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Feb. 8th, 2003 08:44 amHad an unexpected day off yesterday. Lovely. I really enjoy the fact that I get a snow day whenever all the Philly kids do...
I'm still reading Ulysses, and I expect I will be for quite some time. The pattern that I've developed is to read a chapter of the Joyce and then immediately read the corresponding chapter in Harry Blamires's The Bloomsday Book. When I was reading Ulysses for class, I developed a rather snobbish attitude toward poor Blamires. Now that I'm reading the book without the benefit of a professor and class discussion and innumerable scholarly articles, however, I'm finding The Bloomsday Book to be quite helpful. I want to get as much as I can out of this, and while I'm able to pick up on a lot, there's just too much written into every single sentence for me to possibly be aware of all the different significances without some help. Reading The Bloomsday Book for help with Ulysses is no more like "cheating" than relying on my dad's marginalia to help me get through Napoleon's Symphony or The Sound and the Fury (both books that are really excellent, but that may have simply frustrated and mystified me without a helping hand).
Anyhow, I've just finished the fourth chapter ("Calypso"), which is one of my favorite chapters in the book. I love the way that Bloom is introduced to the reader. Meeting him as he's going through his morning routine has a very humanizing effect. Seeing Bloom for the first time in such absolutely ordinary circumstances almost guarantees that the reader will instantly identify with him. Later on, by the time we begin to learn about what an outcast Bloom is, we are thoroughly in his camp. Rather than joining in with those who ridicule Bloom, readers can almost feel themselves being excluded right along with him. This potentially stems from Joyce's own famously conflicted feelings about Dublin in particular and Ireland in general. Writing from his self-imposed exile, he doesn't feel at home in Dublin and so he makes sure that his character and by extension his readers don't feel at home there either.
The other thing that I've been struck by is Joyce's amazing talent for stream-of-consciousness writing. You always think of Molly's soliloquy at the end of the book as the incredible stream-of-consciousness tour-de-force, and it certainly is, but there are other amazing examples that should not be overlooked. Molly's soliloquy is certainly a work of genius, but I don't think I find it substantially more impressive than the way in which Joyce is able to capture Stephen's thoughts in the "Proteus" chapter, or Bloom's in "Calypso". I suppose that those chapters are not generally considered stream-of-consciousness because, unlike Molly in "Penelope", the thoughts that they relate are taking place within the framework of everyday lives and are therefore interrupted and changed by details and occurrences that are external to the consciousness in question. That, however, is just what I find most impressive about them. I'm amazed by the fact that Joyce can so accurately capture the way the details of the environment and the events that are happening can work their way into the consciousness of the character. I'm having difficulty expressing just what I mean... I think what I'm trying to say is that in "Calypso" when we see the inside of Bloom's head as he's walking down the street, it feels just like the inside of my head as I'm walking down the street. The way in which he notices things and responds to them in his thoughts, the way a train of thought will peter out as he gets distracted by something and then will return in different form later on, the way all the events and interruptions are narrated from deep within the character's thoughts... It's remarkable. And Joyce achieves the same effect with Stephen in "Proteus." I also think it's worth noting that these streams-of-consciousness were not dashed off overnight by Joyce. The book took him seven years to write, so he clearly labored over it. The idea of him tinkering with this stuff for years, continually fine-tuning it, and having it come out so perfectly--just as changeable and fleeting as thoughts really are, despite his years and years of effort--is really amazing to me.
Oh yes, and as far as cooking goes, I had an absolute flop last night! Emboldened by my success with the Indian curried meatballs a week or two ago, I tried making a southern Indian shrimp dish... The sauce was unbelievably spicy and tasted of almost nothing but black pepper. I could hardly eat it. Very disappointing.
I'm still reading Ulysses, and I expect I will be for quite some time. The pattern that I've developed is to read a chapter of the Joyce and then immediately read the corresponding chapter in Harry Blamires's The Bloomsday Book. When I was reading Ulysses for class, I developed a rather snobbish attitude toward poor Blamires. Now that I'm reading the book without the benefit of a professor and class discussion and innumerable scholarly articles, however, I'm finding The Bloomsday Book to be quite helpful. I want to get as much as I can out of this, and while I'm able to pick up on a lot, there's just too much written into every single sentence for me to possibly be aware of all the different significances without some help. Reading The Bloomsday Book for help with Ulysses is no more like "cheating" than relying on my dad's marginalia to help me get through Napoleon's Symphony or The Sound and the Fury (both books that are really excellent, but that may have simply frustrated and mystified me without a helping hand).
Anyhow, I've just finished the fourth chapter ("Calypso"), which is one of my favorite chapters in the book. I love the way that Bloom is introduced to the reader. Meeting him as he's going through his morning routine has a very humanizing effect. Seeing Bloom for the first time in such absolutely ordinary circumstances almost guarantees that the reader will instantly identify with him. Later on, by the time we begin to learn about what an outcast Bloom is, we are thoroughly in his camp. Rather than joining in with those who ridicule Bloom, readers can almost feel themselves being excluded right along with him. This potentially stems from Joyce's own famously conflicted feelings about Dublin in particular and Ireland in general. Writing from his self-imposed exile, he doesn't feel at home in Dublin and so he makes sure that his character and by extension his readers don't feel at home there either.
The other thing that I've been struck by is Joyce's amazing talent for stream-of-consciousness writing. You always think of Molly's soliloquy at the end of the book as the incredible stream-of-consciousness tour-de-force, and it certainly is, but there are other amazing examples that should not be overlooked. Molly's soliloquy is certainly a work of genius, but I don't think I find it substantially more impressive than the way in which Joyce is able to capture Stephen's thoughts in the "Proteus" chapter, or Bloom's in "Calypso". I suppose that those chapters are not generally considered stream-of-consciousness because, unlike Molly in "Penelope", the thoughts that they relate are taking place within the framework of everyday lives and are therefore interrupted and changed by details and occurrences that are external to the consciousness in question. That, however, is just what I find most impressive about them. I'm amazed by the fact that Joyce can so accurately capture the way the details of the environment and the events that are happening can work their way into the consciousness of the character. I'm having difficulty expressing just what I mean... I think what I'm trying to say is that in "Calypso" when we see the inside of Bloom's head as he's walking down the street, it feels just like the inside of my head as I'm walking down the street. The way in which he notices things and responds to them in his thoughts, the way a train of thought will peter out as he gets distracted by something and then will return in different form later on, the way all the events and interruptions are narrated from deep within the character's thoughts... It's remarkable. And Joyce achieves the same effect with Stephen in "Proteus." I also think it's worth noting that these streams-of-consciousness were not dashed off overnight by Joyce. The book took him seven years to write, so he clearly labored over it. The idea of him tinkering with this stuff for years, continually fine-tuning it, and having it come out so perfectly--just as changeable and fleeting as thoughts really are, despite his years and years of effort--is really amazing to me.
Oh yes, and as far as cooking goes, I had an absolute flop last night! Emboldened by my success with the Indian curried meatballs a week or two ago, I tried making a southern Indian shrimp dish... The sauce was unbelievably spicy and tasted of almost nothing but black pepper. I could hardly eat it. Very disappointing.
