Chapter 3 Proteus – Keywords

 

PRELIMINARY NOTE

Chapter 3 is dense with direct correspondences to the Proteus episode of Ulysses. It has less external literary references. It begins the task of presenting multiple streams of consciousness. Singular stream of consciousness in Ulysses is converted in TMAC into historical and literary (or prosenchymatic) flows. But to see such text as ‘streams’ suggests blending and flowing. Instead, the Proteus episode in TMAC mangles the individual filaments of personal character consciousness into a single conduit, like twisting together brass strands of electrical wire. The result is an amalgam of individual prosenchymatic paths of thought, knowledge and memory.

 

In Chapter 3, we see Tom Hallem as a ‘young artist’ aligned with Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In terms of comparison, Tom has produced more artworks and he is more successful than Stephen. However, he is doomed to shame, obscurity and death whereas Stephen becomes the subject of Ulysses and morphs into a proxy for the celebrated writer, James Joyce.

 

DEFINITIONS

 

Campsie – a working class suburb in Sydney, Australia.

 

Holden’s – a popular motor vehicle brand in Australia from 1950s onwards, owned by General Motors. It ceased production in Australia in 2017.

 

Passing fishvan – allusion to Jimmy Dragonis, resident of 18 First Avenue, Campsie. The Dragonis family were the first Greek immigrants in the street in the mid-1960s. They were characterised by new language, new food, new smells, new cars (first Japanese car!) and unusual jobs. They were subjected to both overt and casual racism.

 

Chrysler Valiant – a full-size motor vehicle manufactured and sold in Australia from 1962-1981. Originally, it was based on the Plymouth Valiant model in the USA. My mother had a white Valiant station-wagon. It had a wind-down rear windscreen. We used to love sitting back there with the window down. There were no belts or other restraints in that period. We would have ended up on the bonnet or windscreen of the next car if my mother had braked suddenly.

 

Kokoda Chocs – WW2 Australia militia forces sent to New Guinea in 1942. They were derisively termed ‘chocos’ or ‘chocolate soldiers’ because it was thought they would melt in the heat. Their objective was to stall the Japanese march over the Kokoda Trail to Port Moresby, New Guinea until the AIF returned from the Middle East. They turned out to be immensely courageous. They were successful in their objective.

 

Tarentum – a battle fought by Pyrrhus that is cited by Joyce at the start of the Proteus episode. It resulted in the term, Pyrrhic Victory.

 

Mordred in chain mail – Shiftless lineage. Sometimes he was Arthur’s nephew. To other scribes, a foster son. The true King via Lot, according to John of Fordun. Guinevere’s SUB. A false monarch. Locked in fatal grip with his father at Camlann. He became whatever type of trope suited the writer.

 

Campsie Streets – streets on the east side of Beamish Street are named for writers in the Canon, whilst streets to the west possess numbers. See map. Note – Gordon Street is not named in the row on the far right-hand side.

 

Some Antipodean Homais – pun on a character in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. He rises from pretension and obsequiousness to power and influence.

 

Frank Leavis – F. R. Leavis was a leading literary critic in the first half of the twentieth century. He served in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit in WW1. He did carry a small volume of Milton’s poems.

 

Grand cortege of youth and glory – first line of Poem 7 in Poems (1913) by Christopher John Brennan (1870-1932). Brennan was Australia’s leading Symbolist poet. Poems (1913) is a livre composé.

 

Mansions Hotel – a pub in Kings Cross, Sydney frequented by Brennan.

 

Australia’s own Mangan – reference to James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849). He was a difficult individual who suffered from depression and paranoia. He became a heavy drinker and opium user. Brennan as. Joyce wrote two essays on Mangan in 1902 and 1907.

 

Shelley’s “fading coal” in flesh – allusion to an image in “A Defence of Poetry.” Brennan as. Joyce cited this image three times in his literary career – the essay on Charles Mangan, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Below is an extract from my PhD thesis (1996) on use of this term:

Stephen defines Aquinas’ concept of claritas as a moment of creative sublime during which the imagination has been arrested:

 

The mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal. The instant wherein that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony is the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure… (PAYM, 213)

 

Here, Joyce’s ideal of static containment or ‘arrest’ is fused with Shelley’s concept of the imagination as a ‘fading coal’ to complete one of his key aesthetic statements. The passage also brings to fulfilment Joyce’s efforts to fruitfully employ this simile from “A Defence of Poetry,” which repeatedly surfaces in his writings. By placing it at a climactic point in the text, Shelley is positioned at the very core of Joyce’s explication of the correspondences between beauty and poetic creation.

 

The citation in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was the second of three occasions on which Joyce repeated this reference to ‘Shelley’s fading coal’ over a period of almost twenty years. On the first occasion in 1902, Joyce writes of his subject in the essay “James Clarence Mangan”^[1]:

 

… the best of what he has written makes its appeal surely, because it was conceived by the imagination which he called, I think, the mother of things, whose dream we are, who imagineth us to herself, and to ourselves, and imagineth herself in us – the power before whose breath the mind in creation is (to use Shelley’s image) as a fading coal. (78)

 

In this early essay, Joyce is simply substituting the imagination for God; employing a prayer-like style to emphasise the point. The annexation of the prestige of religious imagery and language to the imagination is accompanied by the adoption of an extreme Hieratic persona giving special privilege to Shelley. For example, the 1907 lecture version of this essay presents his subject’s career as a model of Hieratic aesthetics with Shelley’s lyrics represented as the epitome of form:

 

When he began to write, he immediately attracted the attention of the cultures, who recognized in him an exalted lyrical music and a burning idealism that revealed themselves in rhythms of extraordinary and unpremeditated beauty, to be found, perhaps, nowhere else in the range of English literature except in the inspired songs of Shelley. (177)

 

The comment here sounds more like the adulation of Swinburne for Shelley (in the style of Pater) than anything subsequently written by James Joyce. It indicates that he had completely absorbed the Hieratic aesthetic at the start of his career.

 

The other reference to Shelley’s “fading coal” in Joyce’s work occurs in Ulysses during Stephen Dedalus’ discourse on Hamlet, where Bloom comes upon a meeting of prominent Dublin literati after avoiding the path of Blazes Boylan.^[2] It is perhaps the most important section dealing with literature in Ulysses. Opinions on Irish writers like A.E. and Synge are intermingled with discussion of Shakespeare, Goethe, Aristotle, Plato, Mallarmé, Swinburne and Wilde. The meeting offers a platform for Stephen Dedalus to expound his theory on Shakespeare’s life and its significance for the genealogy of his characters. Early in this discourse, Stephen addresses John Eglington’s belief that “Shakespeare is Hamlet” (194), arguing that the author embodies a shifting grid of characters and self-characterisations over time. It is here that Shelley’s image of the fading coal is cited.

References to Hellas abound in Proteus – A major poem by P. B. Shelley.

 

A car backfired. Pigeonflight through fruit trees. Powderflash. Tea-tree scrub. Sound of a shot. Space and time flashed together. Physics of a starter’s pistol. Pomological units, added the Apothecary. Poor b(ast)ard knocked his head with a barrel-organ down Brighton Park. Bloody bubble and froth sprang from his unhinged lips. He lay as dead men only lie. Close his eyes, Shem. Put pennies upon. If you can put your fingers through, it’s a skull; if not, a head – a sequence of references to the suicide of the Australian poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870), by gunshot on 24 June 1870.

 

Nacheinander – In Proteus, Stephen Dedalus listens (nacheinander), and feels (nebeneinander) his feet pulse out a beat in walking. He experiences these both modalities tied together working simultaneously across instants of time and space. This is linked to the aesthetic theory of Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) in Laocoon. See TMAC summary of Lessing’s theory: “Episode 3 charts a dense theoretical course as Stephen tries to unblock his talent by applying Lessing, Aristotle & Aquinas to LIFE. Like Tom Hallem, he is plagued by lack of product. In Laocoon, Lessing argues that poetry presents things sequentially (nacheinander) whereas painting presents them alongside (nebeneinander).”

 

Adiaphane & Diaphane – these matching terms show that Stephen is reflecting on Aristotle’s  theory of light and colour in On the Soul and Sense and Sensibilia. ^‘Diaphane’ in this instance means translucent. It is used by Thomas Aquinas in his commentary on Aristotle. ‘Adiaphane’ is new terminology coined by Stephen. It means opaque, non–transparent, non-diaphanous in French. It has been noted that Stephen is fascinated by obscure aesthetic theory while showing no interest in modern science.

[see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Annotations_to_James_Joyce%27s_Ulysses/Proteus/037]

 

He lay as dead men only lie – a reference to the poem, “Where the Dead Men Lie,” by the Australian poet Barcroft Boake (1866-1892).

 

Crossing Styx. Erasing memory. Blessed void – a standard description of the voyage on Chiron boat.

 

Mao wanted to replace all names with numbers – Hence the phrase, “Tomb-sweeping Algebra.”

 

Proteus – shepherd of Poseidon’s sea creatures. Possessed the gift of prophecy. Capable of metamorphosis. Hated humans. In Book Four of the Odyssey, Menelaus describes gripping Proteus as he transmuted successively into the forms of a lion, snake, panther, monstrous bear, running water and a tree. This is a secondary source for Haines’ black panther dream. Its primary source is Joyce’s actual experience of Samuel Chenevix Trench. Proteanism reinforces the inescapable presence of the body as a finite vessel.

 

Liver brick bungalows – California-style homes built in Sydney from 1920s-1950s which incorporated a distinctively coloured brick.

 

TIME IS CONFUSED IN THIS SECTION BETWEEN 1960s & 1980s IN THIS SUB-SCENE

 

Milk – an ironic emblem for Ireland and mother throughout the early stages of Ulysses until it is replaced by liquor.

 

A tiara presented on a soft velvet pillow. Some Faberge glob. Twelve-twelves is one-forty-four. Itemise what’s broke – calculus of egg cartons. Ovular imagery.

 

A cement mixer arrived. Drum-churning floss. Ferris wheel. Tide-swell. Cycles. Stop at the apex and bob in tide-swells in a little wooden tub. You can see the city’s cunt quite clearly from this panorama under Bradfield’s hem. Ghost train. Iron gates. Creaking hinges. Accelerator grades. Steeds of Mananaan. Roller-coaster joyrides. Catch the Wild Mouse (see HELEN) – comparison of building site in Campsie with rides at Luna Park, Sydney. The fairground at Milson’s Point is located immediately to the west of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

 

Luna Park proposal lying on the lawn behind Kirribilli pylons against the harbor-fast wind – analogy to marriage proposal in Molly Bloom’s monologue. See subsequent text links to famous ending of Ulysses (“I drew Donny into my sleeveless white blouse under the wing of a triangulated collar his heart went mad YEAH I said YES I will YEAH). Penelope goes onto complain that she enjoyed only 4 years of marital bliss, whereas Molly had approximately ten years until the death of Rudy spoiled things (“life continued through TIME for us is it only four years now since (?) at least Molly Bloom got the best part of a decade before it all went wrong”).

 

Morgause – heavily-pregnant, newly-wed Helen Capri is compared to this mythic figure by Penelope Hallem. Morgeuse was the mythical Queen of Orkney and half-sister of Arthur. In Le Morte d’Arthur, she was the mother of Mordred, conceived in incest with Arthur. She is also the sister of Morgan le Fay and mother of Gareth, Agravain, and Gaheris. Gaheris murders her.

 

Metastatic. A leak. Protean fluid. He registered lapse. Tighten – metastasis is the spread of cancer cells from the primary tumour to the body.

 

Missus Horne – Rrsident of 14 First Avenue Campsie. Neighbour of the Hallem family. Her son, Robert, died from stepping on a Claymore mine at Binh Duong during Operation Crimp. This event is mentioned by Reverend Bent.

 

They couldn’t afford to bring his body parts home. Five hundred quid bill…. Dumped him in Terendak instead – families were responsible for the cost of repatriating dead Australian soldiers in the Vietnam Conflict. If they could not afford this expense, the remains were interred at Terendak Military Cemetery within Terendak Camp, Malacca, Malaysia.

 

Brave Elpenor – character in The Odyssey. Forgotten on Aeaea when Odysseus’ fleet sailed. He fell from a roof and died. Later, he petitioned Odysseus in Hades for a proper funeral.

 

Fight to the last Vietnamese – a pun on Stalin’s intention to fight the Korean War until the last Chinese soldier. Mao would have liked to apply this dictum to Vietnam.

 

Algy coming down to our mighty mother – a reference to the poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909).

 

Walking along Cottesloe Beach with Athol – allusion to David McComb and his mother. See also: “Fallen brother. Tom in Prahran. Toxic levels of junk. Another form of drowning. Antithesis of birth imagery.”

 

Milton’s King Edward King sunk beneath a watery floor – Edward King (1612-1637) was the subject of Lycidas by John Milton. He drowned in a shipwreck. To many critics, this poem is a precursor of Tennyson’s In Memoriam AHH.

 

Three times Homer’s epi oinopa ponton is cited: twice in this chapter and once coming out of Mulligan’s mouth in the dream sequence in Circe – a famous phrase in the Odyssey which translates as “upon the wine-dark sea.” Mulligan debases it as ‘snotgreen.’ Stephen restores its Homeric majesty.

 

Tits Hallem. Swim in a bulbous shirt. Buds of May on your chest – the author grew breast tissue in puberty due to an excess of estrogen. His nickname was ‘Tits.’ Later, this image is extended: “they extracted the breast tissue surgically but it could never truly be effaced. He probed a sunken skewed nipple still averse to touch.”

 

First rapegame behind the garage at midnight – the passage beginning with this sentence describes actual events.

 

Swinburne’s Noyades – “Les Noyades” By A. C. Swinburne (see above for biographical details) dealt with a scenario in the French Revolution where an aristocratic lady and a workman were bound together and drowned.

 

Now we are screwed in the earth like some fast-fallen rocket – reference to military experiments by Werner von Braun (See eponymous song by Tom Lehrer).

 

Wormwood – a star cited in the Book of Revelations (8:10-11).

 

Broome Madonna – title of a painting (1946) by Australian artist, Elizabeth Durack (1915-2000).

 

Dickies! – a popular brand of nappies which advertised on buses in the 1980s.

 

Duccio himself – Duccio di Buoninsegna was an Italian painter active in Siena, Tuscany, in the 13th-centuries. He was famous for nativity scenes.

 

Ungeziefer – vermin (German). In “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into “monstrous vermin” (ungeheures Ungeziefer).

 

Bessie pouted – a black Labrador (deceased).

 

Darlinghurst Road, William Street, Victoria Street – roads in Kings Cross.

 

Nuncle Richie and Aunt Sara – relatives of Stephen Dedalus.

 

Bur. Cam. – abbreviations for Burwood and Campsie respectively.

 

Theoxeny – a trope in Classical mythology in which humans extend hospitality to a humble stranger (xenos), who turns out to be a disguised God. Homer used it as a disclosure device. One reason why Odysseus is not attacked when he is disguised as a beggar is that some suitors suspect that he is a God.

 

Barry’s rotten seed – Barry (Bob) Capri is infertile. He suffered Asthenozoospermia, which is reduced sperm motility. This aligns with his stationery existence and introspection. Ironically, he is a car mechanic (symbol of freedom & motion).

 

Like Patrick McCarthy murdering his wife – Ulysses alludes to this murder of a pregnant woman.

 

The causes of miscarriage, foetal abnormalities and dead infants for Don and Richie – various. Orange blossoms refers to Agent Orange, a herbicide and defoliant used by the US air force to clear natural obstacles in the Vietnam conflict. Pleiku was a major ARVN and US base. This program peaked in 1967. Agent Pink was another herbicide.

 

Unlucky Phaeacians – the Phaeacians were punished by Poseidon for assisting Odysseus. Poseidon sinks the ship which carried Odysseus home and turns it into stone. He also vows to destroy the Phaeacian port. It is unclear if this occurs, as they move quickly to propitiate Poseidon. INSERT QUOTE – “Odysseus’ tales should have alerted Alcinous to the risk of transgression. Maybe he had a FUCK THEM (the Gods) moment.”

 

BLF put on Green Bans – Victoria Street, Kings Cross was the scene of a famous confrontation between developers and residents in the 1970s. Frank Theeman was seeking to demolish historic terraces for a multi-tower, high-rise development. He was supported by the Askin Government and NSW Police. He was opposed by community and political groups. The Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) under the leadership of Jack Munday introduced ‘Green Bans’ to stop work on the project.

 

Cross-court backhander always wins in Sydney – pun on corrupt payments using tennis metaphor.

 

Grose Corp – Major Francis Grose was the commander of the New South Wales Corps (sometimes called The Rum Corps). It was established in 1789 to relieve the New South Wales Marine Corps, who had accompanied the First Fleet to Australia. It was notorious for abuse of power. It was disbanded in 1818.

 

Spot rezonings – a mechanism used in NSW to rezone sites for purposes inconsistent with surrounding land uses. It has been exploited regularly by developers to undertake projects against the wishes of the local community. Many proponents make donations to political parties.

 

Juanita Nielsen’s cottage – the home of a community activist and journalist in Kings Cross who disappeared on 4 July 1975. She opposed the redevelopment of Victoria Street by Frank Theeman.

 

Trigg and Shayne – Edward Frederick “Eddie” Trigg and Shayne Martin-Simmonds were employees at The Carousel Club. They fronted the plot to abduct Nielsen. Its objective was intimidation or murder.

 

Call Fred Krahe – infamous NSW police detective (1919-1981).

 

Shirley Brifman – a brothel keeper in Kings Cross. She made accusations of corruption against 33 senior NSW and Queensland policemen. She was found dead in her apartment in Brisbane in 1972. It was rumoured that Krahe travelled to Brisbane and forced a fatal dose of drugs down her throat with a tube.

 

Mick Fowler’s sharp ukulele strings – Jack Radnald (Mick) Fowler (1927-1979) was a seaman, jazz musician and green ban activist. He recorded the song, “Green Bans Forever!”, in 1975.

 

Johnny McCarthy on hot clarinet – one of Sydney’s leading Jazz musicians from the 1950s until his death in 2006. A friend of my mother.

 

Askin’s coppers come free – Frank Theeman received vigorous support from the NSW police service, allegedly at the direction of NSW Premier Robert Askin (1907-1981).

 

Arthur King detained in a car boot three days – a Victoria Street activist who was abducted and held in a motel room for three days. Later, he was a key political adviser to John Hatton MP in preparing the Charter of Reform for NSW politics and establishing the Wood Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service.

 

Loretta Crawford’s testimony – the last known person to see Juanita Neilsen alive.

