Chapter 7 is really hard work

I've had to take a bit of a break from reading Ulysses. What a crazy, unhappy end to 2016! November, I flew Melbourne to Perth to visit family, found out my brother was sick, helped get him admitted to hospital, was told he had stage four cancer. Went back to Melbourne, frantically finished off the teaching year, flew back to Perth on a Saturday afternoon at the beginning of December, saw my brother that night, he died a few hours later. I've just got back to Melbourne.

Chapter Seven has Bloom at the newspaper office, and so many characters have been introduced I'm quite lost. I almost feel as though I'll have to reread the chapter. I think I'll have to look around online for a guide to the chapter, in addition to the 600 plus pages of Gifford notes I already have. Gifford's notes are good for explaining allusions and translations, but they don't explain how the characters fit together.

I suspect this chapter is meant to be funny. I'm really not finding it funny.

At last I've met Leopold Bloom.

I've made it to chapter six. I feel like it was only when I was about a hundred pages in that I got used to the style of writing. The flashbacks, the random digressions, the unfinished thoughts.

It has been a month since my last post but you can blame the busy end of the teaching term on that: parent teacher interviews, wrapping up assessment tasks, summoning the motivation to motivate my classes, and all that.

At the moment I'm reading about two pages at a time, so at that rate it will take me a year to get through the rest of it. That's a bit daunting, but I'm enjoying what I'm reading at this point, so I'll press on.

I enjoyed his visit to the church to All Hallows Church, watching what was going on as an outsider. Also, he collects a letter from someone he is secretly corresponding with. His frequent mental checks about the envelope, which may be incriminating, make me smile: "I tore up the envelope? Yes."

I'm still hanging in there with Ulysses

Yes, I am still reading Ulysses.

It really is like no other book I've ever read. It's like reading a poem, and you don't know what half the words mean. For instance, in Chapter 3, which my book calls episode 3, in the course of a couple of pages, Joyce uses, among other obscurities, the following:
   Italian: O si, certo!
   Hindu: mahamanvantara.
   Shakespeare: Ay, very like a whale.
   French: Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position?
   German: schluss
   Bible: fleshpots of Egypt
On the next page he's back to Latin.

I'm yet to meet the main character, Leopold Bloom, so I hope he makes an appearance soon. I've actually snuck a look at the next chapter, and he's in it.

I'd be totally lost without the notes. I have to read a page of the notes, sometimes two pages, before I read a page of the novel.

I don't feel like the plot has caught my curiosity yet. All I know is that Stephen is headed to the pub at 12 to meet Buck.

So far I'm just pleased that I didn't give up after the first chapter. I told dad tonight that I'd started it. He was impressed. That's something at least.

First Steps up Mt Joyce - Ulysses

I have just started reading James Joyce's Ulysses, which is actually my second attempt at one of his novels. I tried A Portrait several years ago and only made it 42 pages in.

So far, so good. I usually know within the first page whether I'll stick with a book, and I'm already carrying the characters from Ulysses around with me during the day. The last novel I read was Atwood's Cat's Eye, and I was desperate for it to be over by the last hundred pages or so.

It's very dense. Very dense. Within the first chapter I've had to contend with Latin from the old Roman Catholic Mass, a reference to an ancient Church Father called Chrysostom, a few Greek words, lines from popular songs from the early 1900s, Irish slang and bits and pieces like Mabinogion and Upanishads. And lots of Aristotle follows.

I have a secret weapon though. I made my preparations before starting out on this trek. I knew it would be a marathon, and that I'd need help along the way. So I ordered a copy of Gifford's Ulysses Annotated before I started. I read a page of notes, then a page of text. It's slow going, but at least it gives me some idea of what's going on!

The book of notes actually got lost in the mail at first. It took four weeks, five calls to Booktopia and three calls to three different post offices to track it down. Waiting for it seems to have built up the suspense though.

At the risk of sounding over the top, I have a feeling of destiny reading Ulysses at the moment. Ten years ago I would have dreaded it. But as I begin, various strands are coming together: growing up in a house with no TV, but having a copy of Stories of Greek Mythology on my parents' bookshelf, half a semester of Latin during second year university, five years of seminary training, or, priest school as I prefer, a few assorted units of philosophy from an otherwise useless Bachelors Degree in Theology, an introduction to Greek by a wonderfully eccentric priest who tried to get his class of three tone deaf students to sing second century mass parts in harmony. And he had a motorbike. He called it Priscilla. I'm not making it up.