Molly Bloom

  • Ground Control to Major Tweedy

    “Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I’m proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing.” – Leopold Bloom, p. 56 To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out…

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  • Plumtree’s Potted M’Coy

    “This is the age of patent medicine.” – Stephen Dedalus To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episodes here and here. “Lotus Eaters” is, by its nature, a sleepy section of Ulysses, full of seemingly inconsequential incidents, but there are secrets hidden around every corner. Early in the episode, Bloom…

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  • Leopold Bloom’s Journey Through the Orient

    “In short, Orientalism [is defined] as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient…. Moreover, so authoritative a position did Orientalism have [during the post-Enlightenment period] that I believe no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action…

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  • Met Him Pike Hoses

    To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. “– O rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.”  While Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan were sniping at each other over breakfast on June 16, Leopold and Molly Bloom were discussing the idea of metempsychosis (better known as reincarnation) over…

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  • Ulysses & The Odyssey: Calypso

    “… I found that for [Joyce] human character was best displayed – I had almost said entirely displayed – in the commonest acts of life. How a man eats his egg will give a better clue to his differentiation than how he goes forth to war… Cutting bread displays character better than cutting throats.”  –…

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  • Decoding Dedalus: God Becomes Featherbed Mountain

    This is a post in a series called Decoding Dedalus where I take a passage of Ulysses and  break it down line by line.The line below comes from “Proteus,” the third episode of Ulysses. It appears on page p. 50 in my copy (1990 Vintage International). We’ll be looking at the line that begins “God…

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