10. Gibraltar

“And that is where the old tales come to an end, for Odysseus was really the last of the heroes. There were no stories about Telemachus or his children …”

– Unknown

RiverrunonyellabrickspissspecksworndownendrainedouterBrokenilsilverslewsendsludunder Wiljali country on Birrahgnooloos fludd leeching terramotes severndunderendedmillingearsbrake thrule Barkindji Barindji Wiradjuri Dharug and Eora lendsies all-the-LBJ twowars the lennylowerlands of the coast-is-clear wear Flip’s Pieredmount-Sexcolony broek against Parsific seeklifts in supple rinds of corroded stone hewn into locks and scarbrous foundnations by Sinney’s convict re-fuse.

Why commence Gibraltar with a stylistic reference to F(W)ake?

Because we have now passed the endpoint of Ulysses. The Classical period has closed. This is the last (male) novel. The last (white) one. See epigraph.

What is the significance of the date on which this work is set?

We have selected a single day when everything changed. The first cog shifted in a huge industrial clock. It was not recognised at the time. But with the benefit of hindsight, it is indisputable that the world was different after this date (insert proof list of cultural, demographic, gender and economic factors).

How is time used?

Not arbitrarily. Like Snakes and Ladders (link to Mallarme’s dice-roll & Proust). To turn back and churn the smooth temporal flow of text as symbolised by the River Liffey. As AC against Joyce’s DC. Like a transformer functioning with manual calibration (25–60 HZ) between Berlin and Shanghai, the brothers, their father, other characters, Homer and Joyce, Joyce and Virgil (look ahead), him and Proust, Joyce’s time period and TMAC, Sydney 1984 and NOW.

Compare indigenous notions of time with Western thinking.

TIME is a long non-unit for First Nations people, not the sizzling shot-fuse “nuk!” (INSERT SOUNDBITE) of our ontology.

Relate time to motion by natural elements in both works.

Water has fast passage, stone extremely slow. One is linear, the other of evolution. Indigenous mythology has a much more sophisticated understanding of the TRUE EXTENT OF TIME. This is mimicked by Yellowblock’s seepage towards Sydney Cove. It is ironic that Western science should laud its discovery of earth’s antiquity when it was already embedded in the creation myths of most first peoples.

How do you characterise this work?

As DIY. As an Indi 45.

Would this work stand on its own merits as a plot?

Yes. It’s a ripping yarn.

Compare Homer with conventional fiction.

There’ll always be a place for stories. They tell the tale of human civilisation. But Homer was also a supreme technician. Each image, every plot element was fully integrated into a myth and brimming with symbolism and meaning. There was no wastage.

Was Ulysses meant to be bright reading?

Only for readers interested in technical marvels. Its plot is insubstantial stripped of Joyce’s pyrotechnics. But that was really its point: to present a demotic storyline in hieratic style. It became synonymous with greatness-as-impermeability. Its legacy has haunted the written word. All subsequent texts have been conditioned by it. Even Joyce himself was held in its thrall [see F(W)ake].

What was Joyce’s media strategy?

Ulysses was designed to attract mainstream print coverage with its gimmicks and graphic content, even if it remained largely unread by the general public. There is a strong argument that Joyce produced increasingly salacious text as each new episode published in The Little Review was attacked, banned and confiscated. Bob Capri cut the headlights, laboured onto the driveway slab and came to a halt. A ship docked. Two men left the car with a sports bag in each hand and walked back to the footpath. The street was deserted. Bob stopped to drag an empty garbage bin off the verge; scraping it over worn concrete (see C3). A blank land but safe. Mons Calpe. Canto 26. Odysseus in utmost hell. They proceeded through a cyclone-wire gate. Bob waited until his son (insert inverted commas now) had passed and shut a border on the outside world. The stark alley resonated under their soles. Barry pressed a finger against thin lips gesturing at the lodger’s unlit transom. Billy nodded. Tranh was a foul sleeper. They opened a tall mesh postern. A black dog emerged from her kennel. “Down Empty,” Bob growled. She circled then submitted. He patted her pink gut. Kitchen lamps still glowed. Billy looked through the casement. Dishes and pans were stacked on a freckled concrete bench. A bucket in the sink collected grey water. Habits of thrift. Never know when the Spanish will turn off the taps. Bloom dropped through the hatch down the front of 7 Eccles Street. Helen was seated at the dining table unstitching a Fair Isle Vest. She’d miscalculated a row of its complex pattern. Shadows roused her. Bob bundled Billy up the steps. They entered the laundry. Helen locked the door behind them. She touched her son on both arms and lingered, not able to hug. Shanghai Dog exited a taxi at Jiangsu Lu. He was about to assume the plot mantle of Odysseus. The Telemachiad is a cold cracked ember, black as death. It may be years until he found his way back. And then what? He was carrying a shopping bag containing a bottle of Henschke Hill of Grace (1992), a 250-gram jar of Manuka Honey (UMF 18+), some duty-free French perfume in a box (Flower by Kenzo) and a Hermes Kelly 32 cm handbag, etoupe brown, togo leather (2006 – certified). He hoped it constituted sufficient xenia. He entered Starbucks and asked the waitress for a double-shot espresso and a glass of warm water. I must marry Doctor Gu, he thought. He only held one trump card: the gift of progeny. A foreign trophy. Why Circe loved Odysseus. What made Calypso hold him from home. He doused the coffee in sugar satchels and popped a teardrop-shaped Cialis. Sweet syrup slipped towards the rim. He extracted a fake Mont Blanc pen from his coat and ground a SWOT box into a recycled serviette.