 

Three markers rose above Brougham Street’s yellowbrick range – the eventual extent of Theeman’s development on Victoria Street.

 

Catholic bestiary – popular illuminated texts during the Middle Ages featuring animals.

 

Masonic geometry – the stone that was rejected has become the capstone of the arch. Reference to Psalms 118:22 TPT: “The very stone the masons rejected as flawed has turned out to be the most important capstone of the arch, holding up the very house of God.”

 

McElhone Stairs…. One hundred and twelve steps down to Death… Stink pipe rising – a long, straight urban stairway rising over 20 metres from Brougham Street, Woolloomooloo, to Victoria Street, Potts Point. It consists of three flights of steps, totalling 113 risers. There is a clear view corridor from the peak towards the city and the harbour. Constructed in 1904 of solid sandstone blocks. Originally called the Challis Street Steps. On the north side, “a tall sewer vent pipe,” according to the Dictionary of Sydney (Jennifer Preston, 2018), “looking like the mast of a ship, (my emphasis) creates a utilitarian landmark at the entry to the stairway.”

 

A panorama that artists always failed to fix – see Cossington-Smith, Preston, Whiteley, inter alia for attempts to render the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

 

Cowper Wharf – a docking pier for ships. Embarkation point for ANZACS. Entrance point to Australia for my mother.

 

HMAS Vendetta – a Daring Class destroy in the RAN. It escorted the transport ship, HMAS Sydney, to Vietnam.

 

Memories of Emma from his salad days in PAYM – the object of infatuation for Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

 

Women’s names always start with the letter “E” in PAYM. – an observation regarding A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

 

Eileen’s long white hands – description in Chapter 1 of a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

 

Bird-girl at the end of Chapter Four – a significant scene in a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

 

Ao dai – Vietnamese national garment. A long, split tunic dress worn over trousers. It literally translates as ‘shirt long.’

 

Bien Hoa’s dust-bottle main-drag – a suburb of Saigon where the US Air Force operated a major Air Base during the Vietnam Conflict. It was the source of mortar attacks against US forces during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

 

Non la – a conical hat worn by Vietnamese people.

 

Too much French DNA for Charlie – Hanh was the product of a relationship between a French administrator and a local woman.

 

Navarre’s genies – Henri Eugène Navarre (1898-1983) was the French Army commander during the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ (1954).

 

Chignon battalion – derogatory reference to courtesans trailing the French Army during Vietnam conflict.

 

Hoan nghenh! Thuy quan luc chien! – Welcome! Marines!

 

Cadres knocked the top off her head with a sugar cane knife during Tet – Hanh was killed by Viet Cong insurgents during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

 

Tiger Hound – Operation Tiger Hound was a covert U.S. 2nd Air Division aerial interdiction campaign in Laos from 1965-1968.

 

Harry’s still there I see – Harry’s Café de Wheels was a popular pie stall in Woolloomooloo, Sydney. Its name arose from the Sydney City Council ordinance that mobile food caravans must move a minimum of 12 inches each day.

 

He used to be further down the road – Harry’s stall was relocated between Don Cane’s exit from Sydney in c.1962 and his return in 1984.

 

“Old Tiger sold up,” the driver replied. “It’s run by his younger brother nowadays.” – Harry Edwards was nicknamed ‘Tiger’ during his military service in WW2. There is an urban myth that his younger took over the café upon his retirement. In fact, it was sold to Alex Kuronya in 1975.

 

Spoils of Fortinbras – reference to Hamlet by William Shakespeare. The young Prince of Norway attacks Denmark at the end of the play and takes back land lost by his father to Hamlet Senior.

 

What Nuncle Bill did to Nuncle Paul. Raymor taps – uncles of Tom Hallem who owned Raymor, a manufacturer of bathroom products, at Bright-le-Sands, Sydney. ‘Nuncle’ is a term used by Stephen Dedalus.

 

Enter Octavius – a character who makes a decisive entrance near the end of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.

 

Edgar Goodbrother – reference to Edgar in King Lear.

 

‘Dui Lian,’ as they say in Mandarin – means ‘losing face.’.

 

Henry Tudor married his brother’s wife – Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536) in 1509. She had been married to his brother, Arthur, for five months in 1501 prior to his sudden death.

 

Darwin wed his first cousin – Naturalist Charles Darwin was married to his first cousin, Emma Wedgewood, from 1839 to his death in 1882. They had 10 children. She died in 1896 at the age of eighty-eight.

 

Soak plant spores in brine – Darwin demonstrated in home experiments that plants could propagate, indeed thrive, in saltwater. This supported his theory of oceanic travel by flora.

 

A nasty shock awaited Agamemnon – allusion to the death of the tyrant at the hands of his wife and her lover.

 

Come back disguised like Friar Lodowick – the persona assumed by Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure.

 

Leave a stipend like Magwitch – Pip’s benefactor in Great Expectations.

 

Merlin’s shape-shifting – a popular myth. He retired by turning himself into a bird.

 

He was marked for death after taking Cassandra back to Argos – Agamemnon took the captured princess from Troy to Argos. This was wrong on many levels.

 

Helen’s half-sister – Clytemnestra and Helen of Troy/Sparta were siblings.

 

Black Mariah – archaic term for police van.

 

They come while you was mowinthelawn. Victa two-stroke – ironic link to Odysseus ploughing the field. Victa was a popular brand of Australian lawnmower.

 

Old cold-chest skewed in dirt. Deaduninside – the death of Pepe FAMILY NAME REDACTED by suffocation in an abandoned refrigerator in the rear paddock behind 16 First Avenue, Campsie is a key theme of Telemachus. Tom Hallem’s death shares symbolic correspondences. He is effectively trapped in bed, blinded and attached to a canula.

 

Crest Hotel – a hotel with accommodation in Kings Cross, Sydney. Located at the start of the strip on the divergence of Macleay and Victoria Streets. Popular with tourists on moderate budgets.

 

MUNICIPALITY OF CANTERBURY, Sanitary Depot Greenacre, No.8 – garbage services in Campsie came from the suburb of Greenacre, approximately 5 kms away.

 

‘You are a hard man, Odysseus,’ said Eurylochus. ‘You must be made all of iron’ – analogies between Odysseus and Don Cane abound in this section. They are both hardened soldiers. They possess tough pelts.

 

Jammed up a fake horse. From the darkness of a cavehold, a voice. Hidden under a ram’s fleece. Naked before Nausicaa befouled with brine and weed. Cleansed by freshwater. Given curls by Athena that clustered and glowed like hyacinth. Magick beggar. Handsome in repose. Ardent in anger. Never static. Impetuous always – evocative descriptions of various episodes in the life of Odysseus. His profile is imagined on Hellenic coins and Roman busts.

 

Softened up by seven years of luxury with Calypso – Odysseus had a long relationship with Calypso on Ogygia which may have produced 2 children – Nausithous and Nausinous. The author considers that he had lost his edge by the time of his return to Ithaca. He needed to harden back up, intellectually and physically.

 

Sanxia – first half of the pinyin version of Mandarin name, Sanxia Da Ba, referring to the 3 Gorges Dam.

 

Orion the Hunter – a huntsman in Greek mythology whom Zeus placed among the stars as a constellation. It is located on the celestial equator.

 

Andy’s chest – Andy Warhol bore prominent scars from a gun attack by Valerie Solanas in 1968. He exposed them to Ricahrd Avedon in 1987. Lou Reed composed the song, “Andy’s Chest,” which was released on his album, “Transformer.”

 

Da Vinci trawling battlefields – Leonardo da Vinci would gather body parts from battlefields for anatomical drawings.

 

Thew – muscular strength.

 

Face of General Urrutia. Let the machine within possess the external flesh of each image.

 

He stroked his lantern jaw – a family characteristic.

 

Burgos Street – a bar strip in Manila. Don compares Kings Cross to it.

 

Hideout down the back of Bayswater Road. Single with newborn in next bedsit. Bloke with a tuba case come. Drunk laughter – references to Don Cane’s AWOL period in 1962 when he was a fugitive in Kings Cross. Corresponds to Odysseus’ attempt to avoid military service. My mother lived in Kings Cross after I was born. The ‘bloke with a tuba’ is my biological father.

 

Penn’s hardware. Ward & Sons. Quality BUTCHERS. Livio’s Night Spot. Be wine-wise. AUSTRALIAN OVERSEAS TRAVEL. Sea & Air. So much more to enjoy – retail businesses and advertising signage in Kings Cross circa 1962.

 

Far East Escape. China Navigation. Sail on the Taiyuan…. Don planned to get to Hong Kong then pick up an RIL boat to Nagoya…. Imperial Star. Chandris Line – Don’s planned escape route is based on factual analysis of sea routes out of Australia circa 1962.

 

El Alamein Fountain – a water feature in Kings Cross.

 

Nuzzling Penelope’s cold salty neck – reference to Don Cane’s wife, Penelope. Also relevant to Odysseus’ wife of the same name. Both would have had dried brine residue on their skin due to proximity to the sea.

 

Missus Kelly guided a Cyclops perambulator down Darlinghurst Road – my mother. My pram. Her maiden name was Kelly. Subsequent references are to my appearance as a baby.

 

McFadden’s Gymnasium – boxing academy in Campsie. Operated by family of Helen Capri nee McFadden.

 

Nuncle Richie – a character in Ulysses.

 

Baleen – fringed plates hanging in whales’ mouths to strain seawater for food.

 

Bronte’s ions – popular Sydney beach. First major beach sough of Bondi.

 

Crash a small craft onto the beach – Odysseus re-entering Ithaca.

 

Wife mistress sons heir Liger – a progression from social conformity to blasphemy.

 

Telegonus – son of Odysseus & Circe.

 

My mother married the first man who could get her out of a jam, I guess – Don Cane reflecting on his mother’s life. Style based on lyric in Bob Dylan song, “Tangled Up In Blue.” The story in this song is relevant to this sub-plot in Telemachus.

 

James Cane, representative of Burns Philp, Copra trader, aged 38, a former Burnside orphan…. He died in the second raid on the Macdhui in 1942 – this section is all accurate historically.

 

My mother wed a general’s driver in 1944. Went to live in West Virginia – based on the life of my aunt, Rita McCutcheon nee Kelly.

 

Charlestown was a pesticide town. Glow of Union Carbide flutes – factual account of Charlestown, WV. Uncle Roy worked at the Union Carbide plant. A similar plant was located in Bhopal, India. It caused a massive environmental tragedy on 2 December 1984. This is shortly after TMAC is set.

 

A cream-coloured Aldicarb cloud spread slowly into Nitro this morning. Bhopal tragedy. MIC gas leak. Same type of plant (as West Virginia) – description of Bhopal tragedy, India. Uncle Roy worked in the same type of plant in the US.

 

Ingenious Xmas cards that played palsied choir music – the first time we received musical Xmas cards from the US was c.1970. It is easy to forget that Australia was a backward country at this time.

 

Flunked Belmore Boys. Done Nasho. Missed Monte Bello just. 1 RAR. Malaya – a thumbnail biography of the life of Donald John Cane from high school to active service. Nasho is shorthand for ‘national service’ in Australia. Monte Bello refers to a chain of islands off the West Australian coast which was used by the UK Government to test nuclear weapons on three occasions during the 1950s. 1 RAR is the abbreviated name of the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. It was deployed on active service during the Malayan Emergency.

 

Malam bulan dipagar bintang – a duet by P. Ramlee and Saloma (see below).

 

Fast-tracked to Canungra – Canungra Military Area is located in the hinterland behind the Gold Coast, Queensland. From 1954, it trained personnel for the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) commitment in Malaya and the Vietnam Conflict. It specialised in jungle warfare.

 

Holsworthy – Holsworthy Barracks is an Australian Army military barracks, located in the Heathcote National Park in South-West Sydney. It is part of the Holsworthy military reserve, which is a large training area and artillery range for the Australian Army (22,000-hectares). It was established in the 1880s.

 

Mott Hall – The Abraham Mott Hall in The Rocks, Sydney was a popular jazz music venue in the early 1960s. Originally used by the Coal Lumpers Union. The source of its naming is unclear.

 

I could line six pairs of shoes under that skinny metal cot in Malaya – Don Cane was neat.

 

Still, Odysseus left Calypso for Penelope. Trading pleasure for place. In the end, marriage is a fixed image – scholars have been perplexed by the decision of Odysseus to leave Calypso, their children and the comfort of life on Ogygia to return to Ithaca. The author considers it to be a product of an Ideal.

 

One last letter home in neatest long hand. A confession of culpability witnessed by Reverend Bent. Marriage annulled – A letter composed by Don Cane to his wife so she could obtain a divorce (c.1964).

 

Meant I could do eighteen-month tours – unmarried RAR soldiers could extend a 12-month tour in Vietnam by a further six months.

 

Ramlee playing on the AWA portable disc player – Tan SriDatuk AmarTeuku Zakaria Bin Teuku Nyak Puteh (1929-1973), better known by his stage name P. Ramlee (Puteh Ramlee), was a celebrated actor, filmmaker, musician, and composer in Singapore and Malaysia from 1948 until his death.

 

Rebuilding Kuala Lebi Bridge – photograph, Australian War Memorial collection. See https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C206961. Inscription reads: MALAYA, 1960. SOLDIERS OF C COMPANY, 1ST BATTALION, THE ROYAL AUSTRALIAN REGIMENT (1RAR), REBUILDING KUALA LEBI BRIDGE, ON A NORTHERN ROAD LEADING TO THAILAND, WHICH HAD BEEN USED AS A MILITARY ROAD BY THE JAPANESE TO MOVE SOUTH DURING WORLD WAR 2 (W2). THIS WAS A NO-GO AREA DURING THE EMERGENCY. THE ROAD WAS MADE SERVICEABLE AGAIN FOR CIVIL AID AND TACTICAL REASONS.

 

People who’ve never seen the sea – reference to Odysseus’ task in the Odyssey after ridding Ithaca of suitors.

 

Jelingan mata – popular song by Saloma (see below). Written by P. Ramlee. Literally, ‘eye contact’ in Malay. See – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VRZNUKweEU

 

R-n-R to KL – Rest and Recreation Leave, Kuala Lumpur.

 

The brothels in Sultan Street – central red-light district in Kuala Lumpur in the 1950-60s.

 

Merdeka Day 1959 – the official independence day of Malaysia (Malay: Hari Merdeka) on 31 August each year. It commemorates the Malayan Declaration of Independence.

 

A fishbowl of Salmah clones – Salmah binti Ismail (1935 – 1983), was a Singaporean singer and film actress in the late 1950s. She was known by her stage name, Saloma,

Darah muda – ‘youngblood’ in Malay.

 

Omaha Street – the Sydney suburb of Belfield, adjacent to Campsie, possessed streets with American names including Omaha, Baltimore, Indiana and Lincoln.

 

Sharkey Ramon – Dave Bruce Ballard (born 1950), known as Charkey Ramon, was an Australian professional boxer of the 1970s, who won the inaugural Commonwealth light middleweight title. He was managed and trained by Bernie Hall (renamed McFadden in this book). He was inducted into the Australian National Boxing Hall of Fame in 2008.

 

TV Ringside – popular late-night boxing program on Sydney’s Channel 7 in the 1960s.

 

Tatlin’s Monument – proposed Monument to the Third International (1919–20) by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin to be erected in Petrograd as headquarters of the Comintern. Never constructed. A model, however, was built and photographed.

 

Underground empire in Alexandria – proleptic reference to Leer’s business activities in Chapter 8

 

Knife against my shirt ribs in Kreuzberg – an actual event in West Berlin, September 1985.

 

Deasy dispensing my cash from a scab machine – Principal Deasy paid Stephen Dedalus in this manner in Chapter 1 of Ulysses.

 

Still paying off the Yanks – the United Kingdom did not discharge the Anglo-American Loan (1946) of US$3.75 billion until 29 December 2006. Canada loaned an additional US$1.19 billion.

 

Shift to the Dollar Standard – The US dollar was formalized as the sole denomination for international exchange under the Bretton Woods monetary agreement of 1944.  It collapsed in 1973, but it had entrenched the US dollar as the international medium of exchange.

 

Doc Lindeman’s smile – reference to a highly-successful advertising campaign for Lindeman’s Wines in Australia from 1979. It was based on a jingle with the refrain, “you make me smile, Doctor Lindeman.” The novelist Peter Carey coined the phrase during his period as an advertising copywriter.

 

All done down the dark end of the street…. Always in shadows hiding – allusion to the James Carr song, “Dark End of the Street.”

 

Daddy was a bank robber – reference to the 1980 single, “Bankrobber,” by The Clash.

 

Inspector Barlow hunting down Biggs – a pun involving the star of a popular TV crime series in the 1970s and the Great Train Robber, Ronny Biggs.

 

Coca Cola sign still mounted on the summit – a neon sign above the entrance to Kings Cross, Sydney.

 

Hasty Tasty Snack Bar gone. Lucky Harvey also. Lottery tickets, souvenirs, tickets & smokes. Top of the Mark restaurant. A place to take a lady. Now some one buck discount store – Done Cane as Odysseus registers change in Sydney since 1964.

 

Brits dropped us in Seventy-three. Killed the butter trade. Also, apples. Perfidious Albion – Australia’s historic trade arrangements with the United Kingdom were smashed by its entrance into the European Common Market in 1973.

 

De Gaulle’s crunch – France insisted that the UK take French apples when it entered the Common Market.

 

Japan filled the breach. Such is life – increasing trade with Japan compensated for the loss of the UK market. Many Australians were ambivalent – even hostile – to this new trading partner as memories of WW2 were still strong.

 

Casting a slough by squeezing between rocks – Sydney/Saigon, Saigon/Manila, Penelope/Helen, son/home – comparison of places/people with Scylla/Charybdis.

 

Dumb Regan cherished a serpent – A daughter in King Lear who liked snakes.

 

Preparations for Tet continued apace – this passage describes the Tet Offensive in 1968.

 

Open the latch on the bottom of a box. Out they dropped. Turds in mud. Plop plop – comparison of Tet Offensive with Trojan Horse. Both relied on the element of surprise.

 

Lunar New Year. Mau Than. Year of the Monkey – the Tet Offensive took place during Lunar New Year celebrations in 1968.

 

Bay Lop’s squint before the shrapnel blow. Wouldn’t have felt a thing. Loan’s pistol backfired politically – film footage by Eddie Adam of the summary execution of a Vietcong insurgent known as Bay Lop (real name: Nguyễn Văn Lém) by South Vietnamese brigadier-general Nguyễn Ngọc Loan during the Tet Offensive had a profound impact on the American public opinion. Adams won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.

