transcript
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On 20 June, 1904, the 22-year-old James Joyce got blind drunk with some friends in Dublin. He threw up outside the rehearsal rooms of WB Yeat’s Irish Literary Theatre then insulted one of the actresses. Later, he approached a young woman, apparently alone. The word used in biographies is usually ‘accosted’, although it’s not clear what that means. It turned out she wasn’t alone, but had a date - a soldier - who beat up Joyce, leaving him with a black eye, sprained wrist and ankle and various cuts. Joyce was rescued by a friend of his father called Alfred Hunter.
This incident - usually presented as a hilarious jape - but evidently quite terrifying for the women involved - became the inspiration for Joyce’s masterpiece - and one of the most revered novels of the 20th Century - Ulysses.
Ulysses is a vast novel - over a quarter of a million words. Yet it follows the action of less than 24 hours. To be fair, Joyce packs a lot into that 24 hours. Although our old friend Stephen Daedalus and Leopold Bloom dominate the action, there are over 200 named characters. And, as ever, the most important character is Dublin itself.
The story and structure is loosely modelled on The Odyssey with the different chapters named after episodes in Homer’s poem. The first section follows Stephen Daedalus, just as The Odyssey begins with Odysseus’ son Telemachus. Then Leopold Bloom, a 38 year old Jewish advertising canvasser, takes centre stage with Odysseus’ various adventures given modern-day, satirical equivalents. At the climax, Leopold and Stephen are united and return home, where Molly Bloom - the Penelope of the story - has the final word. The word is ‘yes’, although this is one of the rare occasions where one hearkens after a curmudgeonly ‘no’.
Ulysses is famous for its form. The novel begins in a similar mode to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a sort of stream-of-consciousness lite. But Joyce is giving us a false sense of security. Within a couple of episodes, the stream-of-consciousness is so disconnected from the world it is hard to tell what is actually going on. One chapter mimics the layout and language of a newspaper article, another is a play, another is a call-and-answer series of questions like a catechism.
As ever, the road to publication was for Joyce long, fraught and tetchy. Serialisation began in an American periodical called The Little Review in 1918, but was stopped after the Nausicaa episode in which Leopold bloom masturbates on the beach. Outraged by court intervention, Joyce filled the rest of the book with the then unprintable ‘f’ word, the ‘c’ word and descriptions of oral sex. He feared it would never be published, but Sylvia Beach, the owner of a now-famous bookstore in Paris called Shakespeare & Co. came to the rescue and published it in France in 1922.
So… like Odysseus finally reaching Ithaca, we have finally reached Ulysses after referring to it, usually in disparaging terms, over the life of this podcast. And the question is, how are we going to approach it? Are we going to fall to our knees and kiss the shores? Or will we grab bow and arrow and lay waste to the palace?
And if you’re concerned we’re sounding just a little too flip, it’s worth remembering that Joyce himself said that Ulysses ‘is fundamentally a humorous work’, filled with word-play, toilet humour and irreverence.
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