Shanghai Dog weighted each square in turn. S = 35 per cent. W25. O30. T10. He had built this kind of matrix many times for M&As. Most of the items in STRENGTHS and OPPORTUNITIES corresponded to Tom Hallem’s status in West Berlin if Frances had not terminated her pregnancy. There was a much lower risk rating on WEAKNESSES and THREATS. This was predicated on a neutral reaction by his wife. It should have toughened his decision-making process (S & W represent internal assessments). But Shanghai Dog felt utterly conflicted like Leopold Bloom. Extrinsic like Stephen Dedalus (O & T deal with external factors). Marriage to Gu would probably rank AMBER in a traffic-light system. He only needed a few cursory mitigation strategies to turn it GREEN in the post-treatment column. Gu’s money should smooth over the cracks. Residual risk of this project was thus LOW. He tried to suppress any moral sentiment. To sacrifice virtue to convenience, as Doctor Johnson complained. To commit an uncon(scion)able act. Show forged papers. Fakes. Misaligned motives. Link to Gerty MacDowell. Mother. My own first cousin did me betray. Shredded Ginger thrusting out her straits. Bold Elizabeth passing through Sydney Heads. Between which oars glide. Judy. He accepted her exit with Johnny now. He was a younger man. A local. I lied. It was only fair she lied back. Put a bullet in an old horse. Polyphemus was a rejected lover. He wooed the sea nymph, Galateia, with song. Insert rousing chorus of “Croppy Boy” led by Simon Dedalus at the Ormond Hotel. Bloom’s outsider status is affirmed in this scene. He cannot participate in their drunk sentimental karaoke. His wife is a singer. But he remains mute. It is a critical component of their yin-yang. This traditional Irish ballad recounts the tale of a young rebel who visits church on his way to battle. A cloaked figure hears his confession. He assumes it is a priest. In fact, it is a British soldier who has taken refuge in Catholic skin. He reveals himself and arrests the insurgent, who is subsequently executed This is an apt metaphor for all Anglo-Irish exchanges. It is the perfect song selection by Joyce. It turns an apparently minor moment in the novel involving the debased Simon Dedalus into a secret climax working on multiple levels. Link to Stephen’s encounter with Private Carr (reductive parody). For there are always more counterfeit personas that can be manufactured. Always more messages in Ulysses about the risk of disclosure. Bloom would have turned this lyric to his own circumstances. That truth-telling leads to death. Candour is the enemy of man. Bloom is lucky. Molly doesn’t pry into his affairs. She has the opposite temperament to her husband. O never reads my text messages. She isn’t suspicious by nature. She accepts Billy as he is. When Polyphemus discovered Galateia with Acis, he crushed the boy with a rock. This is symbolised by The Citizen’s projectile in C2. Polyphemus is represented in a sympathetic light by Theocritus. The reaction of the other cyclopes to his injury demonstrates what happens when commonweal is debased. Mao destroyed the social compact in China. Graft has dominated since Gei Ge Kai Feng. For one bare Guinea, he sold my life. Cancel out bad with good; death with life etcetera. I have to scratch so many times on the left so many times on the right making sure that everything is done in multiples of three (Trinity). Isosceles triangles. Tom/Billy/Don. Billy Bob Helen. Helen Penelope Don. JUDY and O. Me. She gave me every chance. Maybe it was just bad timing. An unlucky air-shot killed Achilles. Loss of an eye to a glass shard. Mingnian, I told her. NEXT YEAR. Ruo guo wo de gong zuo hai hao. IF WORK IS STILL OK. Yi hou wo de tai tai likai Zhong Guo. Another qualification. Rang hou women shang liang … bao bei. THEN WE CAN DISCUSS … (pause) BABIES. My Mandarin got worse as I prevaricated. Zuihou women xuyao qian. We would need money. Plenty of that stuff wrapped-up in a five-pound note. A nursery-rhyme my mother read. Large format edition. Comfort lost long ago. Now I am master of my own ship, thought Shanghai Dog. Note Joyce’s three-master at the end of Chapter One. Xian > rang hou > zuihou. First > then > lastly. Logical progression. Zhong wen you luo ji. No endpoint but. Never say anything final. Lam chopping at his palm. Add keneng. It means MAYBE. Not yes, neither no. Customised equivocation. Contrast this epistemological approach with Ulysses. Molly’s famous YES at closure. The Odyssey ends on affirmation after the appearance of AEGIS. Even Beckett concludes with the invocation: GO ON. Athene’s goatskin shield. The heroic individual was dominant all the way to Modernism. WE NEED TO LEARN TO LET THE WORLD CONTINUE WITHOUT US. Pater’s Dionysus what disappeared come back and got slaughtered. “OK Billy,” Zhu Di said. That was all. When I went home at Christmas, she got pregnant. No time for niceties. Damp Shanghai afternoons so cold and clammy. She barred our apartment door. Some whispering was heard inside the compound. Insert mundane transactions to preserve dignity. I will pay the rent and electricity until the end