James Joyce's Ulysses--Episode 2

Here is what Frank O'Connor (my hero) wrote about Ulysses: "Take Ulysses, which is twenty-four hours, and I maintain it's a long short story. And it was wirtten as a short story, don't forget that. It was orginally entitled 'Mr. Hunter's Day.' And it's still 'Mr. Hunter's Day' and it still is thirty pages. It's all development sideways. That's really what I was talking about: the difference between the novel, which is not a novel, which is an extension sideways. It doesn't lead forward, it doesn't lead your mind forward... 'So now boys, having finished with this brief moment of our novel, we'll go backward for a while.' And all the time they're just going out like that because they're afraid to go forward." (Paris Review 1957)

I'm beginning to believe that Frank O'Connor was right--Ulysses is a short story that goes ashort way forward, then a long way sideways, then backwards a bit, then a bit or two forward. I'm trying to read it like a story, and the story IS quite exceptional, but James keeps distracting me with the sideways to the Church, to Greek allusions, and the contemporary Irish history and politics.

You can pick up a synopsis of episode 2 in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ULysses_(novel) but there are some interesting insights into Stephen Dedalus and the Irish soul in the 2nd episode: For one, I think Stephen is humiliated by Deasy's stupid joke about Jews in Ireland--Irish (at least Irish-Americans) don't like to be butts of stupid jokes, or taken in by a ignorant joker like Deasy.

The episode also continues a blasphemous tone, for which the book is famous.

I love the internal monologues--When he's helping the young Sargent with his homework: Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him under foot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes... These are the same terms he had used in the previous episode in thinking of his own mother.

The genius in Ulysses is in these internal musings--however far sideways they may take the reader. Too, James often uses the cadence or rhythm of a prayer or the rhythm of ancient Irish poems--brightness which brightness--mien and movement--As it was in the beginning, is now--riddle me, riddle me--History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake...

I have to keep reminding myself that I'm reading Ulysses as a story and not as a piece of scholarhip. However, James is with me throughout the story--I can't seem to shake him from my shoulder as I read his work.