technical passages

"Alan O'Brien" <alaneobrienNOSPAM RemoveThis @blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message news:<zY1mb.2082$Gd2.963@news-binary.blueyonder.co.uk>...
 > "newman" <giacullo RemoveThis @highstream.net> wrote in message
 > news:7d787cf3.0310231545.56245509@posting.google.com...
  > > I am reading Ulysses for the second time now. However I am confused
  > > about the significance of some of the more technical (and very dry)
  > > passages in the novel. For example, in "Ithaca" Joyce writes in
  > > length about the scientific properties of water. I can not understand
  > > why Joyce will force me to painstakingly read through these passages.
  > > Nor is it clear how they relate to the rest of the novel as a whole.
  > >
  > > Perhaps one of the Joycean scholars that post here can help a poor
  > > layman out with this puzzle? Thanks.
 >
 > I always liked these bits; especially the bit about why it is better to
 > shave at night.
 > Alan

Language itself is the subject of several chapters. Ithaca is of
course in the form of a catechism, similar to Nestor (chapter 2). Some
of the 'facts' in Ithaca are not true at all, by the way, and Joyce
knew it. The dispersonal and detached state of the chapter is an
intentional contrast to the "Slaughter of the Suitors" chapter in the
Odyssey -- it's very violent and bloody, Ithaca is impersonal and
clinical.

The theme of the chapter, as I see it, is to eliminate emotion from
the equation and to distill human motives and actions into clean and
non-judgmental descriptions. Bloom and Stephen are both analyzed
critically, dissected, and hung out to dry.

The long passages are meant to be comic and parodic, just as are the
overblown descriptions in Cyclops. If you read them with "one eye
closed" they are very satirical and humorous.

By the way, does your edition of Ulysses have the large black dot at
the end of the Ithaca chapter? It was considered a blotmark and was
deleted but Joyce meant it to be there, as Bloom is "counting sheep"
to go to sleep (Ninbad the Nailer, Jinbad the Jailer, etc.). The large
black dot is the same as QED (quod et demonstratum) that is the end
mark of a mathmetical proof.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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