II - Chapter 8
Overall chapter impression:
Very dense chapter. On the face of it, just a continuation of Bloom's journey after leaving the newspaper office, but on closer look, there's Stuff Going On. Also, gosh, wasn't the past a very strange place to live in? I get the impression they were far more licentious but far more circumspect about it.
Notes: (commentary and/or scribble I wrote to look at/up later)
Lemon platt: just about the only time these two words were written together as far as the internet knows.
Jujubes: are not gelatin based lollies.
I don’t know how or why the king got referenced. A long stretch given the context, I'd think.
Bloo -me: I don’t think you’d do that if your name is also a word in general use. For me it would take up to the 'g' before I thought it was my name and almost no other words have that starting combination. Also, is he throwing in a lowbrow joke or is that just me? Was ‘blow’ in use at the time?
Foundation of a building: how is that blood related?
J A Dowie: doing the research makes that bit funny.
All heartily welcome: It’s an orgy, apparently.
Torry: I think it should be Torrey.
Where did ‘polygamy’ come from? None of the names are Mormon identities. Birmingham ~ Brigham in the next sentence? Or does he just mean polyamory?
Cod isn’t nearly as phosphorous as sardines or tuna… But pollock does this when salted and dried over a peat hearth, apparently. It’s NOT good for the brain.
Dedalus Snr is estranged from wife.
Living on the fat of the land: XREF ‘the fat of the kidney’ from earlier. Joyce does not like priests’ poverty vows, it appears.
Interesting how he treats his own religion as outlandish (‘did you ever hear such an idea?’) and (previously ridiculed) Judaism as reasonable.
Collation: also a light meal (not just sort-order dependent on language in databases).
Margarine is only 50 years old at the time. Odd he didn’t bring up that the Irish cannot afford butter and mention F&M again.
Drink like christians: what do you expect? God - as JC - was a party-goer.
Is he still trying to connect words by the fact they rhyme?
Have to reread the passage about the man overboard earlier. It seems I missed a joke.
Because ‘Elijah is coming at thirtytwo feet per sec’ was too much, even for Joyce? :-D . Litterbug.
Shakespeare does rhyme in places.
Oi, oi oi.
He knows why ocean fish aren’t salty. There are far too many kidney references for him not to know. Also, swan would taste much like goose - strong chicken-ey flavour but greasy/gamey.
Bill Posters is innocent.
What happened there? And did he really just stop thinking about it? Wow!
Dunsink time: More research. Also, parallax is not just background image scroll rate - though really, it sort of is.
‘… she called it’. Who? Molly?
Transmigration. Big word to sound scientific, methinks.
O rocks??
May have to look up Ben Dollard, but it feels like an aside paragraph with some not great puns (because they needed explaining).
Apparently the Hely’s references come from Dubliners.
Have I noticed how he does ‘M^c’ before?
Women - curiosity - pillar of salt. So, men are the target of the curiosity factor up until he realised (remembered) the rest of the population and then it’s their historical curiosity that he references, not every single male that has decided not to die wondering …
Advertising jokes
Ruck is a cool word - it should be brought back. Later (and apropos to nothing), so should reck, as in the opposite of reckless.
I disturbed her at her devotions that morning. Is this another sex euphemism? Or is it something else from his other books.
A nun totally did not invent barbed wire. Citation needed.
Mantailored - there’s an interesting word.
Nostalgia can be a bitch.
Stream of life - like the advertising boat.
daguerreotype - so Bloom’s dad (granddad?) was in the photo business.
Should I look up this Pendennis fellow?
Um-ahh: A married man perving on a woman undressing.
‘That was the night …’: OMG, that would’ve had the puritans on the warpath (probably due to more to frustration at nostalgius interruptus than anything else! 😄) .
Xref the photography bit from daguerreotype. Also women working? She doesn't sound like a front counter chick. Is this work sexism bizzo only mid-20<sup>th</sup> C onwards?
What is the Baker’s list? Does that just mean they are apprenticed to him?
Melancholily 😁
Was that flirting? Or does Bloom just think so?
Totally don’t get the ‘U. p: up’ bit
Cruel. The unfair sex: Seriously? After that last para? That one has to be deliberate.
‘Change the subject’ led to an interesting exchange.
Is the three days before or after the birth? Later: ahh, before
Skimpy: for a guy’s clothing. Wow
Ca’canny? Later: I think there's another use of the word. ToDo: XRef
Why is he buying women’s underwear?
Custard and mayonnaise would have been an interesting spectacle. Very gazpacho.
Want to be a bull for her. That can't mean what I think it means? Later: it quite possibly does.
Life with hard labour 😁
Phthisis: tuberculosis
Doesn’t care much for cops either
The young hornies: 😄
Does soup have another meaning? Cops: prepare to receive soup, I was souped.
