JOYCE		LUCK CLUB
DUBLINERS	ULYSSES	THE PORTRAIT

Chapter 12 / CYCLOPS - Reading Cyclops: Hello all Bloom has just been spotted. The mono (or is it dia)logue is going on in the bar. Everything you can imagine has been touched upon, drawn from. Irish legends, politics naturally, songs, operas, theosophy including jivic rays discharging from the crown of the head and face, names and more names of anybody who was somebody. Without doubt this is brilliant writing. Whatdoesitallmean,but? Chandra I mentioned this list to a fellow member of another list so I hope that he will join us. I have no problem with our dialogue and participated with another reader in exactly the same way some time ago. I have been reading Ulysses since I was 17 and have noticed that I now am fonder of some sections that were earlier difficult and dry. I can't remember what I originally made of Cyclops except that it must not have been much. The sudden shifts in style and the intrusions are initially confusing and the pattern is elusive. There is a little bit of everything here but chiefly parodies of the Celtic revival and the kind of thing written by Lady Gregory. The most enjoyable aspect of Cyclops is the contrast between the overblown passages and the flat earthiness of the conversation in the pub. The significant thing about the earthy narrative is how the narrator carries the story with him. He leaves once to relieve himself and the story follows him. There is something dreamlike about the interpolations. Here - as elsewhere - in Ulysses there are suggestions of what Joyce will do more fully in Finnegans Wake. Bob I finished reading 'Cyclops', and have not got a clue about that chapter. All I understood was that it was a conversation amongst 3-4 people in a bar, and everything that belongs to life has a place in that conversation.If ever I thought of giving up reading Ulysses, it was with this chapter. Bob, you said you started reading U when you were 17. What did you do when you were confronted with Cyclops? Did you just proceed to the next chapter? Are the chapters coming up of this kind? Chandra When I was seventeen, nothing stopped me in my reading. If I didn't understand what I was reading, I simply kept on in hopes that something would make sense and if it didn't, I simply hoped that it would next time I read it. Reading is not as valuable as rereading although there are many books that I read at that age that I would not reread now if my life depended on it. What, if anything, sustained me with Cyclops was the outrageous humor. Thersites is a terrible person but he is funny. The interruptions too struck me as funny. Thersites' blunt style and nasty malicious turn to everything was in contrast to the windy, overblown silliness of the interruptions. Some readers probe the text for deep meanings and hidden connections. They are there, of course, but it isn't always much fun to look for them. Joyce is an author who operates on multiple levels but it's possible to read straight through without worrying about them and I suspect that this is the way - at least ocassionally - it should be done. The following chapter is similarly funny and the chapter after that is the most difficult in the book, a recapitulation of gestation by parodies of prose styles from the beginning of English to a time immediately prior to Ulysses. It has its merits but is not my favorite chapter. The Circe chapter I find too long and rather monotonous although Joyce varies it technically in many interesting ways. The chapter after Circe returns to parody but closes with one of the most beautiful passages in English, a description of a cart horse. The penultimate chapter was Joyce's favorite although he was honest enough to describe it as an ugly duckling. In most considerations of Ulysses this chapter is perhaps the most frequently quoted. The Penelope is a romp through Joyce's idea of a woman's mind as he perceived it. It is not his idea of Woman but a particular woman. (It could be seen as another version of woman, the Nausicaa chapter being the first.) Joyce on woman from the viewpoint of a feminist is seldom edifying. Difficulty? There are difficulties but there are also immediate rewards. If the reader pursues these and lets the difficulties go, there is nothing that needs to be regarded as an impediment. My opinion, anyway. Bob Williams Top! HOME!