 

Floating like Chidley on grapes – William James Chidley (1860-1916) was a dietary, sex, gender and dress reformer in Sydney who believed that strict adherence to a fruit diet would enable humans to float.

 

Lotophagi – Ancient Greek (plural) for lotus-eaters.

 

Handjob fifty kuai – RMB50. Approximately AUD8 at the time when this text was set (2008).

 

The serpent was more subtil than any beast in the field – Genesis 3:1. Sometimes, ‘crafty’ is substituted for ‘subtil’.

 

The Archbishop of Sydney, Most Reverend H.W.K Mowll, C.M.G D.D – Archbishop of Sydney from 1933 until his death in 1958.

 

ARVN tactics – description of various forms of torture employed by the South Vietnamese Army. The US and Australian armies were complicit in this practice, as they willingly handed prisoners of war to the ARVN.

 

Chidley’s suction – Chidley (see above) believed that human sexual intercourse would mimic that of ducks, if it was natural and mutual. Chidley was a misplaced suffragette theorist.

 

We could have won in one day if we crossed the DMZ – it is assumed that the US and ARVN forces would have overrun North Vietnam if they had been able to launch a sustained invasion. This may have resulted in short-term success. However, ultimate ‘victory’ could have proved elusive as later campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan etcetera attest.

 

Burnt out monk torsos – Thích Quảng Đức (1897-1963) was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who self-immolated in Saigon on 11 June 1963. He was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government led by Ngô Đình Diệm. Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of the monk’s death.

 

Ap Bac – a decisive battle early in the Vietnam Conflict in 1963 in which the North Vietnamese Army demonstrated that it could fight and win a conventional battle. The principal repercussion of Ap Bac was to shift US military thinking from the use of advisers to train and lead the ARVN to direct intervention by US troops.

 

The General’s Coup. Big Minh – the Diem government was overthrown in a military coup in 1963. General Duong Van Minh (1916-2001) became the leader of a military junta which took over South Vietnam.

 

Fucking Conein. Corsicans go anywhere – Lucien Emile “Lou” Conein (1919-1998) was a French-American citizen and OSS/CIA operative. He acted as the conduit between the US Ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge Jnr, and the protagonists of the coup. It was Conein who delivered the message of non-intervention to Minh.

 

Cash distributions to Nghia – Conein delivered USD40,000 (3 million Vietnamese piastres) to assist the coup. Major Dương Hiếu Nghĩa was a bodyguard to General Minh who allegedly organised the assassination of President Diem and his brother (see below) in return for a cash payment of this amount.

 

I returned for a full set of postcards of Diem and Nhu inside the church at Cholon – President Ngo Dinh Diem (1901-1963), and his brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc (1910-1963), who controlled the secret police, were assassinated in a church at Cholon during the 1963 coup. Graphic photographic evidence of the corpses was taken as proof and distributed widely.

 

AATTV – the Australian Army Training Team (AATTV) was a key contributor to Australia’s military effort in the Vietnam Conflict. It grew from a core team of 30 advisers in 1962 to over 200 men by 1970. The character, Don Cane, was a member of the first AATTV team.

 

MACV – the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was a joint-service command of the United States Department of Defence. It was created in 1962 to coordinate US military assistance to South Vietnam.

 

Vietnamisation – the name of an ill-conceived policy of the Nixon administration from 1969-1973 to flip responsibility for the Vietnam Conflict from the US to South Vietnam and enable troop withdrawals.

 

John knee deep in the River Jordan in a raiment of camel hair a leather girdle on his loins anointing Christ – a preacher who baptised Jesus Christ in a waterway near the convergence of the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee. He was beheaded by Herod in AD30.

 

Shields displaying armorial bearings – the Sees of Canterbury, London, Calcutta and Australia – the church scene in Chapter 3 is set in the chapel at Trinity Grammar School, Summer Hill, Sydney. This is an accurate rendition of a set of shields commemorating significant Sees (or Dioceses) in the life of the school.

 

Chevet ceiling over apse – parodic hyperbole.

 

Great Organ open diapason stoppt diapason dulciana principal koppelflote twelfth fifteenth / Swell Organ rohrflote viola spitzflote nazard blockflote scharf (22-26-29) double crumhorn trumpet crumhorn / Couplers great to pedal, swell to pedal, swell to great, great and pedal combinations coupled, double torch canceller / Pedal Organ open diapason sub-bass dulciana principal bass flute choral brass crumhorn crumhorn crumhorn: plus accessories: total number of pipes = one thousand one hundred and eighty-one – accurate rendition of organ components.

 

Dylan Thomas’ pug nose – a significant facial feature of the Welsh writer.

 

Well[e]s Mars’ landing – an allusion to the 1938 radio production by the Mercury Theatre, led Orson Welles, of “War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells.

 

Short wave signal travelling all the way up the Mississippi – Bob Dylan recounts how he was able to pick up music from radio stations in southern USA using a short-wave radio in Minnesota.

 

Mojo. Something you lack. Press a drill through the ice and extract – reference to “Austin Powers 2.”

 

Bright lights, big city – reference to Jimmy Reed song and Triffids song.

 

Antioch – Biblical city.

 

INSERT other famous fakes. Attributed quotes. Apocrypha. Chatterton’s Rowley. Hitler Diaries – list of famous fakes. Later, a sub-plot in Telemachus concerns fake paintings prepared by Tom Hallem on behalf of Elizabeth Archer.

 

The testament of Howard Hughes. Probably drafted by Elmyr with Clifford Irving’s script. See Welles’ Letter F – reference to alleged diaries and an autobiography of Howard Hughes. The handwriting purporting to be that of Hughes was almost certainly prepared by the master fakest, Elmyr de Hory (1906-1976). He was the subject of the Orson Welles movie, “F for Fake” (1974). Clifford Irving was the author of a biography of Elmyr titled “Fake!” (1969) as well as the bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes. He received 2 years jail for his role in the fraud. NOTE – Finnegans Wake is referred to as F(W)ake in Telemachus.

 

Ern Malley. Still the best Modernist poetry ever written in Australia – poetry produced by Max Harris and James McAuley under the name, Ern Malley, during WW2.

 

School of Veronese – Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) was a 14th century Venetian painter, best-known for immense religious and mythological works. His works remain largely in Venice, meaning that many major global galleries plug a gap in their collection with works by his followers and heirs. These works do not attain the supreme coloration of the Master and often slide into bathos. The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) possesses a skilful drawing, “Study of a Dog,” which is attributed to the School of Veronese.

 

After Blake. Scott’s Satan Watching the Endearments – a print by William Bell Scott (1811-1890) in the style of William Blake (1757-1827). Part of the AGNSW collection. Tom Hallem studied the European collection closely. It was then housed in the southern wing of the AGNSW. The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) possesses a watercolour by William Blake titled, “Satan watching the endearments of Adam and Eve” (1822). It was an illustration for his edition of “Paradise Lost” by John Milton (IV, 325-535).

 

INSERT INTERNAL MONOLOGUE BY TOM HALLEM THAT HE COULD NEVER REDUCE HIMSELF TO COPYISM OR FORGERY – a commitment later to be contradicted in Chapter Ten. This textual feature of Telemachus is designed to draw attention to the artificiality of plot devices. It appears that the author just couldn’t be bothered manufacturing an internal monologue for this moment.

 

If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out. Link to Oedipus. Also, Gloucester – a line from the Triffids song, “Monkey on My Back.” The Oedipus trilogy by Sophocles concerns the blinding of the eponymous character. Gloucester in King Lear is blinded by his enemies.

 

Blind as Tom Hallem at death, Joyce memorized hundreds of lines of poetry – a slight correspondence between Tom Hallem and James Joyce.

 

I was the only kid in high school who no father had – a fact about the author’s childhood.

 

Jumping Jack mine. Bloke in front took the brunt. I just caught the spray – one of numerous veiled references to the death of Bobby Horne in Vietnam. He is the “bloke in front,” referred to be the Reverent Bent. It becomes clear that Bobby was working with Bent and Principal Westacott at the time he was killed by a mine.

 

Hymn 62. Songs of Praise. They sang. Man alone dumb – a hymn. Its numeration comes from the “Standard English Hymn Book.”

 

Today’s Pools result: Life – 2; Heart of Myselflothian – 2 – comic connection of human emotions to British Football Pools results from the UK, which were announced in Australia on Sunday morning.

 

White Willy Peter – slang term for White Phosphorus derived from its abbreviation in the World War II phonetic alphabet as “WP.” It was used in artillery shells to clear sections of forest. White phosphorus attains heats of up to 2,760 degrees Celsius (5,000 degrees Fahrenheit), causing severe burns and traumatic internal injuries. Absorption will result in death through multiple organ failure. It can only be extinguished when deprived of oxygen.

 

Sat Cong – means ‘Kill (Viet)Cong’ – or ‘Kill Communists’ – in Vietnamese. Sat Cong badges were distributed to US troops who had evidence of killing an enemy soldier. A common form of verification was to cut off the ear of the dead enemy. It could then be exchanged for a Sat Cong badge.

 

Dinky Dau’s won. All SRV now – Dinky Dau is used to mean ‘crazy’ in Vietnamese. A corruption of the French phrase, “beaucoup dien cai dau,” which was coined to rationalise the extreme levels of motivation of Vietnam forces opposing the French Army after WW2. SRV is an acronym for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, more commonly known as North Vietnam.

 

Bạn là những chuyên gia – ‘are you the experts’ in Vietnamese.

 

Eric – a false name used by Don Cane in Sydney. See below for more details.

 

Sleek Sir Charles – a term for the Vietcong after the Tet offensive in 1968.

 

Thompson replicas – Sir Robert Thompson (1916–1992) was a British military officer held in high regard for his effective counter-insurgency tactics during the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960). He was leader of the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam from 1961-1965. He supported the 1963 military coup (see above). His advice to avoid bombing villages was ignored by US military planners. In 1969, he returned to Vietnam as a special adviser to President Nixon on pacification.

 

Chánontai se af̱tó to thanásimo agó̱na. Bị mất trong cuộc đấu tranh sinh tử – lyric from popular Vietnamese song.

 

In Manila, they’ll drive into a pole to knock you out and rumble your wallet – a popular tactic by scammers in Asia.

 

Boonie – a wide-brim hat used by militaries in hot, humid climates.

 

Daedalian. Pen for the Minotaur. Insert Caliban. Cunning Minos imprisoned both father and son. Wings of wax and feathers. Sunshaved Icarus sunclose – various references to fathers and sons in Classical literature.

 

His father is based at Butterworth. Expat posting – RAAF Butterworth was an air base in Penang, Malaysia.

 

Spent his primary school years at one of those ‘sinternational hools’ – mediocre Spoonerism coined by Principal Westacott to try to curry favour with Tom Hallem. The student Moody had been sent to the Principal for punishment because of coining Spoonerisms in hymns being sung by the school choir.

 

Nebelwerther – German WW2 mortar.

 

Flayed Marsyas – a satyr in Classical literature who popularised the flute. He challenged Apollo to a musical contest. He was flayed and killed as a result. It is thought that his punishment was due to the fact that he beat Apollo. Such an act of apparent petulance was not uncommon in Classical mythology. Challenging the Gods resulted in severe penalties, as demonstrated by the fate of Arachne.

 

Hey youse inners ear my call. Satan is waiting. Region of his brimstone. Get your soul bleached. A mouthful of cream. Plea bargain – redrafting of lyrics to the song, “Moan You Moaners,” recorded by Bessie Smith. It was sung by my mother. The relevant passage to Telemachus is as follows:

 

Hear you sinners, hear my call,

Satan’s waitin’ for you all!

Better ger your souls washed white, (ie. soul bleached)

Better see the light! (amen!)

 

Fire is burnin’ down below, (ie. region of his brimstone)

If you ain’t right, down you go

To original hot brimstone!

Let’s you start right in to moan.

 

You better get down on your knees

And let the good Lord hear your pleas, (plea bargain)

If you want to rest with ease,

Moan, you moaners!

 

Eat with Collector regularly – Tom Hallem lists regular meals with a wealthy art collector amongst his strategies for success as an artist.

 

B2B – acronym meaning “Business to Business” in marketing jargon.

 

Kill Ratio – fictional formula used by the US military in Vietnam to depict the difference in fatalities between US/ARVN and Vietcong/SRV forces. It was forecast that the gap in the Kill Ratio would eventually force North Vietnam to negotiate a peace settlement. This arithmetic approach led to distortions such as artificially inflated body counts and inclusion of civilian murders as well as a philosophical shift in approach by US forces from winning ground or battles to pure slaughter. In many respects, it corresponds with the war of attrition fought in WW1.

 

Five thousand-dollar bounties for any Ma Rung dead or alive – Australian SAS patrols in Vietnam were known by the Vietcong as ‘Ma Rung’ or ‘ghosts (of the jungle).’ Their effectiveness led to a bounty of USD5,000 per head dead or alive.

 

Alcinous’ gifts – xenia offered to Odysseus by Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians.

 

Chu Chi tunnels – an extensive network of underground facilities in the Chu Chi district of Saigon. They were used by the Vietcong to mount operations in Saigon, including the Tet Offensive in 1968. Descriptions in Telemachus about events in the tunnels are factual.

 

Stalin was a bank robber – Joseph Jughashvili (1878-1953) was a Georgian national who later became supreme leader of the USSSR under the moniker, Stalin. As a young insurgent in Georgia, he robbed banks, in part to fund Communist operations.

 

Mao a drug baron. Poppy fields in Yunnan – The PRC took over opium producing areas of Yunnan province after the 1949 revolution and used the proceeds from sales to fund its military and industrial operations.

 

Rice sales to East Berlin. Get hard currency. Spend it all on war machines. Overtake Britain in steel production – The PRC exported rice to East Germany and other allies during the famine following the Great Leap Forward (Da Yue Jin) to secure hard currency for weapons programs. A stated objective of the GLP (DYJ) was to overtake Great Britain in steel production. This target ignored the decline of British manufacturing. As with the Kill Ratio (see above), it resulted in distortions to meet arbitrary targets. For instance, private belongings composed of any type of metal were melted and reconstituted as ‘steel’. Such products are usually referred to as ‘shit metal.’

 

Oil Shock – the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) instituted an oil embargo on countries that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. By the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen nearly 300 per cent. This event is generally viewed as the end of the long period of western prosperity after WW2.

 

A stuffed hummingbird fixed in mid-song upon a Bakelite stand adorning the walnut credenza – I can’t remember the significance of this motif. I know that it was inserted late in the drafting of TMAC. It’s so unusual that there must be a reason. Perhaps it’s a reference to someone like Keats or the birdsong of serving girls slaughtered in the Odyssey which was concocted elsewhere in Telemachus?

 

Aleph Yod Nun – one of the seventy-names for God in Hebrew. It seems to be disorganised as the most common version is Aleph Nun Yod which means ‘I.’ It is said that the rearrangement as AYN creates the term, ‘nothing.’

 

He disappeared during a hot extraction west of Pleiku in 1968 – Pleiku Air Base was a major US facility in Central Vietnam (II Corps Tactical Zone). It was the base for illegal operations into Laos. SAS troops would parachute into Laos, conduct combat operations, and walk back into Vietnam to be extracted by helicopter. Airlifting soldiers from live battle situations was termed a ‘hot extraction.’ It was during such a mission that Don Cane allegedly disappeared.

 

Thirty-year rule still extant – secrecy provisions relating to the release of sensitive information held by the government.

 

Dragon Mountain. Camp Enari. 2-1CAV. Late `66 – Camp Enari (also known as Dragon Mountain Base Camp) was a former U.S. Army base east of Pleiku in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. The 2^nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment was stationed there from August 1967 to May 1969. Thus, there is an error of timing in the novel int erms of 2-1Cav. However, 4th Infantry Division was stationed at Camp Enari from September 1966 until February 1968.

 

Re-assigned by MACV-SOG – The “Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group” (MACV-SOG) was a United States special operations unit which conducted covert unconventional warfare operations during the Vietnam War. This phrase indicates that Don Cane was working for MACV-SOG by early 1967. It conducted strategic reconnaissance missions into Laos, and Cambodia.

 

Daniel Boone Squad. Salem House – In September 1967, MACV-SOG commenced Operation Daniel Boone, a cross-border reconnaissance program in Cambodia. Later, this program was rebadged as Salem House.

 

God knows what he did after 1971. Last known date in Australian records – the military record of Don Cane was only available to Australian authorities until 1971. Afterwards, he worked exclusively for US intelligence and the South Vietnam government until he relocated to the Philippines in approximately 1974.

 

Cochrane’s memory – unknown reference. Possibly information about Cane’s activities came from a former colleague with the surname, Cochrane.

 

He rappelled out of a helicopter. There was heavy ground fire. Extraction was attempted. But he lost his grip – Don Cane as Icarus. Vietnam Conflict as setting. Rappelled, in this instance, refers to be extracted upwards by holding onto a thick rope.

 

Underground cubicles in Oxford Street pubs. Green Park cruising…. Motel rooms on Crown Street – locations where sex would occur.

 

I left my wife with Julia still in a cradle – Westacott recollects the personal circumstances of his first Tour of Duty.

 

Greek Stamps. Hercules and Geryon – Westacott is a philatelist. The Labours of Hercules was a prolific set of stamps in Greece. The value of the battle with Geryon was two drachmae. Hercules had to journey to the end of the world to complete his 10th – and last – labour. Australia is a metaphor for this place.

 

Abrams – General Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. (1914-1974) was Commander of COMUSMACV from 1968-1972. He was responsible for reducing US Army forces from 550,000 to 50,000 troops. He initiated the Cambodia Incursion. His legacy is contested. Some writers claim he implemented the ‘hearts and minds’ strategy to try to win over regional populations. Others state that he merely continued the Search and Destroy and Kill Ratio tactics of his predecessor, Westmoreland. Evidence for the latter position includes major attrition engagements such as the Battle of Hamburger Hill (1969).

 

South Vietnam would still be alive if we had stayed the course – a theory of some veterans and historians of the Vietnam Conflict.

 

Our boys were all stationed in Phuoc Tuy – Australian forces were concentrated in the southern province of Phuoc Tuy, which contained the major port of Vung Tau.

 

Aweary like Mariana – a character in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. A poem by Tennyson (1830). A painting by John Everett Millais (1851). In the poem and image, Mariana is presented in exile as lethargic.

 

Chance formations. Mallarme meets Vico –

 

Cordelia can get married to Edgar like they did in Restoration Theatre – in the seventeenth century, the climax of King Lear was altered to procure a happy ending.

