols: Machines, wind, fame, kite, failed destinies, press, mutability

I'm still here but have been ill so I've fallen behind a bit I'm feeling a bit better today so planning to catch up with a cup of tea in bed.

Hello - sorry to hear people have been ill - always seems so wrong in the summer (not that it has been very summery where I am)...I am still reading and will embark on Aeolus this weekend..look forward to catching up with everyone in due course. Get well soon everyone!

I am, and still enjoying it.

I’m also under the weather, but I read ‘Aeolus’ yesterday, and enjoyed the humour of the newspaper headlines juxtaposed with the actual conversation.

Hello, hope everyone is starting to feel a bit better. I've just finished Aeolus. I also enjoyed the humour of the overblown newspaper headlines, and I liked the way this structure made the text quite disjointed - felt like a fast-moving montage or a series of snapshots. I found it quite difficult to follow who was who! The more I read, the more I got a "feel" of the sights and especially sounds of Joyce's Dublin, even though a lot of the historical allusions are lost on me. I did not understand the significance of the Parable of the Plums - can anyone explain what that is about?

I'm trying to visualise what is droll about Leopold Bloom's walk. Flat feet, or does he shuffle? I don't think of him as a figure of fun, but there's something...

Is there any room for a late comer? I have a penguin edition it is annotated 🤞hoping to persevere

@Coffeesaurus if you can wait a couple of weeks we could kick off a new thread? I joined this thread at the start but I can't start reading it until 24th August and so when I get to various points I will be responding to posts from weeks and weeks ago.

Why don't you join us anyway? Quite a number of earlier posters have dropped off the thread, and I'm sure I don't mind if people post questions from several weeks back. Might give me a perspective I've never thought of before!

Re. Bloom's gait - he's your typical modernist anti-hero of the J Alfred Prufrock ilk, I think.

I've been feeling too grim to recommence reading - spent all day yesterday in bed and only two hours awake yesterday. Each time I've had a bad cold since lockdown I've felt okay on the second day, then the thing has hit full force on day 3. What is it with cold bugs post-Covid? In my experience at least they've got noticeably worse.

This weather's bloody atrocious! I'm away in a couple of weeks leaving the English summer rain behind thankfully, and have to fill some time on a long haul flight so will be able to give JJ my undivided attention. Also going to ensure I have access to a copy of that Panepiphanal World book, as I'm not sure when I'll get time to read it otherwise!

Hope you're feeling better @ValentineGreen

I'm sorry to hear you've been unwell too @SerafinasGoose & really hope you're recovering now?

I don't know exactly what I had - a virus or a weird reaction to something but I spent 3 days in bed feeling incredibly ill & I had an atrocious headache. I'm.ok again now thanks v much for asking

We spent the month in Paris & only just back (sob) & I thought I would get a lot more reading done than I actually did.

What's funny is I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I've read by JJ so far & the context against the Parisian backdrop & all the other writers & artists who were in paris in the 20s / 30s & have gone down rabbit holes of other reading & looking up stuff to see who knew who. Who met who. Where they hung out etc. I honestly can't say why but for some reason it utterly fascinates me.

I visited most of the streets & places the Joyces lived in there & again I found it weirdly compelling to walk those streets & see those views & I felt I could almost see their ghostly images to-ing & fro-ing

I can't remember who was talking about the lack of modes of transport in Ulysses & that had struck me too! I am v familiar with Dublin & was working out how long it would have taken stephen to get from the martello to the school.& from there back to the city & def trams & bus must have been used & its odd how neither were mentioned
Hi @Coffeesaurus ! Welcome, please feel free to join! We'd love to have you

Yes I raised the question of why characters aren’t followed onto public transport - but I was wrong! in Wandering Rocks Father Conmee gets a tram from Newcomen Bridge to Howth. He has a blue ticket that cost him a penny, observes how solemn the other passengers are, sizes up the couple sitting opposite him, and watches the conductor pull the bellstrap for an old woman who is nearing the end of the penny fare zone.

Still, the main characters do all their public transport off-stage. Clanging trams and clanking trains pass them, and we’ve had Stephen in Proteus recalling when he cried (Father Jack style) ‘naked women!’ on top of the Howth tram. And of course our current episode starts with the movement and noise of the city's trams.

Hope everyone is feeling better. We still have test kits, and in our house the ‘post-covid’ virus doing the rounds turned out to be our old friend covid.

