Today in 1904

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.  This was originally published elsewhere.)

Comments

[SEK]

I re-post this not because I came to grad school to be a Joycean; nor because my first presentation was at a Joyce conference in Trieste; nor because as someone who is both Irish and Jewish, I sympathize with the cultural dilemma of Bloom; no, I re-post this because Ulysses is, to this day, still my favorite novel, and most novels don’t have days dedicated to celebrating them.

[Mike Russo]

Amen, Scott.

(He says, while drinking a Guinness).

[ads]

"publicly co-masturbated with a cripple"

Are you sure? I can never be sure. I have argued that it's co only in LB's mind.

[James T]

And that man's name was Jesus Christ.