 

Gan lan qiu – the Mandarin term for rugby. Literally, ‘olive-shaped ball.

 

Dead dog on a beach – Joyce links the carcass of the dead dog to war.

 

Gallipoli, Fromelles, Tobruk, Crete, Singapore – a sequence of ill-fated battles involving Australians.

 

The cistern contains. Blood overflows – reworking of a famous line from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” by William Blake. In this stance, ‘blood’ has replaced ‘the fountain.’ It is considered a key phrase in Telemachus. It is cited on multiple occasions (pp. 243 & 478) as well as its first half being used as a heading (p.550). It can be linked to manifestation of The Cradle (see C7, 526):

 

Schwitter’s Merz – Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) was a prominent German artist associated with the Dada movement. He is considered the progenitor of Installation Art because of Merzbau, which were effectively sculptures that transformed the interior spaces of his homes with dramatic Modernist structures, mainly in vaults and ceilings. The artist claimed three Merzbau in total: Hanover, Lysake (Oslo, Norway), and Elterwater (Cumbria, England). The first two were destroyed and the last remained incomplete at his death.

 

Only a bad harvest can save us – an ironic comment by Germans during the latter stages of WW2.

 

Boat ride to Sparta – the second stage of the Telemachiad in which Telemachus visits Nestor, King of Sparta, and his wife, Helen.

 

Trawl for memories of Belvedere College – Joyce’s senior school.

 

ANZAC embarkation. Finger wharf. HMAS Sydney – Cowper Bay Wharf, Woolloomooloo was an embarkation point for Australian soldiers in all wars.

 

Hector doing eight laps of Troy – Hector does 3 laps of Troy before fighting Achilles. After his death, Achilles does the requisite number of circuits to complete the volume stated in this quotation.

 

I like to break a lance with you. Goodbye Tom Hallem – Principal Westacott reverts to knightly language.

 

Sound carries sense like in Milton (see A. Burgess) – It was T. S. Eliot who originated this concept in his essay on Milton (“the emphasis is on sound, not the vision, upon the word, not the idea…”). This conclusion confused F. R. Leavis. The reference to Anthony Burgess is NOT to any commentary on Milton or Eliot. Rather, it refers to Burgess’ use of evocative invented words or terms, most famously in A Clockwork Orange (see ‘Nadsat’).

 

INSERT CHARACTER LINKS: listen to music (Dave); view a painting (Tom Hallem); read a book (Billy). Proust’s tripod of Vinteuil, Elstor and Bergotte – comparison of character grid in Telemachus with A le Recherche du Temps Perdu.

 

Music was preeminent in that era, largely due to the dominance of Richard Wagner. It was the same after PUNK for about 10 years – music was seen as the preeminent form of art in late c19th Europe. Hence, Pater’s deduction that “all art aspires to the condition of music.” The author postulates that music held the same gravitas post-Punk from c.1976-1986.

 

the book is the ultimate end of all expression (see Mallarme) – “Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.”

 

Alex Pope’s “Essay on Man.” Time is a moment. Our point a space. Man as perfect as he ought – precis of lines in Book II (ll.69-72):

 

Then say not man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault;

Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought:

His knowledge measur’d to his state and place,

His time a moment, and a point his space.

 

Diastolic sprawl – a sub-theory of the author which interrogates the Apollonian and Dionysian dialectic (see below) in terms of blood flow. Diastole represents expansion and flow; Systole to contraction and blockage.

 

Greek dromaios. To abandon – origin of the term, Dromology, in the theories of Paul Virilio (see below).

 

Marinetti said Time and Space died yesterday. The motor car is more gorgeous than “Victory at Samathrace” – Dot Point 4 of The Manifesto of Futurism.

 

Lyotard revived pace bowling – a joke about speed & cricket. Probably an error to attribute to Lyotard. I meant Virilio.

 

Apollonian & Dionysian dialectics – The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche interrogates duality between the figures of Apollo and Dionysus in Greek mythology. Apollo is the god of rational thinking and order. Dionysus is the god of wine and dance and appeals to the emotions and instincts.

 

Surdity & Utterance locked in perpetual flux (see C6) – a theory of silence and audition (the interaction of) propagated by the author in an essay in the 1990s titled, “THE CORIOLANIAN”: EXTREMES OF HIERATIC TEMPER. Its tenets are partially included in the final section, A French Arche-Text, of Chapter 6 of Telemachus. Essay to be added to the TMAC website.

 

Dromology & Stasis – a theory of motion and amotion (the interaction of) propagated by the author in the essay noted above. Dromology was a term coined by Paul Virilio. These terms are intervolved with Statis and Utterance by the author.

 

God is a surrealist act, according to Breton – André Breton (1896–1966) was a French writer. Co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of Surrealism. A joker whose work did not translate successfully into the Existential epoch after WW2. He has become a kind of period-piece.

 

The strange life of with Arthur Cravan – Swiss writer, poet, artist and boxer. Born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd (1887-1918?). Changed his name to Cravan in 1912 in honour of his fiancée, who was born in the village of Cravans, France. His father’s sister, Constance Mary Lloyd, was married to Irish poet Oscar Wilde. Most likely drowned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico in November 1918. This sentence made me think it was the title of a Poe tale.

 

Derrida’s eperon – Éperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche (Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles, ENG) by Jacques Derrida.

 

Poe-eyes – “The Oval Portrait,” by Edgar Allan Poe.

 

Imperfect heroes are made blind by the Gods as a prelude to punishment. Oedipus. Tiresias.  Paris. Cupid’s victims. HOMER HIMSELF. Joyce as well. – interesting fact.

 

Swinburne’s nameless heroine in “Les Noyades” – the following passage is a plot summary of this poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne from “Poems and Ballads” [INSERT DATE].

 

Rosebud – reference to the arch symbol in “Citizen Kane.”

 

Mehr licht – ‘more light’ (German). The last words spoken by Goethe before death.

 

Insert LSD 100 micrograms IM – the intramuscular dose of Lysergic Acid administered to Aldous Huxley by his wife on his deathbed on 22 November 1963 (a few hours before the assassination of President Kennedy). LSD was not banned in California until 1966.

 

Refill Tom’s canula – reference to the death scene of Tom Hallem. Occurs post-text (c.1998).

 

His idea of reading “signatures” prefaces Structuralism although he finds it restrictive not freedom-making. They send him down metonymic spirals of thought. See signification systems of Saussure and Levi-Strauss (C6) – sentence two of the Proteus episode in Ulysses. It follows the famous opening sentence (“ineluctable modality…”). The author argues that it predicts the format of later theories, although its impact is personal on Stephen Dedalus.

 

The taxi spiralled down Anzac Parade towards Nine Ways. It deviated onto Bunnerong Road bisecting Housing Commission estates. A sequence of nondescript small shopping centres lined the roadway. Occasional street life. Bogged. One pub suburbs. Matraville Hotel. Chalkboard read “Counter Lunches – STILL ONLY $1.”– sustained passage on travel across Sydney. Southerly direction. The relevant suburbs are Kensington, Kingsford, Daceyville, Hillsdale, Matraville. Nine Ways is located at Kingsford. Note Tom Hallem has a similar drive down Liverpool and Parramatta Roads with Ana Lafei SIMULTANEOUSLY. This inextricably links the false father with the abandoned son.

 

Pig’s Head. Christmas dish of Saxons. Skulls mounted on stakes at hamlet gates like Atalanta’s suitors. Famous tavern frequented by Shakespeare. Destroyed in the Great Fire 1666. Source: Master Farryner’s Bakehouse, Pudding Lane, Thames Street – The Boar’s Head Tavern was featured in Shakespeare’s Henry IV cycle.

 

Calydonian boar. Artemis’ payback – Hunt to kill a razorback sent by Artemis to ravage Calydon in Aetolia. Led by Meleager. The party included Atalanta. She was the first hunter to wound the boar and thus was granted its hide by Meleager. It was taken away by his uncles. He killed them. As a result, his mother threw a magic log linked to his life into a fire. This killed him. It is the subject of a famous 19^th century poem by A. C. Swinburne.

 

He came downhill from Charters Towers to enlist – town in North Queensland. Home of Albert Wheaton.

 

Sank a dozen ponies behind the lace skirt out the front of Buchanan’s Hotel – a public house in Townsville.

 

NCO in Malaya. 1ATF – Initially, Wheaton served in Malaya with Don Cane.

 

Patrolling the fence north of Long Hai. Install a lattice of Jumping Jacks. Graham’s folly – an infamous and tragic tactic by Australian forces during the Vietnam Conflict. The “fence” was an 11-Km barrier fence and minefield laid in Phuoc Tuy province from Dat Do to the coast on the orders of the new Commander of 1 ATF, Brigadier Stuart Graham (see Operation Leeton). Over 20,000 M16 (Jumping Jack) landmines were laid. It was designed to mitigate the exposure of Australian forces to attack from the south across its wide operational zone, which was too large for thinly-stretched, inexperienced and isolated forces. Many mines were extracted by Vietcong insurgents and sympathisers then re-laid in the path of Australian soldiers, causing numerous casualties. It is estimated that the M16 mines caused 102 KIA and 422 WIA between 1967-1971. This tally includes Australian, NZ and US forces. Eventually, the fence was removed. Subject of an excellent non-fiction account, The Minefield by Greg Lockhart.

 

Ana shaking off her m.coil down the Lake – Ana Lafei drowns in an underground pond called The Lake at the end of Telemachus.

 

NCR machine – a book-keeping machine used by Penelope Hallem.

 

Meadow Lea margarine factory in Mascot – a factory in Sydney visited by the author in the 1960s with his mother. She was returning account books to a client. She would leave him alone in the car.

 

tralalaladdy – portmanteau reference to Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jnr.

 

Iron flaps shut tight. Eighteen-inch apertures. Masks for tunnels. Send the Rats down first. Smokem out. Slow low Dioxin mist. Fire-hosing jungle – tactics to flush out the enemy in the Chu Chi Tunnels (see above).

 

Route 19 – National Route 19 is a highway that runs across Vietnam from Qui Nhon to the Cambodian border. It was a supply route to US bases in the Central Highlands. As a result, ambushed by the Vietcong and PAVN were a regular occurrence.

 

Ma Deuces. Name of Lil Sure Shot. Browning meat choppers – various nicknames for the Browning M2 machine gun.

 

Medivac out of a hot DZ in a light Huey – jargon for medical evacuation from a drop zone under intense enemy fire in a Huey helicopter.

 

The red smoke that we pumped into the tunnel complex perforated the prairie grass all over the battlefield – US advisers were stunned when they pumped coloured gas into the Chu Chi Tunnels to find a very high volume of air hatches, escape routes and firing positions.

 

Perforations facing east to catch dawn light. Turn towards the prevailing wind to fumigate. Keep your eyes on them – the Chu Chi Tunnels were carefully constructed to maximise the benefits of prevailing climatic conditions.

 

Balls of coagulated rice in their cotton pockets – Dead Vietcong and ARVN soldiers would be found to possess very small amounts of food. This was in stark contrast to the enormous, heavy 85-pound (40 kg) packs carried by Americans.

 

Convenient how they flip onto their backs when they’re dead. Different gravity of corpses. Chidley at Troy. Dead soldiers float – a fanciful linkage of death, insects, posture, and the theories of W.J. Chidley.

 

Encased and displayed like Pater’s anonymous narrator in “A Prince of Court Painters” – a portrait about a female subject of the painter Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) in Imaginary Portraits by Walter Pater (1839-1894). A “metaportrait” – in other words, a postmodern version of this portrait – titled “Of Virgilia Without Sound” by this author is partially inserted into Chapter Five, Episode Ten.

 

Military Road opened onto a bountiless sandstone plateau. Rugged Ithaca. A land of unrelenting harshness to the eye. Exposed to Poseidon’s rage continuously – analogue drawn between Ithaca in the Odyssey and the coastal headland of Botany Bay, Sydney, Australia. Symbolic link with arrival of first Europeans, which occurred at this place.

 

Hapless Scherians – the community were punished by Poseidon for aiding Odysseus. Their lack of due diligence concerning Odysseus was the problem. They were taken-in by his stories and (apparent) emotions. This is another example of Odysseus’ cunning.

 

Bunnerong Power Station – coal-powered electricity plant in south-east Sydney. Now gone. Demolished in 1986. Allusion to Poolbeg Power Station, Dublin.

 

Yarra Bay – a residential bay on the north side of Botany Bay. The first British expedition under Captain James Cook arrived in Australia landed on the south side at Kurnell.

 

Colonel Cornwall…. There at the Fall of Saigon it was reputed. Thieu’s Tiresias – Western advisers remained on the payroll of the South Vietnam Government until it fell in 1975. Tiresias was a Greek mystic prophet. He appears in Sophocles dramas, Oedipus the King and Antigone. In the former, Oedipus is advised that he is the target of the manhunt. In Antigone, Creon is told that he is bringing disaster upon Thebes. Neither ruler believes him. This is analogous to the role of Western advisers in the downfall of President Thieu.

 

“Quiet waters by” – reference to the hymn, “The Lord’s My Shepherd.”

 

Face down in murk. Shriveled face gripped by agony. Spine exposed – there are numerous references in Telemachus to the Spina Bifida of Chaim Daniel.

 

“… thy rod” was brought down on a line of Nashos punctured by JJs – linkage of content of hymn (see above) to impact of M16 Jumping Jack (hence “JJ”) mines on Australian Army National Service personnel.

 

Quartered Patricides. Draft horse on each limb. See Foucault’s dichotomy at the start of D+P – reference to the opening quotes of Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.

 

If our son had survived, it would have all been different Richie – Donald Cane laments the expiration of his last relationship, which he attributes to the death of their child from birth defects.

 

The death of Annie was the last straw for Darwin – Anne Elizabeth “Annie” Darwin (1841-1851) was the second child and eldest daughter of Charles and Emma Darwin. His loss of religious faith is attributed to her death.

 

William Shelley. Strangled by his mother’s monster – Son of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. He died of an infection on June 7, 1819 in Rome. He was a model for Victor Frankenstein’s youngest brother William, who is strangled by the Creature, in Frankenstein.

 

Sons I sired but never fathered. A family plot listing the whole game show. “Goodness and mercy all my life….” INSERT DISCLAIMER “…. Shall surely follow.” Io’s gadfly. “And in God’s house forever.” Redoubts. Motel shots. False sanctuaries. “My dwelling place shall be.” A flooded hole in the glug – association of hymn lyrics with the life of Don Cane.

 

Rossetti dug up his wife’s grave to get back lost manuscripts – it has long been rumoured that the British poet and artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, threw papers into the grave of his late wife, Lizzie Siddal, during her funeral and extracted them for revision and publication some years later.

 

Swinburne with a shovel composing a hendecasyllabic – a small joke on the audacity of the English poet, A. C. Swinburne.

 

Sappho’s logic. The Gods too would die if death was a good thing – quote attributed to the Greek poet. Full text: “Death is an evil. We know this much. The Gods too would die if death was a good thing” (author’s translation).

 

Out on patrol along the Long Hai fence – reference to the “fence” (see above).

 

Major Ian Westacott GSM (V Clasp) – rank and award attributed to fictitious character.

 

Help build the South’s defence strategy. Pull back to Saigon. Hope world opinion turns. Ford might launch bombers. Catch the NVA in open fields – strategy recommended to President Thieu by western advisers in 1975 after the invasion of South Vietnam by the NVA.

 

Thieu preferred to hear oracles by that point. Stretch-out chicken guts on a parquetry floor. No stomach for another fight. France 1940. Just get out safe. Like Chang. Take the gold into exile. Leave the dan toc to Charlie – Thieu reverted to mysticism during the last days of his rule of South Vietnam. This is linked to the Fall of France and the escape of Chang Kai Shek to Taiwan in 1949.

 

“Tuason gang…. Ex Squires Bingham crowd…. Bolo… Floro Corp…. Makati…. I was mates with Ludwig Rocka…. IDPC…. When he died, Elizabeth lost cover…. Marcos sacked her last year…. Her son has a bright future…. Ramos…. Young Mick ran Gintong Alay for his uncle…. Like Roxas.” – a sequence of accurate references to the political and business world of Manilla during the early 1980s. They build up a picture of Don Cane as an influential figure in the Philippines.

 

“There’s also snake runs,” said Oswald – illegal arms shipments.

 

“Mainly small ordinance…. Good old M16… A2” – ordinance transferred in snake runs.

 

“Central Luzon?” asked Oswald – main island of the Philippines.

 

Flushing out NPA jungle bases outside Manila with Nick Rowe – The New People’s Army (NPA) is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), based primarily in Philippine rural areas. It was founded in 1969. James Nicholas “Nick” Rowe (1938-1989) was a US Army  operative assisting government forces against the NPA. In 1989, he was killed by a unit of the NPA called the Alex Boncayao Brigade.

 

Mao tactics. Control the countryside like Sir Charles – Mao developed the concept of a protracted people’s war fought largely in rural areas with the peasantry. The Vietcong was known as “Sir Charles” by US forces. They mimicked Mao’s strategy.

 

My first mission in Vietnam – an early AATTV objective c.1964 was to train and lead Montagnard commandos against the Vietcong and NVA. Captain Barry Petersen, known as “Tiger Man,” was the most famous Australian adviser. He took on some of the demigod characteristics of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (later channelled into the character played by Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now”).

 

Organise the Ilaga. New Montagnards. Folk Catholics. Put some shit back on the Moro. Machetes marking victims with a Cross. Flesh amulets – The Ilaga (Visayan for ‘rat’) is a Christian extremist paramilitary group based in southern Philippines. They acted as a militia force in southern Mindanao during the 1970s at the start of the Moro insurgency in the Philippines (commenced 1968, still extant). At the height of their campaign in 1970-71, Ilaga committed 21 massacres that left 518 people dead, 184 injured, and 243 houses burned down.

 

Spring on Damansky Island. Soviet Behemoth. First Andropov. Now Chernenko. Sick men all – reflection on the state of USSR leadership as at November 1984 when TMAC is set. Damansky Island was a continuous flashpoint between the USSR & PRC.

 

Red China. Hard to get a fix on Deng. He suckered Carter. They’ve always got a long game plan. Make proletariat from scratch. Game of statistics. Kill Ratio. Lure the US army to Henan. Insert Soviet pops – historical stream of consciousness. Commentary on the visit by Deng Xiaoping to the US in 1979.

 

Mao’s boast. I can take three hundred million casualties and still come out on top, he told Khrushchev – proposed strategy for WW3.