of the lease term, I said. Leave the bond. Inferred chivalry. Scouring the bars on Hengshan Lu for a sub. Indignant texts from the fish bowl at the Shanghai Hotel. They moved back to Pudong to escape my … ministrations. Judy blocked my number. I borrowed Xiao Fang’s cell phone. Johnny took the hand set off his wife and yelled down the line in good English. CUT. It was the last time we spoke. Her daughter is six months old now. Dawn extends rosin claws. Odysseus gazing overboard into sea brine bubbling with silky scales. Just out of reach. Dashed visions of homecoming. Aeolus’ gusts. Find a safe place fast. Even a sequel on Aeaea. Too much time has passed. An empty sack. Richie’s baby. IR8. Chaim. Death of Astyanax. Swollen woodsalt. Fuck a gem-like flame into being. Old mongrel pushing a pram through Mandarine City. That is what I am NOT going to become, thought Billy. As if Faust could marry Juliet. Or Bloom and Gerty. Odysseus reclining on a tree-anchor back on Ithaca. Sisyphus shining his rock. Contingent harmony. Hephaestus’ chains. To go on NOT passively. To NEVER be reconciled. ALWAYS PURSUING. TAKING RISKS. That is Odysseus’ GEIST. He represents an ideal of masculinity placed in an everyman setting by James Joyce. Shanghai Dog unfolded a leaden FAX sheet and scanned the shattered print. It was a list of refrigerant gases from Gansu Brilliant Industry Products in Lanzhou City. All mumbo-jumbo to me. He took out his Blackberry handset. Battery half-dead. Cockweight in his palm. He typed the first gas on the list into the search engine. R11. Slow bar shunting. So, this was life after the GFC. Like Rome in 1000 AD. No institutions left standing. Classical period DONE. Live by your wits trading. Belated like Odysseus. Washwake. Last Exit. Tralala. Aeneas sets off from the blazing ruins of Troy. Everything is reductive. Wires stripped bare. Only a charred skeleton left of the true machine. “Do you know The Odyssey?” asked Paul Javal. “Yes,” replied his wife (B. Bardot). “It’s that story about the guy who’s always travelling.” Shanghai Dog swallowed the scratched screen. The barista was reheating milk distractedly. It bubbled into steam on its journey towards atmos. The television displayed footage of an open truck hanging off an elevated overpass spilling freon cylinders onto a local road below. Exposed steel rods bent like broken mantis limbs. A concrete slab turned on its side like a dead animal. China Daily has denied any fatalities. The Blackberry started downloading results. “Some scaling models back at the Wayward Machine,” it read. A term outside the bounds of any Chinese search engine. A kind of extrinsic space. Gibraltar’s portal breached. Unknown waters. Coal lighters spiralling down the Yangtze where it meets the Jialing tributary in Chongqing. Spaceships tumbling through OUTER space like buttons rotating in bath water. Container ships ploughing into the South China Sea. Turn off JavaScript. Insert Disclaimer. Les Hallem shifted his busted-up torso in front of the late news. Billy picked up his father’s log. A cluster of invoices were fastened with a rusted bulldog clip. He lifted a Post-It Note. TO BE FILED, it said. Years sliding. Soft ebb. Bob’s greasy smudge on the top corner. His watermark. Family business since 1959. Laertes’ acres were well-fenced. Take the Douglas Street dog-leg. Tack hard-port. A curved cream awning opened an opal vault over Stanmore village. Mechanical Repairs, it read. Transmission Services. Insert correspondences with the production, publication and dissemination of Ulysses as well as this work. Pale slabs gleaming all summer. Isaac’s stomach on display. Texta “X” marks the spot. Abraham raised his blade. Soft asphalt. Bob breathing the air of his own earth down the back of the dark workshop. Dead-end of a cave. Cracking open the studs on his grey overalls when Helen called “time.” Five o’clock sharp each day. Mucid wind hit his pileous chest. I jumped on his back when he wasn’t looking. He let me hang off his neck. Smell of Valvoline in his hair. Wiping those great big mitts in a frayed bath towel as he walked towards the lubricant bay. Steal from the world slightly. R11 reduces the temperature of any object it contacts during evaporation. Like Shelley’s chrome dew-balls. Ice circling unseen in random sprays like some ghost ship being buffeted offshore. Banned in most countries. Start by rebranding the product. Maybe call it … Ice Mist. Falsify the ingredients on the customs declaration. False labelling. Hire a local sales team. Sell direct to major building managers. Don’t try retail. There are a few blokes I know in West Asia and Africa who could move this stuff. Shanghai Dog folded the FAX again, put it into his pocket and left the cafe. He proceeded to the subway aperture. It’s hot enough there not to fuss over ethics. All about price point. Commuters pressed against a DVD salesman settled on a milk crate. He smiled upwards at Billy. Huang se dian ying, he asked. Shi kuai! Billy shook his head. Jintian buyong, he replied. Cialis kicking in. Bob Capri brought his son a wide tumbler of cool water with thick ice cubes.

