Like the mom who sneaks vegetables into brownies, I have embedded references to Ulysses throughout The Sixteenth of June. Did I do this to get you to read Joyce? Did I do this as a parlor trick? No. Honestly, I did it because it was fun.
Please note that the following list of lines from Ulysses might not be complete, as much of the Joyce snuck in when I wasn’t looking. Quotations refer to the Vintage international unabridged edition.
Preface
“A razor and mirror lay crossed”
One: Calypso
Leo’s actions mimic Leopold Bloom’s: cooking breakfast, putting toast and tea on a dented tray, being interrupted by cat, bathroom scene with newspaper, etc.
- “[They] ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowl”
- “They understand what we say better than we understand them”
Two: Nestor
In Greek mythology, Nestor is a source of wisdom. I wanted to play with modern notions of counsel by setting this scene on the proverbial couch.
- “You were not born to be a teacher”
- “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” (appears modified)
Three: Proteus
- “Tuesday will be the longest day”
- “Who ever anywhere will read these written words?” (appears modified)
Four: Telemachus
- “Etiquette is etiquette”
- “I should make a collection of his sayings”
Five: Lotus Eaters
- “Couldn’t ask him at a funeral, though”
- “Talk: as if that would mend matters”
- “Too hot to quarrel. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness”
- “No roses without thorns”
Six: Hades
Bodies buried underground; decomposing
- “She’s better where she is, he said kindly”
- “Of course the cells or whatever they go on living.”
Seven: Aeolus
Wind; keys; newspaper headlines
- “It’s the ads that sell a paper”
- “How quickly [she] does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with her fingers”
Eight: Lestrygonians
- “Funeral was this morning”
- “Happy. Happier then.”
- “May as well get her sympathy”
Nine: Scylla and Charybdis
Hamlet reference; court stenographer’s dialogue; image of June fishing by the bubbling pools
- “Be careful what you wish for, he wanted to tell her. It gets granted in middle age.”
- “The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.”
- “The beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts” (from Goethe originally)
Ten: Wandering Rocks
There are 19 scenes/encounters in this chapter, just as in Ulysses
- “Spat a silent jet of juice arching from his mouth”
- Hoof and mouth disease/cattle updated as E. coli outbreaks
- Man typing date at typewriter: 16 June 2004
- “Child born every minute somewhere”
Eleven: Sirens
- “It soared, a bird, it held its flight.”
Twelve: Cyclops
- “The mortgagee can’t recover on the policy”
- “Assurances were given that the matter would be attended to”
- “Heart as big as a lion”
- “Persecution. All the history of the world is full of it”
- “There’s no one as blind as the fellow who won’t see.”
Thirteen: Nausicaa
- “The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace.”
- “Here was that of which she had so often dreamed.”
- “No one would have thought the end was so near.”
Fourteen: Oxen of the Sun
[Web musings instead of language musings]
- “A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening […] purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game” (appears modified)
- “The greatest power for happiness upon the earth”
- “The end comes suddenly”
- “If you fall don’t wait to get up”
Fifteen: Circe
- “The green-eyed monster”
- “Lapped them up like champagne”
- “The noble art of self-pretense”
- “In an oatmeal sporting suit […] a spring of woodbine for the lapel”
Sixteen: Eumaeus
Outcast/imposter/exile: image of coming in from the ocean in rags, dragging seaweed
- “People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them up was a bite from a sheep”
- “Alleging misconduct with professional golfer”
- “Lean on me”
Seventeen: Ithaca
Catechism is reconfigured as FAQs
- “To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to others.”
- “The minor is proved by the major”
- “The way to daughter is through the mother, he thinks. The way to mother through daughter.”
Eighteen: Penelope
- “No fool like an old fool”
- Everybody has their own troubles
- “It must be real love if a man gives up his life for her” (appears modified)