Joyce in the Tropics

I have been told that there are two kinds of people in the world.  There are those who have read "Ulysses" and those who have not.  Despite some past attempts at Joyce's stream-of consciousness classic of modernist literature, I have remained one of the latter types of reader, much to my chagrin.

My first attempt at reading "Ulysses" came after the somewhat smug success of reading "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" when I was, well, a young man.  Thinking to myself that the one Joyce novel was a springboard to any other Joyce novel, I fell too it, not realizing that the difference between "Portrait.." and "Ulysses" is much akin to the difference between jumping an orange crate with your childhood bike, and trying to ride a rocket powered moto on a leap across the Grand Canyon, a' la Evel Knievel.  The second is a mite further to fly than the first.

In all honesty, my first serious attempt to read the Irish tome came to naught from a more-than-passing acquaintance with heroin and scotch, rather than from anything to do with the novel itself.

My second attempt, in my early sobriety, saw me pioneering my way about two hundred pages into Leopold Bloom's day in the mind of the author, or a little less than a quarter of the way through.  I was then side-tracked by something else; another, perhaps more accessible, work, and Bloom faltered and took not another step.

Now, in the twilight of my middle-age, with geezer-hood staring me impishly in the eye, I have once more picked up the cudgels, only to find the joy in Joyce.  Perhaps the chaos of India has acted as my Rosetta Stone for "Ulysses," or perhaps it is just the right time in my life, but for the last three weeks and more, Leopold Bloom has been my traveling companion, his long day unfolding across Dublin as our travels roll across the Subcontinent and back to these United States.

So, as my receding jet-lag tells me it is time for sleep, I will retire to my lovely bed, my own bed of home.  Before I sleep, I will see what Leopold is up to until I drift off and dream of the next journey, be it Dublin, Bangkok or whither unknown.