Online reading, Thursday, 24 March 2022 (End of episode 16)

 With today's reading, Eumaeus, episode 16 came to an end.

Summary:

At this late hour (it is past midnight) Bloom wants to invite Stephen to spend the night at his home in Eccles street but wonders how to formulate his invitation. After mature reflection, Bloom tells Stephen, "As it's rather stuffy here you just come home with me and talk things over."

Outside, their talk turns to music. Stephen, who has been rather silent, loosens up a little. Still the two continue to talk at cross purposes. Bloom wants to show that he knows something about the topic, Stephen talks without explaining or caring whether he is understood. 

Soon Bloom and Stephen have to stop for an old horse which is dragging a sweeper on the road. Bloom feels sorry for it and wishes he had a lump of sugar. The horse deposits three smoking globes of turds on the road. At this point, a shift in perspective occurs and the scene is perceived from the driver of the horse cart, who, though he can not hear what they are saying, watches the two men walking away side by side. Bloom and Stephen walk, stop for a while, continue to walk and to talk, linked in companionship but apart from each other mentally. 

Online reading, Thursday 17 March 2022 (16.1642)

 The reading stopped at ". . . the county Sligo." (16.1642)

Summary:

Bloom's thoughts have been revolving around the scandal, the court case, and how finally it brought Parnell down. The evidence produced in the court during the divorce case filed by the husband was the usual affectionate letters that passed between them full of sweet nothings. 

Though he will try again to start in earnest a conversation with Stephen, at this moment thoughts rise in Bloom's mind about the eternal question of the life connubial. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk? (There is obviously another chap in his own marriage. Through out the day, Bloom has been doing his utmost to suppress thinking about this chap.) It is thoughts like these that make Bloom a very likeable person.

Online reading, Thursday, 3 March 2022 (16.1357)

Important note: There will be no online reading of Ulysses on Thursday, 10 March 2022.

The reading stopped at ". . . a cottonball one." (16.1357)

Summary:

Bloom continues to try to make conversation with Stephen by talking of Jews and their contribution to the British society, Turks, Islam, patriotism. . . . Stephen is not interested in any of it. Over his unstable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis of things in general, Stephen stare[s] at nothing in particular. Having been discouraged by Stephen's lack of interest, Bloom falls silent. As his mind gets busy with a variety of thoughts he notices the pink edition extra sporting of the Telegraph lying there. His eyes run over many captions till he arrives at a note on Patrick Dignam's funeral. The note that must have been written by Hynes talks about what a genial personality Dignam was, and goes on to list the names of people who attended the funeral that morning. The list contains many errors. Not only has Bloom become L. Boom, it also mentions that Stephen Dedalus B. A. was at the funeral, when actually he was not there. Stephen is interested in finding out whether the letter, which he brought that morning to the newspaper has been printed. It has been. While Stephen reads the letter printed on page two, Bloom reads on page three about the horse race in which Throwaway was the winner and on page four about the Slocum Disaster. Then at this late hour in the cabman's shelter moves to the Irish Nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891). Skin-the-Goat's comment that the husband of Katherine O'Shea (who had a long affair with Parnell & married him later), was a cottonball one, makes Bloom think of that scandal, of the court case, and how finally it brought Parnell down.

Online reading, Thursday, 24 February 2022 (16.1118)

The reading stopped at ". . .  in case they." (16.1118)

Summary:
The sailor continues to be loquacious. Though actually not much happens at this late hour in the cabman's shelter, many different topics are touched upon: Bloom compares the women of Italy with those of Ireland (to the latter's disadvantage), mentions that he was in the Kildare street museum earlier in the day, where he was impressed by the splendid proportions of hips, bosom. The sailor goes out to have a swig out of the flasks in his pocket and to relieve himself, while the other customers of the cabman's shelter talk of ships, ship wrecks, and the sorry state of the Irish shipping industry. This inspires the keeper, Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, who has his own axe to grind, to sing the glory of Ireland, and to proclaim that Ireland will be the Achilles heel of England. His advice to every Irishman [is]: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.
Bloom clearly does not agree with all this rhetoric. He tells Stephen, recalling the scene with the citizen earlier, how he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo, and how he simply but effectually silenced the offender. He says - in the typical manner in which we have come to know how Bloom speaks, confusing issues, - “He called me a jew . . . So I without deviating from plain facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his family like me though in reality I'm not.” (The question of whether Bloom is a Jew or not, discussed in an episode that seems to keep asking “What is reality?” is ingenious.)
Remembering this earlier incident with the citizen in the pub, Bloom makes, what is perhaps the most important statement on these pages in this episode. He says: “I resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form.” “It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak.”
Stephen continues to be reticent.