At 8 a.m. on the morning of 16 June 1904, two men woke up. One shaved for class and breakfasted with his usurper and an anti-Semite. The other, a Jew, purchased a pork kidney and serves it to his wife in the same bed in which she cuckolded him. He left to pick up a letter from his secret sweetheart and chatted with the people he met on his way to the baths. Once clean, he attended a funeral and saw a mysterious man.
After the funeral, he tried to place an advertisement in a local newspaper but decided more research was required, so he scooted off to the library where, unbeknown to him, the first of our two men was disquisiting on Shakespeare.
Many people walked around, including our Jew, who decided to follow his morning kidney with an afternoon liver. He ogled the barmaids and thought about his wife who, if his suspicions were correct, would soon be cuckholding him again. So he exited the bar with the pretty reminders of his pain and entered another full of anti-Semites. Fists and cans were thrown.
Troubled by thoughts of wife and ancient grievances, he wandered seaside way and publicly co-masturbated with a cripple. He later attended the birth of a child and the English language before following our first man into the red-light district. He caught up with him, himself, himself-in-drag, his dead grandfather, Nobodaddy, a giant green crab, a talking hat-stand and ducked out when the police arrived. Chastened, the two men entered a dive and met a drunken sailor. They absconded to the home of the Jew and bonded while urinating under the stars.
As 16 June 1904 came to a close, the Jew returned to his troubled marital bed and asked his wife to serve him breakfast in it tomorrow.
She considered his request but never decided one way or the other.
(Happy Bloomsday. Sorry about the spoilers.)
Do you think Ulysses is about a man dealing with his wife's unfaithfulness?
Posted by: Jake | Monday, 16 June 2008 at 04:10 PM
That I do.
Posted by: SEK | Monday, 16 June 2008 at 04:56 PM
Hi Scott!
This is off topic, for which I apologize, but it occurs to me you might know whether my vague memory of reading a Mark Twain short story about some guy who goes around selling lightning rods is something that I just dredged up from the dark recesses of my often very random mind, or if it corresponds to an actual real story that I might be able to find somewhere.
Posted by: human | Monday, 16 June 2008 at 08:38 PM
That was fun. Thanks, Scott. And happy Bloomsday to you as well.
Posted by: Mike S | Monday, 16 June 2008 at 09:04 PM
Sorry about the spoilers?
Now I can put off reading the damn thing for another decade!
Posted by: Justin | Monday, 16 June 2008 at 11:29 PM
publicly co-masturbated with a cripple
hmmmm. don't think so. where do you see her, um, touching herself?
Posted by: CR | Tuesday, 17 June 2008 at 03:14 AM
I remember the comasturbation of Gerty and Bloom.
Also, he doesn't just ask her to make breakfast, he smells her butt and then asks her to make him breakfast.
Posted by: prefer not to | Tuesday, 17 June 2008 at 08:57 PM
Human, that'd be "Political Economy" you're looking for.
CR, give the crippled women some agency why don't you? She knows what Bloom's up to, and she takes no small pleasure in it.
Posted by: SEK | Wednesday, 18 June 2008 at 10:21 AM
Girls lean back everywhere, after all. Happy late Bloomsday!
Posted by: Sisyphus | Wednesday, 18 June 2008 at 06:32 PM
Oooo, thank you!
Posted by: human | Wednesday, 18 June 2008 at 08:52 PM
CR, give the crippled women some agency why don't you? She knows what Bloom's up to, and she takes no small pleasure in it.
She doesn't touch herself. Pretty sure Bloom would have noticed if she had. And it follows that it's just a little odd to imagine that what we get at mid-chapter is her coming. He's coming, certainly. But she comes from giving a peek? Hmmm...
I've written something about this that you can find if you knows my name. Bloom's special kink is imagining his way into female's minds. (the ad with the woman writing etc...) Which, of course, is also often the male novelist's kink.
But seriously, they are not co-masturbating in any viable sense of the term. Self-exposure is not "masturbation." Sorry to be pedantic about it, but I really do think you miss the sense of Nausicaa if you blur this up.
Posted by: CR | Thursday, 19 June 2008 at 04:20 AM
Other nit: By most contemporary accounts, the Jew's wife hasn't yet defiled their matrimonial bed; that cuckolding is the most newsworthy event of the day for them, just as the most newsworthy event of the day for the first man is his loss of a place to live along with virtually all his money. This is not an average day: it is a VERY BAD DAY. Which is why we celebrate it! And what's a celebration without nits? They're the party favors in the pinata of discourse.
CR, I think I might have read your piece, and if so, I think I might have liked it.
Posted by: Ray Davis | Friday, 20 June 2008 at 09:38 AM