Desperately Seeking Cyclops

As part of my MFA program, I have to read a portion of James Joyce's Ulysses. Just one episode. One out of 18. A mere 54 pages in my edition. A paltry 14 percent of the entire tome.  Have you ever read Ulysses? I've always been frightened of it, to be perfectly honest. I will admit that now. I know as a full fledge humanities person and all, I'm supposed to be, um, "learned" in all the classics and stuff, but if my relationship with the literary cannon of classics were an actual object, it would most closely resemble a ratty lace hanky. Or a piece of swiss cheese, or chicken wire, or a sieve, or a church. In other words, it's hole-y.

         I like Joyce I really do. I like the Dubliners. I really like Portrait of the Artist. But––and here's my point––both Portrait and Dubliners are small. They are dense, yes, but somehow density doesn't seem so bad when you can shove it into your back pocket. It's like my cat PorkChop. Small but dense. No no, that's not what I meant. What I mean is that sure she can be a regular crab cake and hook her claws in me until she and my sweater are one tangled heap of small daggers and shredded wool but I take comfort in the fact that she's not a puma.  There is something that is just plain daunting about picking up a 783 page book that is pretty much almost entirely solid print from beginning to end. And not just solid. Solidly Joyce. Even if the only section I'm required to know anything about is a slimmish bit nestled cozily in the middle. But after months of procrastinating, I finally steeled my courage and decided to face it head on. Heady with recklessness, I decided it might even prove the perfect thing to tuck into over my morning coffee, before the bleary haze of sleep has quite lifted and I can't pretend to have even a modicum of productive clarity necessary for writing or creating. Joyce could maybe serve to kickstart the old brain back into working order after an 8 hour slog through dreamland. 

Um.

I know.

But I gave it a whirl. I read it. All 54 pages of the Cyclops episode of Ulysses. Somehow. I remember my eyes bouncing along the pages. I remember the distinct feel of worn paper between my fingers. This is what it sounded like in my brain:

I reached the end and the momentary triumph of accomplishment soon crumpled as I realized I had not the foggiest idea what had just happened. A vague-ish idea that some guy named Bloom had just gotten a biscuit box thrown at him.

I had no idea why.

At least, I was pretty sure it was a biscuit box. 

But biscuit box or no biscuit box, it was becoming clearer to me as I weighed the emptiness of my accomplishment against the argument that I had at least technically fulfilled to the letter the requirement, that perhaps... I had not grasped as much as I ought to have. But still I clung to the hope that victory could be salvaged from the wreck of my endeavor. I would read the introductions at the beginning of the book. Perhaps a few juicy spoilers might let me know what I missed, and then I could go back and skim over those bits.

 It should say something when the court opinion that lifted the ban on Ulysses felt comparatively like a beach read. Especially considering its corker of a title: The Monumental Decision of the United States District Court Rendered December 6, 1933 By Hon. John M. Woolsey Lifting the Ban on "Ulysses." 

I pondered the favorable opinion of Woolsey––he liked it! for a bit, and considered that if he was able (and willing) to read Ulysses in its entirety just to see whether the accusations of smut against it panned out or not, perhaps it wouldn't actually kill me to go ahead and revisit "Cyclops" in its entirety either. And so I cozied up on the couch, and cracked the weighty tome back to the beginning of the episode.

No luck. 

And this is where I have to confess what I did. I am a little ashamed, but the truth can be healing. Even so, I can feel the tingle of shame from the reproachful gazes of all my English teacher friends out there. I have nothing in my defense. Simply put, I was desperate. 

I broke down and visited the internet.  

There, I said it. 

I know. I did what no self respecting reader is ever supposed to do. I read the Wikipedia page on Ulysses. I found the equivalent of a Cliff Notes essay on his "cyclops" episode and read that too. It was just one essay, that's all. And it was so short. Tiny, really. In true lazy scholar form, I don't even know where I found it. I think it was from some Joyce scholar or else a PhD student somewhere. He probably goes to a for profit college. And maybe he's not a PhD student at all. Maybe he's selling that essay for money. After cribbing it from Sparknotes or somewhere.  I know, I know. But here's the thing. 

That essay floating through the interwebs gave me back Cyclops. Because it gave me what I needed, which was a way into it. It helped me spin chaos into order. It turned that din wracking around in my brain into this instead:

Can you even handle another mangled metaphor? Because I'm on a roll.

It cut through the dense foliage and pointed to a place where I could at least get a foothold.  It turned this:

your mission is to walk through here readygo!

into this:

suggested route

by turning me into this:

Aaargh!    (image from minifigforlife.com)

After reading the essay, I felt invigorated, primed, and charged up.  I was ready to return to Ulysses. This time, I took my time going through. I made notes. I chewed over the text in slow easy bites, like a smooth morsel of lox or caviar, let it blossom in my mouth,  I fell into the rhythm of his cadence, let the lilting stream of consciousness wrap me and roll me and rock me mama like a wagon wheel. I went into Barney Kiernan's and felt the din of voices close in all around me. I heard music in the language and the passion in their voices. I found myself caught up and tangled in their tension and the love and the xenophobia and the drunkeness. I shivered with the delight of being let in on a secret each time Joyce detoured from the pub and launched into another swelling, hyperbolic narration.  I breathed his tall tales in, happy for the respite from the cramped cloyingness of the pub where citizen and his pals laughed and quipped and mocked and ballyhooed themselves silly.  No, I didn't find any of this from that enterprising for-profit, essay-selling, phony PhD's piece that I read. That essay had simply shown me a path in to the thicket of Ulysses. But once I was immersed, I lingered and strolled and hunted and soaked in the riches of Joyces world and words around me.  And here's where I can say that I feel vindicated. Because when I finished Cyclops, I still hungered for more. I didn't want to let it all go. I couldn't. And so I have started reading Ulysses from the beginning. I am not far along at all. I am also giving myself permission to put it down for a while if I need to. But I haven't felt that need yet. On the contrary, I look forward to every moment when I can return to his world. It is dense and thick, and impossibly overgrown in places. But if I need them, I will hunt for more essays on the internet or check them out from the library. Another metaphor (I know. Hang onto your hats.) I think of these additional or external pieces of info as maps because that's what they are. They  do not replace the rich beauty of Joyce's prose, but they can provide helpful landmarks and waypoints when I feel lost and mired. A map shows many routes through an area and marks the topography you'll encounter, but it can't tell you which path to take, or under which tree you'll discover to your delight, a sleeping fawn.  There's treasure everywhere in Joyce's language, but sometimes I just needed a little help finding my way in. 

Author. Irishman. Brilliant.