How I Wandered With Ulysses

My odyssey through Dublin and beyond

Ghosts in the machine (Author’s photo)

James Joyce’s epochal novel Ulysses turned 100 last Thursday, or at least our commemoration of “Bloomsday” did. Strange to me that I’ve been tracking it for almost half those 100 years, even though neither it nor I feel that old. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking from at least one of us.

I remember a high school day when somehow, some way, I got caught reading Esquire (or did I catch myself?) and whoever wrote this column was advocating that there were certain books any good English major, or citizen, had to read before we died. The only two novels I remember from that list were Moby Dick and Ulysses, neither of which I had read then, and both of which I’d get to as a Ph.D. student. Other than being difficult reads, they share one other thing in common: obsession, though who or what is obsessed within or outside their settings is best left up to each reader to decide.

Since I’m not one to pass up a challenge (except if it involves eating a pork kidney for breakfast), I thought about how to approach reading both. My best friend, a Comparative Literature major at Sewanee and the best read friend I had, asked for Moby Dick for a Christmas present in his freshman college year, and I almost bought myself a copy along with the one I presented to him. As glad as he was to receive the whale…