“Your last night in Sydney,” he said. “Better get some rest.”

“Yea. I’m feeling pretty flat,” replied Billy.

“Fair enough,” Bob said.

He could equally have chosen the depersonalised axiom, ‘She’ll be right.’ Echo of Stan Parker’s prose. Son of a blacksmith and an educated lady. Came back from the War to a lifetime of dour labour. Don Cane could never have countenanced an existence so mild. His sons neither. Billy needed a BIG LIFE. Fifty years added up in Stan’s mind to a single numeral. Answer to all sums, he said. ONE. White’s flop at embodying climax in a single word. Joyce’s YAIRS in Strine. Tongue-swell. Mandible cud. Thin-lips like silicon tracings. God target sum mawlassies intern meow, may, seared Lauder. Protean utterance. A secret code like Shanghainese. Hit Linespace Carriage Return Lever. Cog-loadings of an enigma machine. Hints hurt Somme hairy. Bee Lee gouter gorf ter Ing Lane term oiler, seared Blob. Tom Harem gnaw veer gunner glow Bee-tart How’s air-knee maw. Shank Hide Og kneadster fog eggnishner flute fur catch. Lizard breath wans turbo cum peg leant. Anal Laugh Eh ice duned art thick climb axe blob fizz chapped her. Donk Aim’s mercurial business dealings in Manila attracted the attention of ASIO. Translate the following phrase into Strine: he always got a helping hand off his American mates. His fingerprints were all over it. Bob Capri displayed discoloured palms.

“I need to wash up,” he said.