Medical students were rioting?
Why is Joe Chamberlain getting handed when he’s just got his degree? Oh. Honorary.
Corny Kelleher he has Harvey Duff in his eye? What does that mean?
Apricots, meaning peaches. It’s probably rude, but I can’t see it.
Now we’re getting existential. Did Joyce read 4000 Bananas?
No-one is anything. Ecclesiastical.
Hundreds of times you think of a person: he’s also read: The friendship that changed the way we think
There he is: the brother - out of the house of commons by the arm. I don’t get any of that
Two headed octopus: ‘Scotch’ arrrggggh. (Realises it’s dialogue): Also who is saying that and what the bloody hell are they going on about?
A.E.: not Swinburne this time
2 headed octopus is from Freemasonry, apparently
Germans making their way everywhere: wait about 15-20 years …
Irides: why Joyce? What’s wrong with ‘irises’?
I’ve mentioned people thinking you’re weird. Holding your arm out and trying to squint at the sun will do it too!
Dunsink: why go on the first Saturday of the month?
Parallax again - are we doing astronomy now?
And is 'show this gentleman the door' a pun?
That is not how planets work.
la-amp? What’s with that?
Ohhhhh, he’s getting excited!
Why are pantaloons under HIS skirts? (Is that why women's underwear was being bought earlier?) Thespianism maybe? Later: oh, missed ‘his face in a poky bonnet’. Yup, theatre. Do I need to know who Pat Kinsella is? Found out. Of course,
The white hat (new theory) is funny.
You are you, and you, and you and all the other yous. You're all you and all your yous are you. It’s not a mystery, it’s just 4D.
He’s an opera attendee. Les Huguenots. Might look up the French religious wars.
Pincushions can get lost. Curtains don’t. Stay in your lane.
Just move to Palestine, already.
Hoyten de toyten: a school phrase for those with a silver spoon up their jacksie. Like him in that restaurant. People eat mate - you don’t have to watch them, you know.
Cormac mac Airt (183-244). Wasn't the last high king. Hmmmm. I don’t see conversion in his history. The Jesus story probably hadn’t got to Briton by then. Also Patrick was centuries later.
Couldn’t eat a morsel here. So stop gawking (and talking about it) and leave already. Methinks the wowser protesteth too much.
Has. Silver spoon - ha! My allusion wasn’t lost.
Knifeful of cabbage? Peas maybe - when you’re 10 - why would you try to eat cabbage with a knife?
Illgirt - badly surrounded?
Foam … splashed yellow near his boot. More dodgy mental images. Foam doesn’t splash, and it’s not yellow from beer (or stout). Kids shampoo might have yellow foam.
… And he’s still talking about the dinner crowd.
Didn’t live anywhere near a farm, did we, Bloom? 🤣
A mention of blood without mentioning religion? You're slipping.
Burgundy for lunch? - with a gorgonzola sandwich? Don’t come near my cubicle eating that! 😁
Plumtree meat ads again!
Um-ah, but he gets away with it because it’s going to be a Limerick!
Not just meat and milk, meat and milk from the same animal. Next up, the ol' cotton and wool together chestnut, i guess?
'Who’s getting it up?' No. Just no.
There’s the Limerick and there’s getting it up again. I am crying.
Ouch! That was nasty! I can tell, and I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. Hanched! Another word that needs to be brought back.
We don’t like Flynn, so we’re just going to ignore him and think about food for a bit, after we’ve made a puerile observation about animal husbandry.
Mawkish seedcake: I don’t know if that is incredibly sexy or incredibly disgusting. Not a confusion I am used to - well done Joyce.
Woman’s breasts: coz I normally wax lyrical about man’s breasts and I have to be more specific??
Then he goes to the toilet. I think. We didn't get a drop-by-drop description, this time.
Then they gossip about him; I think he might be in the Freemasons. He’s not a drunkard, he’s charitable and doesn't like signing his name for some reason.
Is the mourning wrt his marriage? There's a theme I don't quite understand here. If someone could produce a white feather I'd understand.
Paddy has lightweight drinking buddies, lol. Some things - like complaining about lightweight drinking buddies - hasn't changed in over a century. :-D
Lol, love a duck. Lizzie Birdsworth.
Suck whiskey off a sore leg :-D. Obnoxiously selfish and gross.
Stuff I don't get:
Between what's going on in the story and the substories, what most of the semi-decipherable concepts relate to, the real people, especially when mentioned by nickname or misspelled surname - I've got questions about everything. :-D
And, in conclusion:
The plot's thickening. Bloom gets the first real character description I've seen, and it was the first time POV switched away from the protagonists. I sense an amount of ... I don't know ... forced joie de vivre while suffering - like stiff upper lip on steroids - but at the same time he's comfy with inflicting the same suffering.