Oh no @BaronMunchausen sorry to hear that & hope you're all okay? I did wonder if that's what I might have had too. But had no test. It was such an odd feeling thing. Anyway i stayed away from people & it passed over.

I have just reread Hades this morning & was interested to read Bloom's suggestion for funeral trams 'like they have in Milan' - clearly indicating something Joyce saw there.

I enjoyed this episode & thought the ruminations on all the funerals taking place simultaneously across the earth & the ground like honeycomb etc somehow made me think of Wes Anderson visual imagery, which was unexpected.

Interesting too to see the signs of how Bloom is treated differently by the others quite subtly.

This episode was fairly straightforward & I had far fewer references to look up.

Do we know if Bloom was born in Dublin or is a second generation immigrant?

It was a long episode though given that the deceased character hadn't played a role in the book to that point. I think it was to give Joyce an opportunity to ruminate on the cycles of life themes.

I'm reading Aeolus now & @BaronMunchausen as Bloom is leaving the offices he has two thoughts - one that he could get the tram to visit Keyes to get the example of the artwork for the Ad but might miss him so resolves to phone first.

Then he thinks he could get the tram home as he has time but he tells himself no not to do that.

Now I'm fascinated spotting references to trams. And it occurred to me that maybe when we're in Stephen's company we don't see references to things like that as he's more heady / inward but Bloom is all about modernity & progress - he's an Ad canvasser after all which must have been a very new 'profession' in 1902?

I'm not sure when trams were introduced in Dublin? There were the most modern method of progressing from A to B at that time too..

Ithaca’s Q&A gives some bibliographical information for Bloom: baptised multiply in Coombe, Swords and Rathgar - so presumably born in Dublin, probably Clanbrassil St, the Jewish area where Rudolph lived when he changed his name by deed poll, and from which Leopold went to school.I also particularly enjoyed Hades, it’s so tightly written. I think it was conceived as a short story called Ulysses - the Homeric correspondences are consequently strongest, plus it features a lot of characters from Dubliners. I think the outline of Cyclops was also the second half of the story that blossomed into the novel.DP now recovered from the covid, thanks (symptoms similar to yours) - it passed me by somehow. Seems to be a lot of it around, I guess it’s the new flu.

According to Wikipedia the Dublin trams date to 1872, ten years before Joyce's birth.

I was so frustrated by all the invisible tram rides in the early chapters that following Father Conmee onto the Howth tram was quite the epiphany! Where he got on, where he sat, the colour of the ticket he bought, the change he received, what he thought about the other passengers, the fare zone, the conductor in action with the bellstrap.

Ha! I've also looked up info on the Dublin trams & although they were installed 30 years before Ulysses was set they'd only just become electrified making them v progressive in a European context.

The Joyce Project analysis also mentions how the start of Aeolus 'in the heart of the hibernian metropolis' joyce is very aware of the tension & duality of Dublin asserting itself as a European metropolis but still hampered by being within the Empire.

I'm half way through this episode now & enjoying all the headlines & mini stories within the wider episode.

I've hit a dense patch now so took a break but will come back to it. As usual I'm reading it cold & will read up on it all afterwards.

It's interesting what you say about Hades reading like a short story & I can totally see that.

There were some remarkable images in that episode. And referenced to advances in understanding of physics. When was it established that matter cannot be destroyed? I'm off to look that up!

Einstein 1907!

I think that Bloom is significantly 'othered' in Aeolus - subtly but Joyce wants us to notice it. I wonder if the news boys' mimicking his walk is part of the anti-semitic sub-text. They perceive him as different, but don't quite know how. Agree about Prufrock.
I read an essay once about 'Ulysses' and its connection to the Habsburg Dynasty. The story of the Irishman who saved the life of the young Franz Joseph is in this section I think (haven't got it with me). And I remember the essay mentioned how Habsburg names: Rudolph and Leopold are consciously used by Joyce (I wonder if that's true). Leopold's father would have been a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and one of the strange phenomena of that late 19th century Empire was the extraordinarily high incidence of male suicide, almost reaching cult proportions. Joyce, of course, had lived in Trieste which was part of the Habsburg Empire - its great sea port and naval base.
Oh- I just checked that and read that he started 'Ulysses' in Trieste and that a writer he met there was the model for the Jewish aspects of Bloom (Italo Svevo, born Ettore Schmitz).
Sorry - rambling. I've had that virus too and just can't shake off the last bit of it.

Happy to join here or lurk here for the insights 🙂