SIXTEEN:
8. THE LESTRYGONIANS
SEPTEMBER 23
Wondering where this is going..doing a Bloom - just wandering. And shamefully dozing off!
And it is only 1 o'clock. That was a short funeral and gathering at the newspaper office. And JJ gives the impression that Bloom is strolling.
No ancient giants chasing him!
Bloom has interesting musings about pregnancy and childbirth... and then on to other thoughts!
From a tirade on dripping nose to being a waiter in a swell hotel...All over the map.. including the memory of Molly up on hill.
And then to thoughts I just couldn't grasp! Glad this episode is over! And it's only two o'clock.
Wonder what the library holds for us!
SEPT 25
I got SO MAD at Bloom when it turned out he's using a job advertisement for a "smart lady typist" to lure women. What a jackass.
No giants here, as you say, but it's meaningful that Bloom opts for a cheese sandwich and a nice salad instead of joining the meat-eaters gnawing away in the Burton restaurant.
The corresponding organ of the body for this episode is the “esophagus” and the technic is “peristaltic.” It is lunchtime, Bloom is hungry, and he himself moves through Dublin like a mouthful of kidney travelling through the digestive tract. Per Slote et al., citing the work of Aida Yared:
Freeman’s Journal offices on Prince’s St. --> Sackville (O’Connell) St. = the gullet
Sackville (O’Connell) Street --> O’Connell Bridge = the throat
Westmoreland Street -- Trinity College -- Grafton Street --> Duke Street = the stomach
Duke Street -- Davy Byrne’s pub lunch -- Dawson Street -- Molesworth Street --> Kildare Street = intestines
From this digestive perspective, the lack of flow that you and I noted during our call yesterday makes sense: this is Joyce’s “peristaltic” writing technique, mimicking the way that muscles contract and relax to move food through the body. That being said, the episodes we’ve read so far don’t really have much flow either; conversations, action, and stream of consciousness all jump around pretty aggressively. I’m not surprised neither one of us feels particularly drawn into the narrative or carried along by the words.
I did try a version of Bloom's cheese sandwich using similar ingredients I happened to have: a blue cheese from nearby Point Reyes, nice mustard, and a simply delicious loaf of sourdough.
The cheese was actually too mild to stand up to the mustard and the full-flavoured bread, if you can imagine. Delicious cheese but relatively mild for a blue. I do plan to track down some gorgonzola next grocery shop.
K.
ps. Here's a few pics from Point Reyes in the spring:
