Day Five

Today marks my fifth day with Ulysses (I’ve been doing my reading late at night and have spent nine hours or so with the book), and I now find the novel to be a tedious and boring companion. With roughly three-quarters of the book left to read, I am frustrated and discouraged. So much so, in fact, that I no longer do my reading outside, for the temptation to punt the book over the backyard fence is too great.

I am beginning to think I have made a grave error by choosing to start this project with Ulysses, arguably the most difficult of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. Any hopes I may have had of reading these novels in the span of 365 days may be in serious jeopardy. Perhaps it would have been wiser to read the list in reverse order after all? Although I am currently a frustrated reader, I am still very much committed to this project and I will soldier on.

As I write this, I have completed Episodes 4-8 of Book II and hope to finish Episodes 9-13 tonight. Thus far, Book II contains neither the playfulness nor the lyricism that so captivated me in Book I. Instead, the language is rather dry and laborious. The reader is still shown flashes of Joyce’s descriptive prowess with phrases such as “avid shameclosing eyes,” and “quietly creaky boots,” as well as blended words such as “coolwrappered,” and “dullthudding.” But for the most part, the language is as bland and uninspiring as its protagonist, Leopold Bloom.

Bloom works as an advertisement canvasser for a Dublin newspaper. He is married to Molly Bloom, once a semi-famous singer and highly desirable woman. Now a fading beauty, she seems to spend her time in bed being attended to by her husband and reading books she can barely understand. Over the course of these episodes, we learn she has had affairs of which Bloom is aware and seems to tolerate. He is mildly obsessed with his wife’s infidelity and occasionally his thoughts turn to her potential lovers. Seeking a love interest of his own, Bloom is carrying on his own affair of sorts. He stops by the post office to retrieve a love letter sent to him by a young woman named Martha, who knows Bloom as “Henry Flower.” The affair is merely one of words and Bloom soon deems consummation too much work and “as bad as a row with Molly.” For the most part, Bloom is a sharp contrast to the bookish and philosophical Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of Book I.

At times, Bloom is portrayed as a sexually frustrated, dirty old man. While half-heartedly engaged in a conversation with an acquaintance, Bloom admires a young woman across the street. His hopes of catching a glimpse of her stockings (“Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!”) are dashed by a passing a tram. Bloom then recalls a similar incident in which he witnessed a young woman adjusting her garters in a hallway while her friend obscured her from view (“Well, what are you gaping at?”). Later on, Bloom attends a church service and deems the church a “Nice, discreet place to be next some girl.”

In Episode 8, however, Bloom is portrayed as a man who longs to be happy as a husband and father. He evidently misses his daughter, Milly, who lives in Mullingar where she is studying photography, and he spends some time thinking about their son Rudy, who lived merely eleven days. At the beginning of Episode 8, his thoughts turn to Molly and he recalls a picnic they attended years ago and the way she looked in her “elephantgrey dress with braided frogs” which fit her “like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out well...People looking at her.”

Leopold Bloom serves as the counterpart to Odysseus (a.k.a “Ulysses”), the anti-hero of Homer’s The Odyssey. Having locked himself out of his house and not wishing to rouse Molly so soon, he is forced to wander the streets of Dublin until he can return home. This is, of course, meant to parallel the journey of Odysseus, who longs to return to his home in Ithaca. On a deeper level, it would appear Bloom may have set out on a more personal, soul-searching odyssey--one in which he hopes to find the happiness he once knew.