K.M.G.B.A.
Oh Jesus Christ! The chapter referred to by you scholarly types as Aeolus was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever read. Perhaps it’s no harder than the other chapters but I seem to have hit my first wall! In the struggle to find certain ground I find myself in a group of people talking way over my head – and to make matters worse ignoring me too! My post title refers to my feelings on the matter. I press on, but this chapter leaves me dizzy and I have to put it down every few pages to rest. Maybe I’m just going through a phase – can’t seem to string two words together right now – and I thought reading and writing were two different concerns! Anyhow, if a man puts a straw boater behind his red face – does that make him a tit? Sometimes Ulysses makes me wonder if I’m actually reading or just hallucinating – with words!
Once, a million years ago, I was tested on my ability to read the backwards type in a fresh case by what I then thought of then as an old man with black ink-stained fingers. I nearly went down that route as a career and the offices we find Bloom wandering through at the beginning of this episode seem vaguely familiar. It was good to start with something familiar, though the actual purpose of the HEADLINES escapes me. Some seem obscure – others vaguely amusing but it’s as hard as ever to discern quite what attitude to take to the reading of them. I wonder if this were an animation if those headlines might spin out at me? The impossible part of this chapter though is in trying to understand what the characters are talking about. Their conversation and train of thought seems to leap about and is constantly interrupted. It’s a busy office – a newspaper office – and they know very well what it is they are talking about. They know to what they allude and Joyce feels no compunction towards explanation. I mean I find it fairly obvious that the one-armed adulterer was Nelson – I got that straight off. My problem is that even when I recognise the personage I fail to grasp the point of the allusion.
Among the familiar, strange names crowd together on the printed page. Blavatsky springs out for me (my interest in Hinduism makes me aware of Theosophy) and I press on. For every ten things that escape me I seem then to fall on one thing I recognise and which partly motivates me to move forward. The other thing major problem that throws this reader off during this chapter is the shifting of the point of reference. We begin with Bloom (and therefore inside his head) and then lose him halfway through to Stephen. Normally the lack of speech marks can be overcome by common sense but here we get multiple speakers talking across one another and your guess is better than mine as to who is speaking to whom.
Grasping for straws of meaning at the end I gather the newsmen are off for a drink to continue their discussion. Bloom seems preoccupied by an advert for someone called Keyes which he is trying to ‘firm up’ and for which he has thought of a clever design – or so he thinks as no one else seems terribly interested or impressed. Stephen has delivered the article on Foot and Mouth – the one he took from the school master Deasey earlier on – though there seems to be some doubt as to whether or not it will see print.
Questions are plentiful but in the main I’d like to know if this newspaper shares its offices. Not that it matters a great deal but I’m wondering if this Freeman’s Journal is on something like the Dublin equivalent of Fleet Street – are there other competing papers close by? Is it a free paper – paid for by advertising – or is there some reputation that goes with it? I suppose the meaning behind the conversation of the journalists (if that is what they are) will become clearer when I come back to read it through with notes and some much needed help, but there’s also Stephen’s story of the women climbing the tower and eating the plums. What is that? Is he telling a story or a joke or is it an idea for some kind of article? Is this his creative writing? Is it saleable? Is there a cash benefit to it or is he just idling with friends?
Having got something of the gist of what Bloom is about in his business I’m still not sure what Stephen does? What is his connection to the Freeman’s Journal? Is he hoping for publication of his own writing. I’m assuming he’s a writer – a would-be writer – maybe Joyce’s counterpart in the fiction. I’ve not read any other Joyce or even anything about him but from compiling the Hypertext Chapbook I thought I came across the idea that Stephen is some kind of continuation of the main character of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – Joyce’s own character.
I make no bones about it – I am completely ignorant! Feel free to fill me in if I’m missing the elephant in the room. Ah! Just before I post I realise The Freeman’s Journal is or was a real newspaper! I hadn’t thought of that!
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Tags: Blavatsky, Freeman's Journal, Keyes, Nelson