 

Teach a lesson to Hanoi. Adapted the whole notion of Pyrrhic victory. PLA got a bloody nose. It took twenty days to capture Lang Son. But it showed the world that China would expend its troops without scruples to meet strategic goals – analysis of 1979 invasion of Vietnam by the PLA.

 

Rerunning the tactics they used in Korea. Human walls – PRC tactics during the above war.

 

Vietnam as fulcrum. No shift on Kampuchea – China saw the intervention of Vietnam in Kampuchea as a strategic threat. This was despite the global repugnance for the regime of Pol Pot, which China supported.

 

New Soviet reticence since Kabul. Ogarkov’s back. Downsizing the Red Army. Expend an ox – analysis of USSR geopolitical strategy since the ill-fated war in Afghanistan. Nikolai Ogarkov (1917-1994) was Chief of the General Staff of the USSR from 1977-1984. Significantly, this piece of information is out of date as he was dismissed as Chief of the General Staff on 6 September 1984.

 

First military parade since 1959. Reel of bottled museum pieces – USSR held a major military parade through Red Square in 1984.

 

There is always a political undertow to Ulysses. Stephen on Kevin Egan – Kevin Egan is a fictional avatar for Joseph Casey. He was a Fenian  involved in revolutionary actions in the 1860s but now lives quietly in exile in Paris. He is a false father figure for Stephen Dedalus in Proteus. The Citizen also cited meeting Egan in Paris in the Cyclops episode.

 

He worked in a Renault factory –erroneous attribution (deliberate). It was Deng Xiaoping who worked as a fitter in a car plant in Paris, France circa 1920-21. He also worked at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel plant in central France, as a fireman and as a kitchenhand. He also briefly attended middle schools in Bayeux and Chatillon.

 

Served by a waiter called Thanh. Visit Versailles. Stand outside in the cold. Wilson passed Nguyen Ai Quoc in a limousine as he entered the palace. Scrape away frost from his limousine window. See a spasmodic face. History’s missed moments. Later, he became known as Chen Vang, a Chinese merchant. Then Ly Thuy. Finally. Ho Chi Minh. Name-shifting Proteus – shifting names and perspectives of the historical figure lastly known as HCM. He lived in Paris and did indeed go to Versailles in 1919 to promote Vietnamese independence. President Wilson probably passed him on his way to the conference.

 

Despite all the hype of the Reagan Doctrine, the Contras still need funding, replied Cornwall. We can’t get money off Capitol Hill – US counter-insurgency activities were hampered by a lack of funding in the early 1980s. As a result, they reverted to drug importation and sales in the US to generate operational funds. The Reagan Doctrine was a policy of President Ronald Reagan (1980-1988) in which the US provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in Soviet-backed, pro-communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It is ironic that this doctrine was not supported by adequate funding. ‘Contras’ is a term for various right-wing rebel groups in Nicaragua form 1979 onwards. They opposed the Marxist Sandinista which came to power following the Nicaraguan Revolution. Capital Hill is a metonym for the US Congress. It acts as a proxy for the US Government in Washington.

 

Lend Lease bill to Britain was four billion pounds – payment owed by the UK to the USA for war materials.

 

Lao Tigers – insurgent group in Laos during the Vietnam Conflict and Laos Civil War.

 

Griffith dope shuttles. Siphon off Iranian bucks – It has been reported that Air America shipments of heroin from the Golden Triangle were diverted to Australia to collect marijuana from the Riverina region before proceeding to the USA. See related reporting on Nugan Hand Bank and CIA in C10.

 

Met Colonel North once in Saigon – Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North was a Marine Corps commander. He served at the National Security Council from 1981. He became infamous for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal in the late 1980s. It involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran in return for the release of American hostages then held in Lebanon. North diverted proceeds from these sales to Contra rebel groups in Nicaragua. He was a highly-decorated platoon commander during the Vietnam War. It is likely that Don Cane met him in 1969. This passage implies he was already active on TMACday in 1984.

 

Son Thang testimony – a massacre by US Marine Corps “hunter-killer” patrol led by Lance Corporal Randell D. Herrod on 19 February 1970, in which five women and 11 children were killed. North gave favourable testimony to Herrod.

 

The model for Kevin Egan was Joseph Casey – see above.

 

Tom Hallem commenced his run through the back streets of Ashfield – equivalent of Don Cane’s journey to Botany Cemetery.

 

Costumed in a cuckold’s suit and Victor work boots. My version of Stephen’s Latin hat and ashplant – Tom Hallem is dressed in the discarded clothing of Leon Daniel in TMAC. Mr. Daniel is the husband of his lover and dealer, Elizabeth Archer. He no longer fits into his clothes due to emaciation from HIV/AIDS. It is linked ironically to the costume of Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses. I say ‘ironic’ due to the fact that Stephen feels very stylish, whereas Tom feels like he is wearing fancy-dress.

 

Australian expatriates in London. Sewage froth on a bank – complex metaphor for the feelings and product of Australian artists in the UK. They were made to feel like shit. However, successful ones produced content which was often considered obscene.

 

See Deleuze and Guattari (C4). Cynical emissaries. They colonized our outsider status – see Billy Capri’s colloquium paper in Chapter Four.

 

Son must repeat the journey of the father – version 1 of slogan for Telemachus. Superseded by superscript/subscript version.

 

Unfortunate Oedipus. Look what Paris dragged home. Some other man’s purse – sons with unfortunate fates. Link to their fathers.

 

Priam’s moan-you-moaners – linkage of the mood of the King of Troy to cited song (see above).

 

Eteocles’ intransigence – King of Thebes. Son of Oedipus.

 

All that shit over Polynices’ corpse – another son of Oedipus. Elder of Eteocles. This reference relates to Sophocles‘ tragedy Antigone. Creon, new ruler of Thebes, decreed that Polynices was not to be buried or mourned on pain of death by stoning. Antigone defied this order.

 

Fighting brothers. Cane and Abel. Joseph and Esau. Bill and Paul. Stanislaus Joyce. Functional foil –various.

 

Swimming like Bobby Goldsmith – Gay Olympics athlete. See C7, Footnote 76.

 

Morphine suppository blooming in Tom’s guts like a Morton bay fig canopy. Tree of Hope hospice. Cabrini Private –Proladone is the brand name of this medication. Medical facilities in Melbourne.

 

What did they do to your chest? – question upon seeing the heart transplant patient without shirt. Link to Les Hallem’s wound in C2.

 

Uncle Paul’s eyes opened. He turned a savaged eye on his nephew – The character of Nuncle Richie in Ulysses in converted into Uncle Paul in Telemachus.

 

A teardrop cyst covered Leon’s face. Carmine gone grey. CMV. T Cell count exhausted – reference to typical, initial signs of HIV infection.

 

And I don’t want your uncle anywhere near my coffin, he said to Tom Hallem veering close to his face – reference to the brother of Uncle Paul.

 

A birth certificate. My father’s name is missing – reference to the author’s personal documentation.

 

Shem in his ink battleship. Bic Martello – Joyce as Shem. Pen as warship. Related reference to Bic pens.

 

Joyce told the Clongowes gentry that his uncles were millionaire tap merchants – FACT. See Ellmann.

 

Don Cane strode across the chapel courtyard…. Birnam Wood to Dunsinane – interesting reference to Macbeth. Don Cane is here presented as the symbol of rebellion and change to a corrupt society.

 

Buddha choking on dried boar’s flesh. Symbol of esoteric knowledge. Third avatar of Vishnu. Wild as an uncastrated pig – Gautama Buddha was poisoned at a mango grove in Pāvā on his way to Kuśīnagara. He gorged himself on suckling pig. An alleged offering. Shortly afterwards, he suffered fatal dysentery. On a related note, Varaha (Sanskrit: “Boar”), was the 3rd of the 10 incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu. When a demon named Hiranyaksha dragged the earth to the bottom of the sea, Vishnu took the form of a boar to rescue it.

 

Atalanta’s prey. Who would be Meleager? Fated to destroy his own family like Heracles. Or Althaea who threw the fatal stick. A mother killing her own child – see above.

 

Medea also. Partial to sacrilege, she was. Suckled by a she-bear – Euripides’ tragedy Medea depicts the end of her marriage with Jason. He abandons her to wed King Creon‘s daughter, Creusa. Medea and their sons are to be banished from Corinth. In revenge, she poisons Creusa and Creon, and later murders their sons before fleeing to Athens.

 

It’s a ton – AUD100 was the common pledge at Albert Wheaton’s funeral. This scene repeats the events at Arthur Dignam’s funeral in Ulysses.

 

“Eric Killion,” replied Don Cane slowly – a fabricated name used by Don Cane. Later, he visits the grave of this person. This suggests he has been using this name for decades.

 

We were mates up north – while this is actually a true statement, in that Don and Choc became friends as soldiers during training in North Queensland, the listeners would interpret the comment as a reference to childhood camaraderie.

 

Number never came up – conscription to the Vietnam Conflict in Australia was determined by luck of the draw using a barrel with numbers on live television. The chances of being conscripted in the ballot was ~7% (estimate by author. The following logic was applied – approximately 4% of Australian population is 20–24-year-old males historically (based on 2000-2016 censuses) > take 1% of this group as 20-year-old males > Australian population was ~11.65 million in 1966 (base year) > 1% of 11.65m equals 116,500 > there were ~64,000 conscripts of eligible male population from 1964-1972 > this equates to a raw average of 8,000 per year (8 years) > this equates to 8,000 out of 116,500 > or 7 per cent or 1:14).

 

Bald crown displayed. A damp mop. He pulled at his belt to hold the underside of his belly in place. His body assumes different shapes at different times to different folks. Note the arbitrary nature of character descriptions – Don Cane as Proteus possesses different physical appearance at different times to different audiences. This is in keeping with Classical tropes. Odysseus ranges from an old beggar and a spectacular hero made brilliant by Athena.

 

Stories of war service. Noxious tales. Apocrypha. Been every place. Done every battle. Keep up the Show. Misinformation. Spook-static. A realistic figurine – the war record of Don Cane is designed to be too extensive. This is a deliberate tactic by the author. It suggests the hyperbolic nature of this character as well as the mythology which surrounds him. In this raged, it links him to Odysseus.

 

Mkgnao! Mkgnao! – the sound made by Bloom’s cat in Ulysses.

 

Happy Valley. Five metres up to the deck. Imperial Citadel at Hue. Outer crust. Noman’s Land. Fifty-metre fire zone. Barbed wire inner fence. Zigzag trenches. Rock embankments secure my domain – description of Hue from the US perspective during the Tet Offensive, 1968. It was seized by the Vietcong who turned its fortifications into a grinding siege.

.

Rise out of the sea. Go up the beach face – summary of the ANZAC invasion of Gallipoli (1915). Physically grim.

 

Trojans skulking behind their vaunted parapets – correspondence with Troy within this passage on Turkish fortifications at Gallipoli (1915). Note that this campaign was fought on what is considered to be the approximate site of Troy.

 

German officers had arrived just in time to direct the Turkish defences. Under new management –the invasion of Gallipoli was ill-fated. German military advisers had arrived during 1914, stiffened fortifications and taken control of local troops.

 

Enter Apollo – his intervention in the siege of Troy was not decisive. The death of Hector did not result in the defeat of Troy. It needed the stratagem of the horse to finally overcome the city.

 

War, horrid war, approaches your borders – prophecy (disbelieved).

 

Helen o’er smooth walls reclined. Share some intel with Priam. Paris swept off the field. Go to his bedroom. Unscrupulous Venus. Settle into a siege – summary of the preamble to the siege from the POV of the royal party.

 

Ucalegon leaning against a dugout basking in the sun – link Troy with Gallipoli and thus ANZACS.

Ucalegon was an Elder of Troy.

 

Sharing a smoke with Louis in the ANZAC trench. Telling a joke. Play you again next Saturday at Bolton’s Ridge. PJ Harvey’s lyrics channel Les Carlyon’s prose. Death was everywhere, they said – summary of lyrics on “Let England Shake” by PJ Harvey. Clearly, the author read Les Carlyon’s non-fiction masterwork, Gallipoli. It was probably given to her by Mick Harvey.

 

Priam means GUTS – his name derives from the Luwian compound ‘Priya-muwa,’ which means “exceptionally courageous”.

 

Layout of Troy. It all started with infrastructure. Ripping off Poseidon. Bad dope. Walls made of stakes. Crystal labyrinths. Yon devoted. Troy’s proud walls must lie levelled. Wrap in fire. Troy overlooked the plains of Scamander – a bunch of technical details about the fortifications of Troy. The head contractors were Poseidon and Apollo. King Laomedon refused promissory payment of immortal horses. As a result, Poseidon supported the Greeks.

 

Khe Sanh squatted in a drain. Stick Grunts out in the jungle and the NVA will come. Outposts in the hills. Mountaintop beauty. Tracer slicing nocturne. Low organhum. AK47. Unique pop. Once tried, never forgot. Infiltrating our trenches. Hand to hand wrestle. A grenade threw me against the side of the ditch. Both legs shredded. Calling out “Choc!” He dragged me back to CHQ. Wet bandages covered my shame. KSCZ – description of the Battle of Khe Sanh (1968) in Quảng Trị Province, South Vietnam.

 

The Greeks built a defensive barrier around their port along the coast after the death of Achilles. See Books 12-13 – see the Odyssey. Compare to Vung Tau. I could have added descriptions of the fortifications at the heads of Sydney Harbour during WW2. Midget submarines penetrated this barrier in 1942.

 

Paris’ random shot – the death of Achilles has been ascribed to a random, blind arrow shot by Paris.

 

An anguished mother hurled a tile down on Pyrrhus from a rooftop which crushed his skull – during the Battle of Argos, the mother of an Argive soldier threw a tile on Pyrrhus which broke his spine and paralysed him.

 

Joyce would have seen exquisite justice in that image. Life’s aimless ill-purposes. A back-kick, Stephen calls it. Nightmares consume our end. Each person reduced to a sequence of events good, bland and useless – sentence following Stephen’s famous pronouncement on History.

 

Lost the protection of the Mediterranean fleet – dual reference to British sea power and the conundrum of Odysseus.

 

Vung Tau. Every type of work ship chained together. Loose wire perimeter. A couple of dozy guards. Evacuation point IF THE SHIT EVER – port in Southern Vietnam used as the embarkation point for Australian forces. Surprisingly ill-fortified and well-guarded.

 

75 it did. The fishing trawlers were overwhelmed by refugees. Stuck in the tide like Odysseus. IN/OUT/LULL. Forced back to shore. Re-education camps – In 1975, many South Vietnamese citizens sought to flee the oncoming NVA by boat. Many did not escape and were interned by the new government. Odysseus was held offshore by Poseidon with Ithaca in sight.

 

Tom Hallem closed quickly on the familiar form of Bob Hensley. His long, crooked back was set on a deliberate path – the Hensley’s channel Philemon and Baucis.

 

Our packs o’er-pressed us. The heat toppled our bodies forward. Hills twice as steep up Kosciusko’s side – Mount Kosciusko is Australian tallest peak at 2,700m.

 

karst face – a rugged, metallic blue limestone found in Kosciusko National Park, Australia. In this instance, it refers to a character’s expression.

 

INSERT NUMEROLOGICAL MEANING (NOTE JJ FIXATION) – instructions to make additional text insertions (never actioned) is a characteristic stylistic device in Telemachus. Here, it makes note of Joyce’s obsession with numerological significance.

 

Take the cattle to high country each spring. Where the fledgling Murrumbidgee cuts across Blue Waterholes. Mount Analogue. Up where Oedipus was saved. Cattle left free to roam and forage. Government put a stop to all that in nineteen-fifty-five. Confiscated our stock. Mustered the stragglers. Forced relocations. Flood Adaminaby – a summary of the experience of stockmen in the Snowy region of Australia during the construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme (1949-1974).

 

They sank the Franklin homestead. One kilometre south from the dam side road – the home of famous 19^th century Australian author, Miles Franklin, was inundated when Jounama Pondage was constructed in the 1960s as part of the Snowy Scheme.

 

A volunteer was bashing out a honky-tonk version of “Bill Bailey” in the recreation room – reference to the style of Winifred Atwell. Ragtime pianist. She was a popular entertainer of West Indian origin in the UK and Australia from 1950-1970s. She emigrated to Australia in the 1970s and became an Australian citizen in 1981. She died in 1983. An outspoken critic of racism in Australia.

 

Menelaus was a shrunken figure by the end of the Iliad. He could never get his hands on Paris. His brother ran the show. Directed him to kill Adrestus. Execute a POW. Low act. Not even a foetus in its mother’s belly was to be spared – Agamemnon was the brother.

 

Agamemnon was always a ruthless bastard. Slaughtered his own daughter for God’s sake. But was he too cocky or too trusting when he went back to Mycenae? Fatal error – the figure of Agamemnon is deftly prepared by Homer. Military leaders often suffer in civilian life.

 

Penelope stroking my hair while the broken notes of “Japanese Sandman” crept in a whisper – see Chapter 2 keywords. Use search function.

 

Embers. Shelley’s coal gone cold – see above for analysis of this image by Joyce.

 

At the arse end of the cemetery, a market gardener was tilling his field. Rows of Rau Muong, Vietnamese mint and shallots had been cut into the slope at odd angles above a deep gully full-frothing with blackberry weed. Conical hat. Flannelette shirt open. Scarecrow staked in dirt – traditional Vietnamese agrarian cultivation by refugees has been an unusual feature of the backlots of Sydney since the end of the Vietnam Conflict.

 

Verse from some Matt Munro song – popular British entertainer from 1950-1970s. Famous for big ballads and show tunes.

 

He read its inscription: Eric Killion / 9 May 1935 – 18 Apr 1961 / “Simple man, simple dream” – actual grave at Botany Cemetery. Witnessed by the author during a bicycle ride. Accurately rendered.

 

Killed in a training exercise at Canungra – see above.

 

Off on psych training with Pete Young – reference to Lieutenant Peter Young in The Men Who Persevered by Bruce Davies & Gary McKay. This is an excellent account of the Australian Army training Team Vietnam (AATTV). The following section was repurposed for TMAC with Don Cane replacing Captain John Healy: “Lieutenant Peter Young thought it all a bit ‘gung-ho,’ but he and Captain John Healy were required to undergo a more gruelling mental challenge in Melbourne as they had been selected to serve with the Special-Forces-cum-CIA program in Danang.” This event links Don Cane very early in his service with US forces, and makes his subsequent recommissioning with MACSOV more realistic. His extensive service record is designed to resemble that of Odysseus, who was an outstanding soldier.