He left the dead hearth. Dark green velveteens. Curious soft-quenched waning. Transitory like Mellors. Arising off a base station. Provisional status. Anybody could get commissioned in the Great Slwarter. All you needed was survivor’s luck. Like Lawrence. He pincered the gap between Nineteenth-Century Prose and Modernism. A winning formula of post-war torpor, class conflict and sex. He was Henry James Rated AO. Havelock Ellis would have writ such muck if he could. Kangaroo was still the best attempt at a political novel in Australia until P W/out G. Lawrence’s characterisation of Connie Chatterley removes any ambiguity from the Elizabeth Archer trope. Iago-green Merle. Link to portrait of Lady Peasoup (C5).

“What are you going to do about Don,” Billy asked his mother.

“Nothing,” Helen answered with an idle tongue.

“Do you hate him?”

“No,” she replied. “It was all for the best really.”

Her hand touched mine. Dead for a ducat.

“Do you hate me?” she asked back.

“No,” I replied.

“I think it’s time for bed. We’ve got to get you to the airport early.”

My mother held fast. I also. Maybe out of shock. No frippery. Gibraltar is always an exit. See also Thrace. Find endpoints. Under Aldebaran. Look deep south. Low on horizon-rise piercing the flank. Odysseus must still make good with Poseidon at the end of the Odyssey. Billy Capri slipped down the hall to his bedroom and closed the door. The lock clicked shut. He opened his backpack and took out a black paperback. He laid it down on a bedside table. Light the lamp. Bookmark C3. He removed all his clothing. Isaiah naked and barefoot as a peeled mandarin. Re-Adamated. Throw off the figleaf and grab Flavian’s mitt. Sew and unsew. Job One. Bathsheba. Odysseus on Scheria. He took a pencil stub from his desk, slipped it behind his ear and propped himself against the varnished bedhead. Shanghai Dog descended into the subway. Streams of people seeking surface moved against him. Mao swimming Chang Jiang. Wastewater grottos. The station concourse was wide, bright and white. Billy purchased a three kuai ticket. Boylan’s gift. Import–export. Price of admission. A deal made under duress. Our deadline. Size of my belly. Matt’s stare. He swiped the ticket and skipped down the short staircase to the platform. Banks of fluorescent lights and electric advertising scrolls heightened its grids of marble tiles and shining steel fascias. Next train to Longyang Road was three minutes. A supermodel on the cover of Chinese Vogue clicked into frame. He took an iPod from his jacket and swished the dial to Playlists. It landed on “Shanghai Roadkill.” He depressed the dial. The Stooges “Down on the Street” commenced. Locomotive drill. Iggy grunted then growled. The train sped fast before him. Chinese faces shone as it slowed. The doors opened. Overflow. He wrestled the crowd around the hatch to gain ingress then pressed his index finger against the ceiling for traction. The gazing commenced. Yet Shanghai Dog felt invisible like Odysseus. He was utterly concealed by cultural dialectics. The train started. A couple were playing “Anti-Japan War Online” on golden consoles. Their fingers moved with disjunctive speed. P. J. Harvey started. “Look out ahead,” she sang. An LCD screen broadcast CCTV1. Cut to footage of Chen Yun-Lin’s visit to Taiwan. Highest level meeting since 1949. Chen and You Ma were exchanging gifts for the media. Chen presented Ma with a horse painting. Ma means “horse” in Mandarin. In return, Ma gave Chen a priceless piece of porcelain. This was an ambiguous gesture. The KMT took boatloads of relics when they shipped off the mainland in 1949. Now there was talk of a Panda swap. That passed for diplomatic progress. “This world’s crazy,” the chanteuse continued. The news broadcast switched to China’s stimulus package. It would be released in a couple of days. The Chinese government never put an exact date on major announcements. But the newsreaders were already gloating. He was tired of poses everywhere. Don Cane rolled his eyes at Yankee prowess. “I wanna go to a different land.” Should have arrived in Shanghai back in the Nineties. They were desperate for FDI back then. “Know Your Product” started. He had to marry Doctor Gu. Her English name was MELANIE. His penis began to swell involuntarily. Supply-side narcotics. Quantitative easing. He would reach her suite in 30 minutes. He could fuck her with