Dublin
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Bloom’s Potato
To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. “On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her.” Ulysses, p. 57 The episodes “Calypso” and “Telemachus” correspond…
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Ep. 38 – Pico della Mirandola like.
This episode of Blooms & Barnacles takes an esoteric twist as we continue deeper into “Proteus”, Ulysses‘ third episode. Topics include: why Dermot is not impressed with the Library of Alexandria, the length of a mahamanvantara, what the heck a mahamanvantara is, Joyce’s youthful rage put into poetry, Joyce’s youthful interest in theosophy, Pico della…
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Who Was the Real Leopold Bloom?
Yes. Only a foreigner would do. The Jews were foreigners in Dublin at that time. There was no hostility towards them. But contempt, the contempt that people always show towards the unknown. –James Joyce This post is a part of an occasional series on the real people behind the characters in Ulysses. To listen to…
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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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Ep. 34 – Translating Finnegans Wake into Japanese (w/ Kenji Hayakawa)
Kelly and Dermot are joined by translator Kenji Hayakawa to discuss the gargantuan task of translating Finnegans Wake into Japanese. We discuss Naoki Yanase’s translation of Joyce’s classic novel into Japanese, creating special software Japanese characters to tackle Joyce’s various coinages, why Japanese is an ideal language in which to read Finnegans Wake, why only…
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Ep. 33 – Nuncle Richie
Stephen contemplates the horror of a visit to his Aunt Sara and Uncle Richie’s house. We discuss parallels in this scene with Joyce’s real life aunt and uncle, why Joyce’s Aunt Josephine gave away her first edition of Ulysses, the intractable Dubliner/culchie divide, middle class pretension, Hiberno-English, Wilde’s Requiescat, and the difficulty of parsing conversations…
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Ep. 30 – Sweny’s Pharmacy Revisited (w/ P.J. Murphy & Jack Walsh)
Blooms & Barnacles catches up with P.J. Murphy and Jack Walsh of Sweny’s Pharmacy in Dublin, the location where Leopold Bloom bought his lemon soap in Ulysses. In addition to P.J. and Jack, we had the chance to talk to many friend’s of Sweny’s from all over the world! Topics include the future of Sweny’s…
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Ep. 21 – Croppies Lie Down
This week, Kelly and Dermot explain the nightmarish history tucked into Stephen’s terse rebuttal of Mr. Deasy’s weak grasp of Irish history. The passage covered can be found on p. 31 of Kelly’s edition of Ulysses (1990 Vintage International). Topics covered include the history of the Orange Order, the Battle of the Diamond, the Planters’…
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Decoding Dedalus: Galleys of the Lochlanns
We don’t want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. – Stephen Dedalus 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 passage below comes from “Proteus,” the third episode of Ulysses. It appears on page 45 in my copy (1990…
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Ep. 20 – Big Words Which Make Us So Unhappy
History is the art of Nestor, so let’s immerse ourselves in the nightmare of history, at least the bits covered on p. 31 of Ulysses. Learn about Stephen’s hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Mr. Deasy tries to teach Stephen a bit of history, but (spoiler alert) he doesn’t know much about history. Topics covered include Daniel O’Connell, the Orange lodges,…