Mission Accomplished

You've all been dying to know, haven't you? Mmmmmm? So what does TOBU stand for?

I named my blog after Tales of Brave Ulysses, a track from Cream's 1967 psychedelic blues classic Disraeli Gears. Because I knew I might have a lot of time on my hands out here in Indonesia, I decided I would try to read Ulysses, James Joyce's classic, and incomprehensible, novel of Dublin life.

It was either this or the latest Jackie Collins.

Ulysses describes a day (16th June, 1904) in the life of Dublin characters, through conversation, internal monologue and the infamous stream of consciousness passage at the end of the book. The non-hero is Leopold Bloom, a half Jewish ad-canvasser, and the book casts him as Ulysses, wandering through the capital like his namesake through the mediterranean. Joyce deliberately blurs the boundaries between thought and speech (there are no quotation marks), so the result is deliciously ambiguous - did he say that, or just think it?

Joyce avoids the traditional authors' tricks of how to reveal the characters' thoughts (first person narrative, artificially expressive dialogue), instead using myth and allusion to acknowledge the artifice of the author. Yet the result is unmistakeably real. No other book I've read has so realistically portrayed what it is to live and think as a human. Random childhood memories jostle with practical thoughts, higher emotions and bodily sensations; like suddenly remembering your first teddybear when you were thinking about politics, and trying to fart while popping to the shops for some milk. Life IS like this book.

It's also funny. Here's some laugh-out-loud moments from the modernist classic:

Cheese digests all but itself. Mighty cheese.
Who can argue with that?

O, fie! Out on't! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn't to look, missus, so you naughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her elemental.
Frankie Howerd evidently got his act from Ulysses.

Lord love a duck, he said, look at what I'm standing drinks to! Cold water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg.
I love that expression.

And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.
This is quoted in Lucky Jim, recalled by Dixon as being "a line from a book he'd once read". I'm rather impressed Jim Dixon has read Ulysses, even though with typical diffidence he won't admit to it.

Do fish ever get seasick?
We've all wondered about that.

I shall be celebrating with a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of Burgundy when I get back to civilisation.