Ep. 73 - Titbits

Does Leopold Bloom seem a bit anal retentive to you?

Content Warning: We talk an awful lot about poo in this one. If that’s not your cup of tea, use your own discretion.

In this episode, Dermot and Kelly finish Ulysses’ fourth episode - “Calypso.” Topics include Ezra Pound’s sense of propriety, the number of toilets in the Bloom household, Titbits, using dung to clean kid gloves, James Stephens, Dlugacz’s mere enthusiasm, jakes v. jacks, cuckstools, Matcham’s Masterstroke and Mr. Philip Beaufoy, Bloom’s desire to write his own prize Titbits story, Joyce’s own failed attempt to be printed in Titbits, when Molly met Boylan, Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours, Westminster Quarters, overthinking Bloom’s “heigh-ho’s”, glorious hypostasis, filth, Leopold Bloom’s anal fixation, James Joyce and psychoanalysis, the power struggle of Freud’s anal stage, the anal retentive personality and whether it is an apt description of Bloom.

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Further Reading:

1. Brivic, S. (1976). Joyce in Progress: A Freudian View. James Joyce Quarterly,13(3), 306-327. Retrieved March 18, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/25487275

2. Budgen, F. (1972). James Joyce and the making of Ulysses, and other writings. London: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-idx?type=header&id=JoyceColl.BudgenUlysses&isize=M

3. Ellmann, R. (1959). James Joyce. Oxford University Press.

4. Freud, S. (1948). Character and anal erotism (1908). Collected Papers. The Hogarth Press. Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/rtf35lq

5. Gifford, D., & Seidman, R. J. (1988). Ulysses annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses. Berkeley: University of California Press. Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/vy6j4tk 

6. Gunn, I. Sanitary matters at No. 7 Eccles St. James Joyce Online Notes. Retrieved from http://www.jjon.org/joyce-s-environs/no-7-eccles-street-2 

7. Joyce, S. (1958). My brother’s keeper: James Joyce’s early years. New York: The Viking Press. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/books/edition/My_Brother_s_Keeper/zt3kuhTGL_AC?hl=en&gbpv=0 

8. Simpson, J. May’s band of brothers. James Joyce Online Notes. Retrieved from http://www.jjon.org/jioyce-s-people/may-s-band