 

Lyndall made it all the way back to Emmy’s farm – erroneous reference by the author to Story of an African Farm (1883) by Olive Schreiner (1855-1920). Lyndall was the free-spirited female character who became pregnant in an ill-fated love affair. Her child died during birth. Subsequently, Lyndall succumbed slowly to illness and melancholy. Near the end, she began a journey back to the farm with her nurse, the cross-dresser Gregory. She dies at night on the plains gazing into a hand-mirror.

 

Maybe mum’s husband in West Virginia passed away. Plumber at Union Carbide, outside Charleston – Don Cane’s mother emigrated to the USA after WW2. Her husband worked for Union Carbide. Ironically, they lived in the town of Dunbar.

 

Wrecked the life of many a poor girl – Verse 1, Line 3 of “Love Careless Love Blues.” Based on the 1925 recording by Bessie Smith. The significance of this choice of song by the author should be noted. Its narrator recounts an ill-fated love life. Verse 5, Line 3 contains a telling line for Penelope Hallem: “You brought the wrong man into this life of mine.” That man was Donald John Cane. Also, Penelope is a semi-professional blues singer in Sydney, echoing the career of Molly Bloom.

 

Insert list of dead mothers. Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin. Anticlea killed herself on a false report of Ulysses’ death. See also Aegeus. Dicken’s killed them off in childbirth. Mary Dedalus succumbed to cancer. Mary Joyce died 13 August 1903, aged forty-four. Less than a year before Ulysses is set – In order: Rachel

 

Her son broke many a true vow – “Careless Love Blues,” op.cit, Verse 2, Line 3.

 

Church of the Three Patrons at Rathgar brought the wrong man into her life. Ten births three misbirths eleven mortgages pawned furniture. Indigent Children. Absconding fathers – a recapitulation of events in the life of Mary Joyce AKA Mary Dedalus. Her fate is associated with the lyric of “Careless Love Blues,”

 

Why I sing this song of hate – “Careless Love Blues,” op.cit, Verse 5, Line 4. Last line of this song.

 

Black sail of Perseus billowing off Piraeus – textual error. Should be Theseus.

 

Flying through my head like wine. Or a stray bullet – “Careless Love Blues,” op.cit, Verse 1, Line 2. The lyric is linked directly to thoughts of fatality in the Vietnam Conflict.

 

You’ve filled my heart with lead. Wearing its copper jacket – Ibid, Verse 3, Line 3. Once again, the lyric is connected to death in the Vietnam Conflict. “Weary old blues” in the original lyric has been replaced with “lead.”

 

I twisted on the track straight after Bobby Horne shuffled off that Jumping Jack. His eyes held my gaze for a moment as the rest of his body exploded – death of Corporal Horne, 1966.

 

Cook’s sails sped between these tight heads and turned port for shelter. Scarce respite in that anchorage – brief summary of the arrival of Captain Cook at Kurnell, Botany Bay, 1770. It was an inhospitable place without a water source.

 

E-Z Breeze Café…. GO COLA…. Sid Fogg Coaches…. Pipe King – characteristic businesses of this backward location in the Sutherland Shire, Sydney, Australia.

 

Couldn’t have built a better monument if they’d mounted Paul Hogan on a point post – popular comedian. The outer scoring post in AFL. Within it, one point is scored. Beyond it, the ball is ruled out of bounds. Thus, a metaphor. Impalement of one upon the other is an image offering droll commentary.

 

Drowned, starved, parched, murdered in foreign wars murdering poisoning killing the locals back home – thumbnail sketch of the history of European civilisation in Australia.

 

Cross the Goyder Line – a line drawn on a map of South Australia beyond which cropping was considered impossible due to inadequate rainfall (average annual rainfall beneath 250 mm). Named after George Goyder, Surveyor-General of South Australia, who fixed the line in 1865 after an expedition of 3,200 km across the colony.

 

Don Cane shifted across the plot to his father’s headstone…. “A just upright man” – expression from the Bible offering a humorous double meaning as the subsequent imagery shows.

 

Shelley’s down/up imagery – stuff was always rising and falling, dropping to the earth and evaporating back into ether in his poetry.

 

INSERT Professor Edkin’s system of self-classification – see linguistic concepts of Joseph Edkins (1823-1905). Self-classification in social terms occurs when an individual reports an identity or membership within any group (ie. Skinheads).

 

Pessimism of the intellect. Optimism of the will – statement attributed to Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937).

 

Nation founded on misprision – misprision is defined as “the deliberate concealment of one’s knowledge of a treasonable act or a felony.” This is the relationship of European settles to the locals upon arrival in 1788.

 

Reactionary coups like ’75 – dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975 is seen by many experts as akin to a coup against an elected government.

 

An atmosphere of failure and crude irony surrounds our national leaders – this statement is followed by a list of the fates of 14 prominent Australian Prime Ministers, Premiers, Governors and others.

 

“She thinks you’re her late niece.” – mistaken and false identity is a key trope in Telemachus.

 

Death of Sydney Carton – reference to the sacrificial death of this character in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

 

Accidental beheadings in Shakespeare – a joke on the Bard’s propensity for unintentional demises as plot stimulants.

 

Harmon’s sailor as depicted by the author of The Curved Plough – not known. Perhaps invented.

 

Prisons where escape was impossible like Siberia (Ivan Denisovich), Papillon (French Guinea) or English convicts (New South Wales) – the author deliberately mixes place/person in this anti-style passage. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) was a famous novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It inspired the title of the Beatles song, “A Day in the Life.”

 

Helen identifying Telemachus by gait – claim by Helen (ex-Troy) when Telemachus visited Sparta. She also claimed to identify his father in Troy. This is one of those straightforward correspondences used by Homer to highlight the power of DNA.

 

Eurycleia – nurse of Odysseus. She recognised Odysseus by a scar on his leg, sustained in childhood during a boar hunt.

 

Cyrano’s nose – Cyrano de Bergerac was a smooth talker with an out-sized proboscis. A historical figure (17th century), he is best-known today as the titular subject of a play by Edmond Rostand (1897), which most people assume was written by someone like Voltaire back in the 18^th century.

 

Sitting in a kitchen full of strangers in Wolverhampton everyone talking through their adenoids. Kris Richards walked straight up to me in the crowd at Birmingham Bus Station. You must be Uncle Eric’s son, she said. Eric the father and Eric the husband. My mother’s dissembling – anecdotes from the author’s rich vault of self-justifying tales of existence.

 

Parnell went under several aliases including Fox and Stewart to cover his tristes with Katharine O’Shea, which bore fruit in the form of three children (see Eumaeus) – Charles Stuart Parnell (1846-1891) was a key figure in Irish Nationalism. His fate and legacy was a strong undercurrent in all of Joyce’s writing. Parnell is mostly considered through the positive opinions of Simon Dedalus. His relationship with Katherine O’Shea was a personal scandal that affected his political influence and health. He did assume aliases during their liaison. They were married and did have three children before his untimely death.

 

Twins hiring twins who were separated at birth. Sebastian and Viola – typical Shakespearean plot convolution in this instance in Twelfth Night.

 

Henry the Fifth disguised as a yeoman. Tartuffe’s mask. Looks a lot like Charles Darnay. Fake piety. Go back to the circus in Nebraska. Swticheroo. Swap exile with Hermann Stoeffer. Take on the guise of Eugène L. Your nickname is Napoleon. Gogol’s bureaucrat. Wilde’s Jack posing as Earnest discovers what his name actually is – long list of aliases, fakes and assumed identities.

 

Eliza Doolittle > Darwin’s bet > Empire linguistics > Henry Lawson in London – a complex image-turn from Pygmalion (1913) by George Bernard Shaw to the experience of Australian writers in Imperial England. The Australian accent was mocked like Eliza’s Cockney English and drew patronising commentary. The quality of the written work was not considered.

 

Lionel Logie teaching ANZACS how to speak through holes – speech therapist immortalised in the film, “The King’s Speech.”

 

Our Protean tongue – Australian English.

 

Dominioned literature – title of a parodic theory of post-colonial literature. See Chapter 4 for full explication by William Capri.

 

STRINE – a satirical term to describe the broad accent of Australian English which was coined in 1964 by Alastair Ardoch Morrison, under the pseudonym of Afferbeck Lauder (a syncope for “Alphabetical Order”). It spawned four humorous books including the classic Let Stalk Strine. Strine is used in Chapter 10 during the scene at the Crest Hotel, Kings Cross involving Ocker, King of the Push, who is an Australian version of Joyce’s The Citizen. See also Appendix B for translation of Strine talk into English.

 

A barmaid grinds out the term, tie’m pleas jennermen – Strine for ‘time please, gentleman.’ A traditional announcement that the public bar was about to close.

 

The spring race meeting is the highlight of the social calendar in both Tumut and Adelong…. Have you put the posters up at Quong’s? We should be getting them out to folk as far as Moorang and Glen Marsh…. And then there’s the advertisement in the Star to be placed – accurate references to life and events in the Snowy region of NSW during the 1930s. Quong is a shopkeeper living in Adaminaby in Happy Valley, the first novel by Patrick White. Moorang and Glen Marsh are far-flung hamlets in relation to Tumut. The Star was the principle local newspaper.

 

Ask that Jewish tyke fella: Broeom – humorous amalgam of the name Bloom in Ulysses and the family name of the author’s wife. Her family is Irish (father’s side) and Jewish (mother). Designed to look awkward and be unpronounceable.

 

“How’s your brother?” she asked suddenly. “Who?” “The slut’s son,” she replied. Her husband told her SHUSH – dementia has relaxed Mrs Hensley’s inhibitions. She is referring to Billy Capri and his mother. This passage is proleptic of the revelation of Billy’s true paternity in Chapter 4.

 

A formation of geese passed across the porch – allusion to Penelope’s dream in Book 19 of the Odyssey. It is analysed in Telemachus from page 673 onwards.

 

Got some work anti-fouling yachts down the CYC – Cruising Yacht Club of Sydney, Rushcutters Bay.

 

I’m going on the Sydney-Hobart for the first-time next month – Australia’s premier yacht race which starts on Boxing Day each year. It started in 1945. The race distance is 1,170 km. The following passage mixes features from this trace with motifs in Ulysses and the Odyssey.

 

Van Diemen’s Land – original name for the island of Tasmania.

 

Bass Strait. A shallow ledge – the body of water between the Australian mainland and Tasmania.

 

Elijah, a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, bobbing east – reference to a key (water-borne) motif in Ulysses.

 

King Island listing to starboard – an island in Bass Strait to the west of the fleet. Famous for cheese.

 

Piercing Scylla’s pinnacles – a reference to the Odyssey.

 

Whirlpool off Eden – port off the south coast of NSW. Last mainland location where yachts in the Sydney-Hobart race can shelter.

 

Wayfarer still holds the record for the slowest race time. Eleven days – reference to above yacht race.

 

The Mediterranean represented Homer’s entire cosmos. The known world emanated around it. Dawn emerged over its wine-dark meniscus. It hauled sunset down as well. And scrolled the constellations – summary of Homer’s world view.

 

The geography of Odysseus’ voyage is hotly disputed by scholars. Some say that its western extremity was south of Tarragona in the Hades episode. Others maintain Ogygia, Calypso’s island, was further south of Gibraltar off Morocco. The Lestrygonians episode has been sited anywhere from Sardinia to Telepylos on the African coast. There is general agreement that Lotus-Eaters was set on Djerba Island off Tunisia – summary of various theories of the physical geography of the Odyssey.

 

Green Cape.… Bass Strait…. fast run down the Tasmanian coast – comparison of the Odyssey with Sydney-Hobart yacht race. Designed to position Greg Wheaton as the ‘perfect son’ for Done Cane (and also Odysseus). This sets up a telling contrast with the reality of his own sons.

 

Farewell Queenstown harbour full of Italian ships – direct quote from Ulysses. Memory of Simon Dedalus.

 

I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said. Salt junk all the time – direct quote from Ulysses. By the sailor to Bloom.

 

Captain Cat– narrator of Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas. A retired sea captain. One of a list of notable seafaring characters in this section of TMAC.

 

Ahab – principal of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Another sea-dog.

 

Don Cane admired the young man. He was set in Athena’s mold. Versatile. No privilege. A labourer. A technician. Master of mechanical arts. An artist of sorts. All the skills of Man chiselled into a fine frame. Give him a garland. Could be an astronaut. Put him in the jungle: he would thrive. Drop him onto a plank in the ocean: he would get to shore safely. Everyman’s offspring. Not-Everyson – laudatory description of Greg Wheaton from the POV of Don Cane.

 

No. I live up north. This is the first time I’ve been here in years – another lie from the man also known as Eric Killion.

 

Golden Sheaf Hotel – a pub on the corner of Liverpool Road and Burwood Road, Enfield.

 

Let’s cross to Chris Burns in the Budget Rent-a-Car helicopter – fabricated name for radio announcer. The author worked on the ill-fated Budget capital raising in 1989.

 

The Australian Bureau of Meteor-CHEEP!-ology rates pollution in the low range. Another wet aft CHEEP! will be followed by an unsettled evening. Winds in excess of forty kilometres per hour are forecast. City top of nineteen degrees, Liverpool twenty-one. And a wet track for the Cup in Melbourne, Gary CHEEP! Mudlark’s delight – actual weather conditions on 6 November 1984.

 

I’m Chris Burns for Budget Flat Rate. Twenty-five dollars-a-day including mileage – actual 1984 costs.

 

Time for another Solid Gold Classic. Horse with No Name on Sydney’s W-ROCKS FM – fanciful, manifold narrative construct. It would have been typical for radio song lists on Melbourne Cup Day to be dominated by tracks about horses. W-ROCKS FM is a pun on the title of Chapter 5 and radio station naming. “Rocks,” of course, also refers to a type of popular music.

 

Appian Way – an unusual, seed-shaped street in Burwood, Sydney.

 

Kingswood station wagon – popular Australian motor vehicle manufactured by General Motors Holden. Extremely durable. Capable of being run into the ground.

 

Ana Lafei Papese – Papese (TO SING, PLURAL). Also, the word for dolphin – tragic heroine of Telemachus.

 

Must be imbued with elements of ALP (beautiful plural) – the character, Anna Livia Plurabelle, in Finnegans Wake was known by this acronym.

 

Also, M le F. Link to Arthurian legend – abbreviation for Morgana Le Fay. An enchantress in Arthurian legends. Le Fay means fairy.

 

She is taking Tom on his final journey back to Avalon – Tom as King Arthur. A fatal voyage.

 

“Wara wara,” said Tom Hallem grasping the frame – an example of the cringeworthy attempts at humour of European Australians in relation to First Nations people. I nearly – and maybe should have – deleted this passage. Along with some other ones.

 

Why should Stephen think of Eccles Street as his father’s palace? His REAL version of the battle with the suitors would have involved confronting standover men trying to evict his family from his father’s latest house next day – the author’s theory is that Stephen Dedalus left Bloom with relief. He was devoted to his father like James Joyce. His battle with the suitors would have been fighting the latest eviction of his family.

 

Link to Father Conmee’s arrears. His landlord was Reverend Love, an Anglican cleric from Sallins who appears in sub-episode 8 of Wandering Rocks – evil Anglicans.

 

Compulsory tithes imposed on Catholic farmers to support the protestant church – more examples of evil Anglicans.

 

Molly Maguire groups went looking for him (see Cyclops). In Dublin, they were called Peep O’Day Boys – erroneous information built on the specious utterance of the Citizen in Cyclops. Molly Maguire was an Irish 19th-century secret society, best known for activism among Irish-American and Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. Peep o’ Day Boys was an agrarian Protestant association in 18th-century Ireland. In Circe, there is the following stage instruction: “(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o’-day boy’s hat signs to Stephen.). These groups bear no resemblance, other than antinomian activity.

 

Link to Battle of Union Street, Newtown, 1931 – a street battle in Sydney during the Great Depression when anti-eviction protesters barricaded themselves into a house and fought hired thugs and the police.

 

Contemporary authors like Henry James, Oliver Schreiner and later Hemingway and D H Lawrence all depicted the struggle of modern women in a patriarchal society – throwaway theory on Ulysses.

 

“I want to put some aboriginal words on a new painting” – a comment designed to show the superficiality and glibness of Tom Hallem.

 

I’m a Meanjin girl. Grew up in Serviceton. I speak Turrbal. That’s my mum’s language – a realistic exchange of the author c.1984.

 

ALP: “Brisbane. You know. Fringe dwellers. From housing estates. They call the place INALA these days.” TH: “What does Inala mean?” ALP: “How should I know? They probably made it up.” – a reasonable deduction by the author.

 

Her thick hair was pulled back with a bright red hairband, displaying the full arch of her soft face – she is reminiscent of Adrienne Gaha.

 

Went to see Whores Manure last night. Ended up at the Taxi Club –

 

The car settled at the Brighton Street lights. Place where ALG blew his lights out – Reference to the suicide of Adam Lindsay Gordon.

 

“Push in that tape,” she said finally – list of contents of an actual compilation tape of the author, c.1984.

 

Yarrbal word – an error on a few counts by Ana Lafei. Symbolic in this regard of received history and groping for identity when history has been destroyed by invaders. In fact, ‘bung’ was considered a Turrbal word. The Turrbal people come from present-day Brisbane, Queensland. Ana Lafei hails from there. Alternatively, they are known as the Mianjin/Meanjin mob. Meanjin was the name of an Australian literary journal. The etymology of Bung indicates that it originates in Middle English from Middle Dutch ‘bonghe’ (noun) [source – Oxford Languages].

 

mid-15c., “large stopper for a cask,” of uncertain origin, perhaps from Middle Dutch bonge “stopper;” or perhaps from French bonde “bung, bunghole” (15c.), which may be of Germanic origin (or the Germanic words may be borrowed from Romanic), or it may be from Gaulish *bunda (compare Old Irish bonn, Gaelic bonn, Welsh bon “base, sole of the foot”). It is possible that either or both of these sources is ultimately from Latin puncta in the sense of “hole” (from PIE root *peuk- “to prick”). Transferred to the cask-mouth itself (also bung-hole) from 1570s.

 

Beta House – a vacant warehouse with artist studios and squats on King Street, Newtown, early 1980s. Site of Chapter 3 of TMAC.

 

The last Martello was Fort Denison (see C5) – FACT. “There was only one Martello Tower built in Australia, Fort Denison. It was built in 1857 on an island in Sydney Harbour and was the last Martello tower ever built in the British Empire.” (see https://martellotowers.co.uk/australasia)

 

Commanded a fire arc across the length of Dublin Bay to the Poolbeg stacks – the location of a Martello Tower at Sandymount was sound militarily.

