Ulysses - post V

After a really good day’s reading the pressures of the week have caught up with me and it has dipped today. I am also recognising that it might be a wise idea to pop to the library tomorrow and get out Homer’s Odyssey because otherwise I miss completely missing the parallel meanings in Ulysses.

Bullet points between pages 316 – 370

* Having seen the men singing, which is obviously connected with the sirens in the Odyssey – although I need to refresh my memory on that one – Bloom then steps into another pub and ends up in a confrontation

* Faced with an atmosphere that is on the knife-edge of insulting Bloom initially it seems for his wife’s adultery and it is hinted that it is with the touring troop owner Blaydon but then it becomes anti-Semitic

* The focus seems to settle on Bloom’s Jewishness and as a result one member of the group works himself up into such a frenzy he grabs a cake tin and hurls it at Bloom as he leaves and heads down the road

* There is then a rather unsavoury passage where you follow two girls, 17 and 22, who are looking after a couple of twins and are being watched by Bloom who chooses the moment just after their departure it seems to me at least as the perfect timing to masturbate

On that savoury note I’ll leave it for today and might well pause while I pick up Homer tomorrow and Sunday