detachment. Maybe he couldn’t cum. But that was OK. She only noticed her own SHOCK, as Lawrence termed it. Joyce’s style in this episode discloses the mechanics of closed systems; in this instance of Writing and Empire. Shanghai Dog butted the window. A face peered. Benjamin’s Arcade. Beckett’s Plan B. Joyce chronicles the harsh conditions prevailing in Imperial Dublin in “Lotus Eaters.” Bloom is proceeding to the funeral of Patrick Dignam. It is modelled on the service for Matthew Kane, who drowned in Dublin Bay in July 1904. He is Joyce’s Elpenor. Death has left his family bereft. We are shown images of their NO FUTURE by the author on route. It is executed with Naturalism. Bloom sees a boy smoking a cigarette butt as he hauls a heavy bucket of offal. A girl scarred with eczema undoes his idealised image of female beauty. Bath heat belatedly sweated out of Bob’s body. Doctor Gu was sitting at the vanity unit rubbing thick cream into her face. A beggar disfigured with burns sat in a tortured heap outside the Shangrila Hotel. A smashed-up child staggered into his path with her palms held out for alms. The old man swung at the girl with a stick to drive her off. A war veteran in a ragged PLA uniform was propped on rotten crutches at the entrance to Baker & Spice cafe. A fat woman in a floral dress leant on the entrance to a fashion house watching frightened lovers cling. They huddled under shopfront awnings waiting for a bus. The train passed directly underneath Nanjing Lu. Shanghai Dog’s throat was starting to swell. Bob Capri steadied himself against the plastic towel rack. The profile of his ageing pelt shone under heat lamps. Odysseus biding his time. A hard coat hard-won worn and dimpled. Get Polyphemus drunk. Blind it with yer wooden stake. Suitor families were milling outside the palace gates. There was always a heavy crowd at Lujiazui. We should fuck them up once and for all with a torpedo, says Flett. Telemachus began a slow ascent behind a screen of vines that his grandfather had planted to cool the wall of the west bedroom against the full summer sun on Paliki. War-ran-jain-ora. It was getting late. He looked down to the ground. Faithless serving-girls were still strung-up in full view of the household. Blood coarsened their tunics disclosing the outline of slender trunks. A blackbird sang in an adjacent grove. Its last note now mimicked their dying pitch. Thin men of Haddam circulated below. Telemachus was well-hidden. In the old days, he used to spy on his mother naked at her bath from this vantage point before launching himself into her parlour brandishing a xiphos, crafted by Laertes from fine Hickory selected by Karya, the famous Hamadryad of walnut orchards. The servants were always taken by surprise except old Eurycleia. She had become inured to such pranks as Odysseus’ nurse. You’re still young, scoffed Claudius. Sprinkle cool patience on thy flames, added Laby Fry. He’s actually done well to date given his age and breeding, said Merlin. Note link to restaurant scene later in C10. Time gets unhinged in this chapter. Complete reverse search of MERLIN using Navigation Tool. It constitutes an exact chronological retraction. Note elegance of “B. Button” concept. This is where Joyce differed from Proust. He was scrupulous like a Swiss watchmaker. What is your will Unk, asked Edmund flourishing his cape? Insert more dialogue from the screenplay, Toto Against Hercules. This B-Grade success was the accidental literary triumph of Godard’s failing flunk. Link to this work. Today, Telemachus had been freshly-tested in battle. He still wore the lifeblood of the suitors caked on his bronzed, serpentine forearms. Their carcasses had been piled against an interior wall beneath a deep portico to slow the stench. Their rotting flesh would eventually announce their demise to the city. Vassals were washing blood off the tables, floor and walls of the dining room before meeting their own fate. Again, link to forthcoming restaurant scene. Hamlet’s father had been a tyrant. It is implicit in the sense of relief at court after he is killed. Claudius was a calm-bringer. A good administrator like Tennyson’s Telemachus in “Ulysses.” Too slick and cunning for his step-son but. Claudius + Hamlet Senior equalled one complete human. Killing Polonius, the alter-ego of his father, was Hamlet’s only decisive act in the whole play. It also constituted