 

Siege of Valletta – In 1565, the Ottoman Empire attempted to conquer the island of Malta, which was held by the Knights Hospitaller. See below for links between Malta and Ogygia.

 

Ogygia – island inhabited by Calypso. Where Odysseus spent 7 years and sired at least 2 children.

 

See Brueghel’s painting –  Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) painted a scene of Odysseus and Calypso in the caves of Ogygia.

 

Gozo – tradition identifies Ogygia with the island of Gozo in the Maltese archipelago. It is typical of his lush Mediterranean and Biblical nature works.

 

Visit the Azure Window – while this may seem like a reference to Tom Hallem visiting the school chapel in C2, in fact, it concerns the so-called The Azure Window (Maltese: it-Tieqa Żerqa), which was a 28-metre-tall (92 ft) natural arch on Gozo. It collapsed in 2017.

 

Caravaggio was sent there by the Colonna. Knights gave him sanctuary – the painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio took refuge on Malta in 1607-08. Fabrizio Sforza Colonna facilitated his escape from Naples, as he was a Knight of Malta. Caravaggio was actually made a knight himself because of his magnificent artworks. However, Caravaggio soon wore out his welcome. He was expelled from the Order in December 1608.

 

Clark Air Base – a major United States military facility on Luzon Island in the Philippines from 1903-1991. It is discussed

 

Study of Saint Jerome translating the Bible into Latin – recurring image from C1 (see snip below). There are numerous images of Jerome in his study, the desert and extracting the thorn from a lion’s paw. This reference is “Saint Jerome Writing” (1607) by Caravaggio, which is held at St John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta.

 

Homosexual guilt-trips – a jokey reference to Caravaggio’s travails which, in fact, were no laughing matter.

 

Terrors of hell down catacombs. Chu Chi – a recurring image in TMAC. Chu Chi tunnels were addressed in C2 Keywords.

 

Ana face-up on the Lake – Ana Lafei dies in Chapter Ten over a drug overdose that results in drowning in an underground abandoned railway platform in Sydney known as The Lake. This is one of many proleptic references to her death, which is designed to cut-off any suspense or surprise in TMAC. The author rejects such contrivances.

 

Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent – a scrap of Latin from Virgil which translates as “everywhere horror seizes the soul, and the very silence is dreadful.” This seems like an apt quote for the death of Ana.

 

Napoleon’s double-cross – Frederick pays Napoleon for timber with counterfeit bills in Animal Farm by George Orwell. It also alludes to tactics by Napoleon Bonaparte, such as his use of deception in the Battle of Lodi (1796) to cross the River Po.

 

Beheading of John. Ends justify means. Salome’s dance steps – references to “Herodias” by Gustav Flaubert. It was later channelled by Oscar Wilde into the play, Salome.

 

Broadway Hotel. Lingerie Ladies. Tuesday lunchtime – proleptic comparison of topless dancers in Chapter 5 with Salome.

 

Foxseal – keyword in TMAC. Name of a horse in the 1984 Melbourne Cup. Title of sub-episode in C5. Linked to Stephen’s fox-riddle in Ulysses.

 

Calypso’s entreaties. A sad case. Odysseus rejected immortality. Matter of a mere vampire bite – Calypso negotiated with the gods and Odysseus for him to attain immortality if he stayed with her on Ogygia. If it had gone ahead, the author suggests it would have been achieved by a physiological action much like lamial puncture.

 

Calypso as visited by Hermes – the God came to advise the goddess-nymph to give up Odysseus.

 

Insert list of complaints. I saved him when he was alone. Inspired his art. He’ll be nothing alone. I have no ship to give him. He needs a prop. I can only counsel Ulysses on how to reach his own land unscathed. What is he seeking anyway? To reclaim the past. A safe harbour – Calypso’s lament.

 

See Joyce and Sylvia Beach. Someone with good networks. A patron. Not a Muse. Not Bonnard’s wife. Or Manet’s Olympia. Victorine. Dali’s Gala. Or Lizzie Siddal. Get with the INC.ROWD. Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim in Venice – a list of male artists and female models, muses, champions and wives. Sylvia Beach was the proprietor of Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris. She was the first publisher of Ulysses (1922). Later, he signed with another publisher causing severe losses to her business. Bonnard’s wife and model was Marthe Bonnard from 1893 until her death in 1942. Manet’s model was the French artist, Victorine-Louise Meurent (1844-1927). Salvador Dali was married to ‘Gala’ (real name: Elena Ivanovna Diakonova) from 1934 until her death in 1982. Lizzie Siddal has already been discussed in this concordance to Chapter 3. Her full name was Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (1829-1862). She acted as a model for many Pre-Raphaelite artists, most famously in Millais’ “Ophelia.” She was a bit like Edie Sedgwick in the Factory days TBH. She struggled to be taken seriously as an artist and died prematurely. Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim were rumoured to be lovers. ​She relocated to Venice after WW2 and her divorce from Max Ernst. Her home on the Grand Canal (Palazzo Venier dei Leoni) became the site of a famous art museum.

 

Chipping frescoes off the wall at Pompeii – an act of cultural vandalism by Peggy Guggenheim.

 

Twelve days with Samuel Beckett on a velvet chaise longue – a romantic interlude for Peggy Guggenheim with a future Nobel prize winner.

 

Pollock’s sponsor. Funded by the CIA – reference to Jackson Pollock and the financing of Abstract Expressionism by the US Government after WW2 as a form of cultural imperialism against Europe.

 

Separate politely for the sake of the children. Nausithous and Nausinous. Maybe Latinus as well – children of Calypso and Odysseus.

 

He demands a pledge. Calypso gives it. There is a feast in her cave. She compares Penelope with a goddess unfavourably. That was a tactic which backfired. It only makes Odysseus reaffirm his commitment to get home. They fuck. Dawn comes. She provides the means. He builds a boat. The wind rises. EXIT – the end of the relationship between Calypso and Odysseus as seen from the POV of the former.

 

“I’ll try scoring for both of us,” Tom said. “But there’s been a drought lately” – the Sydney drug scene was in the grip of a heroin/opioid drought at this time. This explains the difficulty for Tom Hallem in securing drugs on 6 November 1984. It also explains his error in Ana’s dosage, which was due to inexperience with high grade heroin.

 

Reference Patyegarang (see C4) – woman of the Eora nation who taught her language to Lieutenant William Dawes. They made the first detailed study of Australian Indigenous languages.

 

Putuwá – a word in the Eora language defined in the journal of William Dawes as, “to warm ones (sic) hand by the fire & then to squeeze gently the fingers of another person”. It is considered to have special significance in disclosing the likely intimacy between Patyegarang and Dawes.

 

See Twelfth Night. Orsino loves Olivia who loves Cesario/Viola who loves Orsino. Mary’s love for Toby.  Ophelia’s feelings for Hamlet that may or may not be returned. See also Lysander who loves Helena who loves Demetrius who loves Hermia. Resolve with fairy dust – further plot convolutions of Shakespeare. How did he get away with it? It’s the peerless language, I guess.

 

There’s no such balm in Wuthering Heights – novel by Emily Bronte (1847).

 

Maybe Tom felt more like Werther – eponymous character in the epistolary novel sequence, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), by J. W. von Goethe.

 

Hallem absorbed fleeting symbols: a sandwich board on the church footpath advertising the fact that ELIJAH IS COMING – direct link to key symbol in Ulysses.

 

“Want to see Nick Cave tonight?” asked Ana at last. “We’re first support….” – Birth of Mirtha was an alternative band in Sydney led by Elizabeth (guitar, vocals) and Joanne (bass). The former is a minor model for Ana Lafei. The latter appears as Jackie in episode 6 of “Wandering Rocks.” Birth of Mirtha did not support ‘Nick Cave: Man, or Myth?’ at the Sydney Musicians Club. It is a plot device. The actual date of the concert was 3 November 1984. It has been altered to fit the requirements of this work.

 

The car ploughed around the corner and stopped in front of a grim take-away – Johnson Street, Annandale.

 

Exit Peisistratus. He supplied Telemachus’ first real fellowship – reference to The Odyssey. Peisistratus is the son of Nestor. He accompanies Telemachus on part of his journey. This refers to the scene where they part. The text notes that, “he disappeared from Classical…. Another footnote.” This aligns Peisistratus with Telemachus in symbolic terms.

 

‘This is for your husband,’ Tom Hallem said slotting Elizabeth’s envelope between Ana’s legs – Tom delivers the letter for Matthew Supplejack on behalf of Elizabeth Archer. It contains confirmation that Matt was won inclusion in a major European art exhibition, which will be announced in Chapter Ten. Ana Lafei is Matt’s partner. However, they are not married. It is a resentful jibe from Tom Hallem, accompanied by a crude act.

 

Across both faces, he had drawn a sequence of small skeleton-puppets floating through space with their fingers linked like parachutists – Tom mars the envelope with emblems of his own work. This should be assessed psychologically and symbolically by the reader.

 

Stephen starts Proteus wanting to paint everything black but he is slowly charged with colour during the episode – analysis follows of how Joyce evolves coloration in this episode to cast fresh light on his character’s mood. Various references to gold, yellow and green; Wilde and Pater; custard; and Queen Victoria’s teeth.

 

Stephen writes a scrap of verse on the back of Deasy’s le

tter – speculation on the content of this poem has been rife amongst Joyce scholars. It was probably juvenilia which was too embarrassing to be quoted in Ulysses.

 

Missus Horne wrote two letters to her son in Vietnam twice per day – a fact about the author’s neighbour in Campsie. Her letters were returned in her son’s parcel of belongings after his death (see above).

 

A telegram from his father called Stephen home from France to his dying mother. It commenced with the misspelt word, “Nother” – a fact from the life of James Joyce. See biography by Richard Ellmann [INSERT PAGE NUMBER].

 

Critics generally pile onto Simon Dedalus with disdain wherever possible. Ulysses is more complex – analysis follows of this character’s appearances in the novel as well as comparisons with John Joyce.

 

“See yer when yer worms are straighter,” – comic piece of rhyming slang in Australia for ‘see you later.’

 

“Don’t forget my taste,” she shot back – Ana reconfirms her desire for heroin at parting.

 

Parramatta Road – a detailed description of a low-quality retail strip in Annandale follows.

 

cars creeping westward, past and beyond him, a movement that is associated with sunset and death… whereas Tom now continued east, backwards towards dawn, the place where the moon rises as a heavy pastille over Bondi Beach – an important extract demonstrating how Tom Hallem contradicts quotidian passage. This acts as an emblem for his alienation. Of course, he is actually moving westward in symbolic terms towards death.

 

Elizabeth has possession of my home. I now none. No key. I will not sleep there tonight. Nor in the house of Les Hallem. Nor Ana’s couch either. I could just wander off the page tonight like Stephen Dedalus and let the end of the novel overtake me – Tom Hallem as Stephen Dedalus. A direct appropriation form Ulysses.

 

Elsinore’s tempting flood – an allusion to Hamlet in Stephen Dedalus’ internal monologue in Proteus

 

It fixed Ophelia – she drowned in Hamlet (like Ana Lafei). This is prolepsis of Ana’s death, which is reinforced a few lines later (“Ana on the Lake…. Ana flipped manically. Last vital sign.”).

 

an annihilated cat was exposed in the gutter outside the Annandale Hotel – correspondence with the dead dog imaged shortly thereafter in Ulysses. Also, linked to Bloom’s comment on “animal reflex” causing the baring of teeth.

 

My mother took out her dentures to die. Slumped in her great brown armchair in front of a television she had long since lost the ability to tune. Head lolled back. A crevice in her face in repose. I touched her silver hair. No wake-up. Kate’s dead, I said with breath-pangs when I got back upstairs. We placed her on the floor for the paramedics. Then we picked her back up at each end and lay her straight along the bed to wait for the coroner. Silvan weight. Look close. – actual rendition of the author finding his dead mother (2017).

 

A headless mannequin modelled a lime linen overcoat behind op shop glass like some bottled museum piece – the emotion caused by the above passage necessitated a counter-balancing image.

 

Glassy brine off Esperance. I alone saw John. My brother did not want to be rescued. I dropped a lifebuoy. Bade him: TAKE. – a scene described to the author by REDACTED.

 

Un coche ensable – a coach stuck in sand (French). Lifted straight from Ulysses.

 

Joyce citing Veuillot on Gautier’s prose – the above phrase was used in an essay by Louis Veuillot, “The True Parisian Poet,” to criticise Theophile Gautier’s funeral oration for Heinrich Heine in 1856.

 

Terence Maloon called my paintings: bad… mud – influential Sydney art critic in the 1980s.

 

Stephen fears drowning, losing his verses and losing his teeth in that order. I: exposure as a fraud, obesity and speed-stained teeth – comparison of the neuroses of Stephen Dedalus and Tom Hallem.

 

Call Brian Deverill – Monaro requires the services of Brian Deverill to fix the roller door. Deverill is a former comrade of Albert Wheaton. He will be interrupted at the wake to undertake this job.

 

Stephen Dedalus letting Ireland’s past unfold below Poolbeg Road…. Link to Australian history – various comparisons between Ireland and European settlement of Australia.

 

Great famines. Blighted potatoes. Baited flour. Smallpox scars. Lash marks. Indigenous misprision – further comparisons between Ireland and the convict and indigenous experience in Australia.

 

Private sector provision of services for the Second Fleet – the outsourcing of convict transportation to the private sector created a human tragedy which revolted even the hardened members of the First Fleet. This is linked to later calamities such as WW1 fatalities and Spanish Influenza etcetera.

 

Prospero in Port Jackson – passing correspondence between The Tempest and European settlement of Australia.

 

Foucault’s carceral. Ever-receding sites of exclusion – applies the theory advanced by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish to the Australian convict period.

 

Bigge’s pattern book principles – John Thomas Bigge (1780-1843) was sent by the British Government as a commissioner of inquiry into the colony of NSW in 1819. The image alludes to his methodology, which was to reassert basic doctrines of incarceration rather than adapt to local conditions. Governor Macquarie was a proponent of the latter approach. This schism is seen as evidence of their basic differences in personal character. The Bigge inquiry was initiated at the behest of pastoralists led by John Macarthur, who objected to Governor Macquarie’s enlightened policies on convict emancipation, which were harming their economic interests. The above summary reduces a complex historical situation to simple terms.

 

Civilisation was absent, this was an island and, therefore, unreal, as Auden said. – “Journey to Iceland” by W. H. Auden (1937). An apt description of European feelings about Australia, almost to the present day.

 

A couple came towards him with a bowed dog – a scathing portrait of the lives of some First Nations people in Sydney, c.1984

 

Joyce’s Egyptians. They arrived in Sydney fifty thousand years before Homer. Eora land. Twenty-eight nations. Cadigal tongue. They lived by the coast and fed from the sea like Ancients. The women gathered oysters in the shallow rocks when the tide waned. Hooks of brittle turban shell. Pounded-bark fibre lines. They speared the catch with prongs of sharpened bone. Inferior tools handled with superior dexterity. Setting bushfires to flush out prey. Get the spirits smoking – a thumbnail sketch of life in the place now known as Sydney prior to European settlement.

 

Enter Regina – arrival of the First Fleet, 26 January 1788. Refers to Britain in female/maternal terms. Perhaps erroneous. In fact, it could have been presented as “Enter Rex” because George III was monarch at this time.

 

All poisoned, infected or slain – the fate of First Nations people in Australia. You could add “raped and violated” to the list.

 

“Out of that you mongrel,” the man said – this phrase recurs in the dream sequence in Circe, Chapter 7.

 

Stephen Dedalus’ kenoma – Ancient Greek term for emptiness or void.

 

Blade of Pyrrhus pausing over Priam’s prone form twixt purpose and fulfilment – death of Priam in The Iliad.

 

Gap between thought and expression. A lifetime – reference to “Some Kinda Love” by the Velvet Underground from eponymous album (1969).

 

We find words only for what is already dead in our hearts, said Nietzsche – quote from Twilight of the Idols (1889) by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

 

Crush soles into wrack and shells – narrator describing the movements of Stephen Dedalus at the start of Proteus episode.

 

Hamlet, Laertes, Fortinbras: all sons trying to avenge their fathers. Orestes a model – sons who wanted to avenge the deaths of their fathers. Hamlet failed.

 

Mrkgnao! – rendition by Joyce of the sound made by Bloom’s cat in Ulysses. In this scene, it is dead and being mauled by a dog. Joyce hated dogs. This image is symbolic of the relationship between Ulysses and Telemachus.

 

Cue Berkeley – see below.

 

Become Minor – reference to Deleuze and Guattari’s essay, “What is a Minor Literature?” in Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature,

 

Like Edgar or Vincentio gone to earth – heroes in King Lear and Measure for Measure who took on disguises and apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.

 

Odysseus was a great list-maker like Joyce. But he only kept one column in the ledger for REVENGE – a fact. His list on Ithaca contained the names of all the suitors.

 

LZ dust off. Field of fire. Strip harlots. THUD! A human jumped out of the open hatch. Suddenfilade. The helicopter reared then hovered unevenly then sped off. The rappel mound upon its steel floor unravelling after. Faster as it lifted. A stretched cord. HE watched his father’s body dragged through jungle lashings. Sharp sounds all over. FTT FTT FTT. Rise. Pop through the canopy. Out! In silence, I watched him released into atmos – Tom Hallem’s reverie reconstructing his father’s death. It includes elements of his dream from Chapter Two.

 

Penelope ‘s doorframe received the impress of her lover’s forged head. Molly slippery asunder. Shiny screwthreads. The soft sides of fists banging on white panels. I awoke. Ceiling above. Digital clock branding time. Female weight against me. Confused. Touch her body. It is Elizabeth – Tom’s reverie shifts to the event of the previous evening as recounted in Chapter Two.

 

Dawn @ Augeas’ stables. Not so great downstream but – Number 5 of the 12 tasks of Heracles was to clean out the colossal stables of King Augeas. They had not been cleaned in 30 years. Heracles was required to clean them in a single day. He executed this task by making two rivers bend so that they flowed into the stables, washing them clean. He later slaughtered Augeas after a dispute over equity. Wry humour in sentence two.

 

Delighted when it fitted into Esther Osvalt’s shoe – Stephen Dedalus recalls his pleasure when his foot fitted into this person’s shoe in Paris.

 

Delectatio Morosa – In Catholic theology, is a sinful pleasure.

 

Joyce’s lyrical piss (55) – intentionally erroneous page reference.

