Categories
Books Ulysses

Shut your eyes and see …

I’m still stumbling through Ulysses, mired in the mind of Stephan Dedalus’ musings in Proteus. Dense stuff, but fascinating.  I’m getting good info from the podcast I follow. It’s going pretty much line by line, with about 45 minutes of discussion on each segment. I’m astounded at the nuance and depth of Joyce’s thinking, and the humor. I made a run through it without explanatory text, and it’s much easier to navigate this time than it was the first few times I read the novel. The whole Aristotle (Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.) vs. Berkeley/Boehme approaches to the physical world.  But still. Damn. Wish I’d read more philosophy.

I think my favorite section is where the dog encounters a dead dog on the beach and goes a bit Hamlet/Yorick in the moment.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.
 
— Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel! 
Heading to Florida next week, and planning to take Joyce along for the ride. Reading Ulysses by the sea seems somehow necessary at this point …
Categories
Assorted Bob Gravity's Rainbow Innisfree

Inherent vise …

No, not the Thomas Pynchon novel. Nor the movie. I needed a vise for my workbench and with images of my grandfather’s vise in mind I found one I liked and ordered it. Before attaching it to the bench, I glanced at the directions, which turned out to be a word salad that resulted from a feeble attempt to translate Mandarin into English. Needless to say, I followed them to the letter.

Categories
Books Jerusalem Ulysses

Mashing up Jerusalem and Ulysses …

I’m a big fan of Alan Moore’s Jerusalem, so when the r/ReadersofJerusalem subreddit started a group read of the book, I decided to join in even though I’m already immersed in Ulysses. Below is the first post I made to the subreddit after having re-read the first chapter …

A few things I’m noting … very random, some specific to the way I’m approaching Jerusalem this time around.

Barefoot/Sole/Soul

  • During her dream, Alma (soul) notices the Angles’ “feet were naked in the dust and shavings piled like curls of butter. Wouldn’t they get splinters?”
  • At one point during the dream, she thinks about a grass slope near Peter’s Church “the grassy slope she pictured Jesus walking … in his long dress with lights all round his head and nothing on his feet.”
  • And the wild-eyed kid who Mick assumes is on drugs “stumbled barefoot off across the grit and shattered headlight glass of Scarletewell Street corner.”

For some reason, this reminds me of a line from the Hal Ashby’s 1971 film Harold and Maude, where Maude tells Harold, “The earth is my body; my head is in the stars.” Harold. like Mick, needs to connect with the spiritual, to find the link between earth and sky.

Joyce/Homer

I’m also re-reading Ulysses along with Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey and I can’t help seeing a few vague parallels here.

  • It’s perhaps not coincidental that we find a mention of the Iliad (“Truth? Why would I want the truth? I was just making conversation, Warry. I weren’t asking for the Iliad.”)
  • The housing project tenants are referred to as “Myrmidons,” who were soldiers Achilles commanded in the Iliad. “Myrmidon” means “ant people” in Ancient Greek, and the image of these housing projects full of “disgruntled man-herds” is a flex on Moore’s part, showing his deep knowledge of Greek mythology and etymology.
  • Moore clearly is signaling that we’re embarking on an epic journey here, perhaps similar to the one James Joyce leads us on in Ulysses. Just substitute Northampton for Dublin. Mick’s walk from his house to Alma’s art exhibit is a deep, detailed dive into the sights and smells of Northampton. I’m also thinking that Stephen Dedalus and Mick might be similar, with the former running from spiritual matters (Catholicism, in particular) and Mick storming full storm toward them, though he hasn’t realized that at this point.

Language

Moore is an incredible writer. I’ve read/listened to this book several times, and his ability to create detailed, believable characters has kept them alive in my head long after I finished my most recent read. To wit, here’s his description of May Warren:

May Warren, formerly May Vernall, was a stout and freckled dreadnaught of a woman, rolling keg-shaped down the tiled lanes of the covered Fish Market most Saturdays, leaving a cleared path in her wake and gathering momentum with each heavy pace like an accumulating snowball of cheery malevolence, the speckled jowls in which her chin lay sunken shuddering at every step, the darting currants of the eyes pressed deep into the heaped blood-pudding of her face glittering with anticipation of whatever awful treat she’d visited the market to procure.