his FIRST ERROR. He would have been better off prevaricating some. He wrapped the body in a rug and lugged the guts into the next room. Everybody’s wearing nightgowns – Gu, Bob, Gertrude, Penelope, even Odysseus. All the characters in Shakespeare’s play are abominations. Telemachus suppressed a sullen after-gasp, guiltily at first then quizzically, wondering at the source of the ferocity which had consumed him during the slaughter of his enemies. A blackbird choked on its opening note. Telemachus craved the peace of familiar inflections. Lingering. Waning. Betoning again. Not even Molly Bloom could fertilise this colony. Not that she was much of a breeder. Henry would have added her to the beheaded list. Tom Hallem could not look at Matt S without SICK. Merlin opened his trousers. He took Tom’s arm and guided it towards his elaborately wired cock still unfull. A cool wind from the Ionian Sea was refreshing Paliki. Odysseus had constructed his palace to maximise the benefits of its sheltered location on the underside of a peak. It also optimised lines-of-sight to the horizon, disclosing any enemy vessels when they were still well upwind. Hold hard, Merlin demanded. Not now, said Tom batting off his hand. Yes, urged Molly. Not here Patroclus. We should be forever testing new places, Eromenos. Never acquiescing in orthodoxy. Kinaidos I am not. You will be cast out of the Sacred Band, spat Merlin like Lady Verdurin. He barred the door. Cockswell under grey folds of slackbelly. Furdecked. Tom watched him unmoved. Bald head flecked like a dog-belly. He jerked fast. Ruthless. Hating. Swann delivering a spray of cattleyas to Odette. Gilbert Osmond getting the job done with his wife. He pressed an index finger into his elastic prostate. Sperm spat. A single thread grasped Tom’s lower leg. Scrawny purl. He let it rest on his trousers. Symbol of Hephaestus. Merlin withdrew his penis from sight making careful folds. The breeze muffled Telemachus’ movements through the upper branches. The blackbird spired. (IV) He nestled in proximity. Seven Lamps. Pen and ink sketches by John Ruskin. Lamp One: Sacrifice. The last lamp: Obedience. The ultimate nexus of Ruskin’s flames was Hector arriving at the battlefield outside Troy. Achilles brandished his new shield. An Australian Flag by Jasper Johns. Odysseus Leaving Ogygia. Fox on Aeaea by Juan Davila. The Martyrdom of Whitlam by Andrea Mantegna. Gough would have wanted to go the full Grunewald, Comrade. Suddenly, the bird emerged from its ambuscade and crossed to-and-fro like a finely calibrated pendulum before Telemachus’ eyes. He could not determine if it was a god or an omen. The river whirred swiftly. It whirled in the autumn breeze. Telemachus rebalanced his body. He intended to bide his time in this bower until his parents were asleep then slide back to earth. He feared his father’s fast blade. Odysseus would have considered every rustle in the undergrowth to be the potential entrance of a new assassin. The vines acted like a sling. Aeolus was stirring. Occasional gusts cleansed the palace grounds. The television reported that Tangcao Expressway had been closed. Traffic was being rerouted down G205 to Caofeidian. The blackbird landed on a cedar-limb. Telemachus pressed his cheek against the warm stone wall, just beyond the ken of his parent’s bed. He could make out lax conversation. It was afternoon all evening. His father recounted his passage home from Troy. Short form poems a pennyeach. His mother replied with Ode on Solitude. Unlamented let me die. Like Troy, she had lived by stealth under siege for years. Billy Capri slid on his stomach along the shag pile carpet until he reached his parent’s door. Weak light as if from an olive lamp washed under the crack. He rested his cheek near a ribbed aluminium plate. Waiting for cannibals. Media pack. Grab onto the underbelly of Australian landscape traditions. Hang on for grim life as you struggle against. Hawke kept his eye injury secret throughout the election campaign. It occurred when he was hit in the face batting for the Parliamentarians in the annual cricket match against the Press in July. A man in a black suit left the disabled toilet cubicle. Fuller averted his gaze. Small tastes of radioactive waste floated in his soup. Perhaps he would be eliminated in a car crash. Nobody would find his fly-blown body for days down a remote embankment.