 

Fox-phoney as Swinburne’s mandible medieval prose. Cunning Odysseus. Side-stepping censors – Joyce’s opaque High Modernist style served the useful purpose of also disguising pornographic, blasphemous and scatological content. In this vein, he echoed the English poet, A. C. Swinburne. There are numerous references to this tactic over the course of Telemachus. In the following passage, there are multiple parodies of both writers (thy rill of gylderne metal! Pissfield…. Stuff about cunts, wombs, priests and vampyres…. Women set naked in his kindome. Flaming swords. Succubi…. menstrual moon…. Saint Ophelia (oinopa ponton) etcetera).

 

Seaside fauna fanning out underwater like dank petticoats. Millais’ subject matter. She was fearful of the stream’s light meter. For it dragged her down, inexorably, to a dark God, to drown with no air above in totality. Without sky, sun or flood. And without vanity – on Ophelia’s fate.

 

Follow Joyce down the pithead. Introit > Requiem Mass > dead mother > moth fluttering against her womb > inside > assorted beddings > bluddy mens > creative acts > an orgasm > conception > birth > death > Nature > earth’s mother > humanity’s tomb > starspray > space > immutable – the flow of Stephen Dedalus’ mind in Proteus.

 

BISHOP BERKELEY. Ireland’s philosopher. A Cheat’s Guide follows – a list of 23 statement which can broadly be attributed to Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753).

 

Not that Stephen Dedalus arrives at any place in the Telemachiad. At the end of Chapter 1, Joyce leaves him suspended on the shore gaping at a three masted boat wearing another man’s clothes – note: Tom Hallem is also wearing another man’s clothes. Those of his lover’s husband.

 

In prosaic thrall like Shelley’s Sensitive Plant – a key poem by P. B. Shelley (1792-1822) in the author’s cosmos. His PhD thesis was named “Sensitive Plants” after this poem. There are myriad references and allusions to this ballad in Telemachus. INSERT LIST/TABLE.

 

By contrast, Homer completed the Telemachiad with the steadying disclosure that Odysseus was alive – the difference between Joyce and Homer in regards to their ‘Telemachus-figure’ is stark.

 

Joyce just reruns key terms and symbols then turns for lyrical effect to the moon. Swinburne’s mother. Handmaid of the Lord. Angelus prayer. Butt of peasant limericks. Update its currency for a belated epoch.

 

Diana’s blob all pale and weary like one of Pater’s milky hims – the moon. Walter Pater liked to create wan, pale heroes.

 

Companionless as Hamlet, Alastor and all those Samuel Beckett characters – other loners. Alastor is the star of a poem of that name by Shelley.

 

Krapp collected the large black dial in his fingertips and turned it – CLACK – depressing the red RECORD button simultaneously [steady drone] – a straightforward link to Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett.

 

There is a legend that everything wasted on earth is stored on the MOON. It must be a vast warehouse…. [12 lines] That feels good on my skin – a fantasy sequence in Telemachus. Atypical.

 

He proceeded across the road, turned into Australia Street and headed uphill along the verge of Camperdown Park – see Google Maps.

 

Joyce finished C1 on 16 June 1915. It was the 11th anniversary of his first assignation with Nora Barnacle – historical information about the author of Ulysses. It is followed by commentary on sexual activities on the night in question from the correspondence between Joyce and Nora.

 

The clock strikes NOON at end of this chapter. GAY SLANG. When the cad with the pipe asks Earwicker for the time in F(W)ake, he answers 12 noon. Denotes twin erections touching. See Genet. The hour of Stephen’s Paris reverie – factual information relevant to analysis of Ulysses. And Finnegans Wake. Includes reference to the work of Jean Genet. (1910-1986).

 

“PM of Mister Faun” became a symbol of artistic intransigence – a comic translation of the title of the poem, Apres Midi d’un faune’, by Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898) with subsequent references to its publication difficulties.

 

The first work that put poetry back in music. A key element for Joyce. Debussy’s fake spurts announced entrance into an awakened realm – allusions to the work of Claude Debussy (1862-1918). He put the poetry of Mallarme to music. This passage integrates high art with a base commercial exchange involving sexual gratification.

 

Ex-speedline – folded paper currency was a handy device for making a straw through which to inhale amphetamines in Sydney at this time.

 

The man closed the heavy door behind Marius and made fast the lock – blending Telemachus with Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater. In this situation, Tom is Marius and the “man” is Flavian.

 

Copy of Cupid and Psyche – a romantic tale depicted in terms of sexual arousal in Victorian art.

 

A wave of calm swept over him – Tom Hallem feels relief when he is submissive in sexual acts.

 

Tom Hallam stood and grabbed both cocks in his grip. Achilles and Patroclus. – links the sexual act in Telemachus to alleged romantic entanglements in the Odyssey.

 

Hallem pressed his forehead into Flavian’s soft shoulder – see above.

 

Young Pausanias – reference to Pausanias of Orestis. He was a member of Philip II of Macedon‘s personal bodyguard  who assassinated the regent in 336 BC. It is generally assumed that he committed regicide at the behest of Philip’s son, who became Alexander the Great. Some critics suggest that they were lovers. Pausanias was murdered fleeing the assassination.

 

Theoclymenus’ prophecy – a prophet of Argos who forecast the return of Odysseus. He escaped Pylos in a last-minute rescue by Telemachus. On Ithaca, Theoclymenus read the auspices of the birds. He said that Odysseus was already in Ithaca in disguise watching events unfold. He prophesied that Telemachus would become the King of Ithaca. When he told Penelope of these signs, she did not believe him. Later, he had a vision of the death of the suitors but they mocked him. They were killed that night.

 

The tallest structure in Dublin is Donnybrook Tower. A mast for Radio Eire – a high rise transmitter in Dublin. 2

 

Insert Gerty text. LB post orgasm – reference to Bloom masturbating in front of Gerty MacDowell in Nausicaa.

 

He passed the Dairy Bell ice cream factory and scampered across Salisbury Road – Hallem is moving along Australia Street.

 

Approaching the top of the ridge, he cut across the park behind Saint Stephens Church – Hallem turns into Federation Road briefly in order to enter the northern end of Camperdown Memorial Rest Park.

 

Gogo and Didi – affectionate nicknames used by the characters Estragon and Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s popular drama, Waiting for Godot.

 

Greg Wheaton crossed Gilligan’s Island at Taylor Square – shift in location to Taylor Square, Darlinghurst. Greg Wheaton is the son of Albert Wheaton. Don Cane meets him at his father’s funeral and gets a ride back to Kings Cross. Gilligan’s Island was a small grass strip between busy roads which was used by homeless people and pigeons.

 

… supermarket car park. Church Street traffic lights King Street gridlock fish shop on the corner El Bahsa Sweets newspaper placards the wide double doors of the Shakespeare Hotel – Hallem’s movements to the threshold of the hotel.

 

Try the TAB – Totalisator Agency Board. Monopoly organisation running legal gambling shops in Sydney during the 1980s.

 

Reagan landslide…. Hawkie’s caving. Floods. Oh… and Sophia Loren’s in Australia – major news stories of Tuesday, 6 November 1984. Ronald Reagan won the 1984 Presidential Election against Democrat Walter Mondale with the highest popular vote in US history (58.8%). Prime Minister Hawke was suffering serious physical and emotional challenges during the 1984 election campaign. Sophia Loren was a popular Italian actor, whose career peaked in the 1950-60s.

 

Fair Helen of swan-cum made – Helen of Troy was conceived by Leda with Zeus in the form of a swan.

 

Theseus’ wager. A game of Two-Up between thieves – various. He liked a bet. This probably refers to his deal with Pirithous regarding Helen and Persephone. It reinforces the image of Helen as a victim and chattel throughout her existence.

 

Die rolled in a marble vault – pun on the title of Stephane Mallarme’s Un Coup de dés.

 

Paris’ prize. An impulse purchase – the so-called ‘judgment’ of Paris was a spur-of-the-moment decision made under duress.

 

She was only a ghost, according to Stesichorus – Greek lyric poet. Said to have become blind then cured by composing verses insulting then flattering to Helen of Troy.

 

Telemachus arrived in Sparta just as Hermione was leaving port. Their paths passed. But did not cross – Telemachus got the best tour of Sparta. He arrived after the feast for Hermione’s journey to Pyrrhus to marry Neoptolemus.

 

Her daughter’s exit freed Helen of her last moral constraints. She hijacked Telemachus from her husband – this is a theory of the author. It explains Helen’s antinomian behaviour.

 

Bloom fantasises about Molly sirening Stephen Dedalus in this manner – the author contends that bloom was grooming Stephen for his wife. He would have been Severin + cuckold.

 

Helen’s drugs gave him wings sedating grief – She drugs Telemachus. It feels great. But it’s kind of creepy as well.

 

Yet she was always somewhat sinister like Circe with his father – a freewheeling analogue.

 

She (Helen) claimed to have recognised Odysseus when he went spying in Troy. This was a reductive metaphor for the later episode in the Odyssey when Penelope recognises Odysseus disguised as a beggar in the palace – nice comp, author.

 

It was her Arachne moment – Arachne challenged Penelope to a weaving competition. She was pretty arrogant about it. She was also a bit too good, might have won in a fair contest, and got turned into a spider by the Goddess.

 

LIST PROTEAN ACTS IN C3: Joyce re-Homer; TMAC re-Joyce/Homer; garbage (churning of); narrative continuity; narrative POV; memory (Tom, Don); A. L. Gordon poet, Pepe, Ana, Tom (life > death); childbirth (mother, child); Sydney (as seen by Don Pane); identity (Don as ‘Eric’ Kill/lion); relationships (eg. Ana/Matt); sport; Australia (Europeans, war, migration); historiography; light; truth; and the mind (Missus Hensley and Bishop Berkeley) – a nice summary.

 

Proteanism needs stasis to react against – makes sense when you think about it.

 

Bleachtaste…. Mouth full of brine – the taste of semen.

 

Two notes coiled in my pocket – payment for sexual services rendered.

 

Hold my father’s head under paddy water until he expires – fantasy of patricide located in Vietnam Conflict.

 

Kill Proteus – what Menelaus did.

 

Down with the topsail! We split, we split! – See The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 1. This segment contains multiple references to that play.

 

Jettison Asenahana’s craft – metaphor for Ana Lafei’s car.

 

Make your way through the straits – reference to Gibraltar. This is Chapter 10 of TMAC, thereby (sur)passing Ulysses.

 

Artful Prospero. His carceral storms. Calculated shipwreck

 

Tidesmaw buffeting my body towards shorerocks inevitably. False refuge. An uncharted isle. Bitter dealers directing pawns on a board. Look up. – more refs to The Tempest.

 

On a poster, a white-washed ship sailed across the frame of the Student Union travel agency. Sail Away from Cares Today! Find silence in exile – deliberate connection to Don Cane’s recollections of Kings Cross, 1962 earlier in this chapter (See text: “AUSTRALIAN OVERSEAS TRAVEL. Sea & Air. So much more to enjoy…. Far East Escape. China Navigation. Sail on the Taiyuan…. Don planned to get to Hong Kong then pick up an RIL boat to Nagoya…. Imperial Star. Chandris Line”).

 

Odysseus’ twelve black ships all proud vermilion – see Homer, Iliad, Book 2: And Odysseus led the great-hearted Cephallenians who held Ithaca and Neritum, covered with waving forests, and who dwelt in Crocyleia and rugged Aegilips; and those who held Zacynthus, and who dwelt about Samos, and held the mainland and dwelt on the shores opposite the isles. These Odysseus led, the peer of Zeus in counsel. And with him there followed twelve ships with vermilion prows.

 

Joyce’s proud three master. This image at the end of Chapter One allows the reader to sail from Stephen’s internal monologue on a tranquil tide. It is another Trinity symbol. A tripartite novel. Three chapters. Three characters: Stephen, Molly and Bloom. The oven for making the poet is mind, body and soul – a bunch of triple allusions in Ulysses.

 

Ploughing upstream. Smoke-rack veers to seaward – close reworking of language at the end of Chapter One of Ulysses.

 

Sinbad the sailor. Joyce is recalling a favourite child’s tale from 1,001 Nights with this citation. It was another great story-cycle powered by apparent coincidence. Neither Joyce nor Homer allowed such cycles to rest – this reference to Sinbad in TMAC points ahead to the famous dream-list of Leopold Bloom at the end of the Ithaca episode of Ulysses. The comparison of coincidence in 1,001 Nights, Ulysses and the Odyssey is defensible.

 

Go past Gibraltar. Never come back. Telemachus. In a small vessel. A smaller ask. Rotten carcass of a butt with no rig nor tackle, no sail nor mast, the very rats instinctively having quit it. Yet mine nonetheless. Unarrived as Stephen Dedalus or Tom Hallem on the chosen day. But all days make their end. Move towards disjuncture – a summary of intentions for the rest of Telemachus.

 

A new page comes in Ulysses monumented with twin bars: II – this was a clever device by Joyce if true. Did he use an image of a three-masted ship to align with his three-chapter novel? Or is it a construct of the author of TMAC?

 

The second mast. Homer & Joyce. Add a third – the author takes liberties of achievement and scale with great writers.

 

At this point, they both shift decisively from the son towards the father. Stay with the son – the objective of Telemachus is to re-examine this plot form the POV of the son. This is a critical severance with Homer and Joyce.

 

You leave Ithaca SSE. Round the Peloponnese. Pass north of Crete. Troy is due east. To return home, reverse the journey. You will need to find new currents – likely route of Odysseus’ fleet to & from Troy.

 

West equals Empire – a shibboleth of Western history is that European empire-building always went in this geographical direction.

 

I am but mad NNW. That’s eleven o’clock for mariners – first half spoken by Hamlet in Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Second half is accurate for a compass.

 

Time please gentlemen – what the publican or bartender says at closing time at Australian pubs. In this instance it also refers to the end of Chapter Three.

 

Hawk eating a dove. Call Theoclymenus to interpret this omen. You will be king and your father is alive, he said – Telemachus views this sight on returning to Ithaca. Theoclymenus interprets it as a favourable sign of the strength of Odysseus’s lineage.

 

Joyce ate Homer. Snake consuming its tail – riffing off above image. Joyce eating Homer describes the literary act of swallowing the Odyssey so it was inside Ulysses. The text-stream immediately shifts to an ouroboros image, which also suggests self-referentiality of Joyce.

 

Joyce’s Telemachiad is a self-contained story. As a Metaportrait, it would have done Pater proud – interesting connection of Chapter One of Ulysses to Imaginary Portraits by Walter Pater and to the author’s own concept of ‘metaportraits.’  A metaportrait based on Pater’s “Prince of Court Painters” appears in Chapter Five, sub-episode 10.

 

What we call a ‘sketch’ in Australian literature – a very short story detailing a single, usually humorous, event. Popular in The Bulletin.

 

How to end it but. Invoke Beckett – reference to the ending of The Unnamable, which is the most famous in modern literature.

 

Tom Hallem slunk around the side of a rock. Clock ticking down to the big race. He gazed in a pawn shop window. Scratched watches and rings mounted on display. Dumping ground for stolen xenia. Junkies whorde. Rob your own parents’ grave for pin money. Get to campus. Willy is coming (repeat with exclamations). Don Cane slammed the car door shut and waved Greg Wheaton on his way. He entered the hotel. The son stayed on stage – everything collapses into a pile of images intervolving Tom Hallem with his father, Don Cane. Tom is the last one left standing.

 

Aweighting – probably another Shakespeare reference. Polysemous utterance.

 

Down with the topsail! We split, we split! Seadeath? Not to drown. Jettison Asenahana’s craft. Float on wood. Make your way through the straits. Artful Prospero. His carceral storms. Calculated shipwreck. Tidesmaw buffeting my body towards shore rocks inevitably. False refuge. An uncharted isle. Bitter dealers directing pawns on a board. Look up. On a poster, a white-washed ship sailed across the frame of the Student Union travel agency. Sail Away from Cares Today! Find silence in exile. Odysseus’ twelve black ships all proud vermilion. Joyce’s proud three master. This image at the end of Chapter One allows the reader to sail from Stephen’s internal monologue on a tranquil tide. It is another Trinity symbol. A tripartite novel. Three chapters. Three characters: Stephen, Molly and Bloom. The oven for making the poet is mind, body and soul. Ploughing upstream. Smoke-rack veers to seaward. Sinbad the sailor. Joyce is recalling a favourite child’s tale from 1,001 Nights with this citation. It was another great story-cycle powered by apparent coincidence. Neither Joyce nor Homer allowed such cycles to rest. Go past Gibraltar. Never come back. Telemachus. In a small vessel. A smaller ask. Rotten carcass of a butt with no rig nor tackle, no sail nor mast, the very rats instinctively having quit it. Yet mine nonetheless. Unarrived as Stephen Dedalus or Tom Hallem on the chosen day. But all days make their end. Move towards disjuncture. It is marked in publication with blank paper at the fag. A new page comes in Ulysses monumented with twin bars: II. The second mast. Homer & Joyce. Add a third. At this point, they both shift decisively from the son towards the father. Stay with the son. Joyce’s text is lodged in a middling man’s wits. Roadmaps given out and taken back. You leave Ithaca SSE. Round the Peloponnese. Pass north of Crete. Troy is due east. To return home, reverse the journey. You will need to find new currents. It takes time. West equals Empire. I am but mad NNW. That’s eleven o’clock for mariners. Time please gentlemen. If you were installed in an empty white room, how would you express yourself? Write words on the wall with your own defecant. Hawk eating a dove. Call Theoclymenus to interpret this omen. You will be king and your father is alive, he said. Joyce ate Homer. Snake consuming its tail. Joyce’s Telemachiad is a self-contained story. As a Metaportrait, it would have done Pater proud. What we call a ‘sketch’ in Australian literature. How to end it but. Invoke Beckett. Tom Hallem slunk around the side of a rock. Clock ticking down to the big race. He gazed in a pawn shop window. Scratched watches and rings mounted on display. Dumping ground for stolen xenia. Junkies whorde. Rob your own parents’ grave for pin money. Get to campus. Willy is coming (repeat with exclamations). Don Cane slammed the car door shut and waved Greg Wheaton on his way. He entered the hotel. The son stayed on stage. Aweighting – at last, we have reached the end of the concordance for this chapter. The final section is an extended engagement with the Proteus episode of Ulysses. The author of TMAC is writhing like Proteus in the hands of Menelaus. He seeks to distinguish his work from both Joyce and Homer.

 

^[1] When the essay was revised as a lecture in 1907, Joyce retained this passage virtually word-for-word.

^[2] James Joyce, Ulysses (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) 183-209.