“We need to get Billy to the airport soon as possible tomorrow,” said Barry to his wife.

“We’ve got to clear the air first.”

“But what if Don comes?”

“He’ll go straight to Penelope.”

“What if he don’t.”

“I know him. Now put out the bed lamp. Let’s get some rest.”1

Helen Capri turned aside. Her husband slid into her spine and put a tamed arm over her trunk. They always began the night thus. Later he would turn so that they pressed back to back like Plato’s first humans. Billy waited until there was tranquillity throughout the household and withdrew to his room. He got into bed and took up his book to search for the famous story of the Trojan Horse. This tale does not appear in the Iliad, which ends with Hector’s funeral, or the Odyssey, which begins with the Telemachiad. It is Virgil’s special construct. Homer’s Odysseus himself never explains his method of defeating the Trojans. All he says is: “I left Troy and made for home.” Billy wondered how Joyce perceived the Trojan Horse trope in composing Ulysses. It was inconceivable that he did not ponder the opportunities left by the gaps between the Iliad and the Odyssey … as well as those presented by placing his text between the Odyssey and the Aeneid. If the entry of Bloom into bed represented Odysseus re-entering his own bed on Ithaca then Molly’s monologue is the seed of its aftermath – GIBRALTAR. It is the crossing point between the known and unknown: a symbol of humanity’s irrepressible thirst for NEWNESS. It enabled Joyce to write BEYOND the end of Homer’s narrative giving him hegemony over his Hellenic precursor and alluding to a bond with his Roman successor, Virgil. Joyce was thus able to reposition himself – in fact, squeeze – into the crux of the GREAT Classical dyad. Homer–JOYCE–Virgil. You can almost see the road sign. It enabled him to revise – even rescind – temporal notions of literary influence (see H. Bloom). Titling his novel after the Roman figure, Ulysses, rather than the Greek one, Odysseus, reinforced the sense that Joyce was straddling giants to create his own ‘space-for-ego.’ He stood with a footsole planted on each head/land like the Colossus of Rhodes while subsequent literature sailed under his patched trouser crotch. Nora laid down her darning to excoriate her husband. Telemachus was startled from reverie by his father’s voice suddenly coming rich and deep from the gloom. “Come Telemachus,” he said. “Now you have heard my tale. You have also heard your mother’s story. Sit with us for a while on this bed which I assembled out of an olive trunk, and in which the Gods in their mercy and wisdom granted us the good fortune to create you.” The young man crawled through the casement. Bloom watched Stephen at the door. He is still a boy at heart, thought Bloom, who has never received the gifts due to an eldest son. Peri. No point of comparison. Odysseus pushed a glowing bowl at Telemachus. “Here,” he said, “taste the last of the Ambrosia that the goddess Athene in her bounty has left us. Then go to the cellar and take any of the serving girls you choose. They will go with you gladly.” A Spa and Sauna is located in the basement of the Shanghai Hotel. Boys lead you to the locker room where you undress. Some mock, others admire, my hirsute form. They provide a frayed towel and escort you to the shower area. You must clean your body well. Government officials recline in steaming tubs. Mao liked to dine on fine food. He also loved dancing. He enjoyed the company of young ladies. They dress you in cheap summer pyjamas like a child. Jiang Qing idolised Hollywood movies, especially musicals. She was an actress herself, after all. You are escorted to a private room which plays pirates of Japanese pornography. She watched them in a home theatre with her cronies. She kept a wardrobe of elaborate qi pao. Eventually, you are escorted to the fishbowl. Mao was always constipated. His doctor purchased a Western lavatory. They used to stop his special train and set this ceramic toilet in the rice fields where he would squat pondering the scenery for hours. The girls enter the box. Sunset spread across the farm flats behind Wushao Expressway. Da Hong Pao was brewing in the meeting room alongside the banquet table. They take a mouthful of Fujian tea and warm your cock. Doctor Gu was encrusted in four red robes. Telemachus consumed the sacred floss. It had been blown with Athene’s sibilant breath. He examined the raised-relief of the Goddess etched into the nest of the bowl. Chidley high on grapes. Coleridge tugging on his pipe. Schlickeysen’s fruit diet. Live an Elysian life and your star will start floating. Telemachus left his parents in bed. His body cast an elongated glow down the corridors. Like Shelley’s heroes, he erased all impression as he went. No guard challenged him. He drifted towards the basement. Pies with his devil’s fingers innem, as Ruskin wrote (see C6). Unholy sweat. She hooked the red rope into her ankles and rotated over his loins. Big as a house he was. Shanghai Dog groped at his trousers pressing and rubbing the corrugated zip. Tom Hallem strained to recall the cab ride. The driver had turned up the radio shaking him free from a drunk stupor. Stephen had been dreaming of Eastern potentates, Joseph the Talking Horse and his dead mother again. Ghost in a dream like Hamlet’s father. Jafar to King Haroun. This is a good example of Joyce’s use of metempsychosis between Stephen and Bloom. He fucked the Caliph’s sister and lost his head to a curved sword. Cut a wet watermelon. Hold it up to your face. The word ‘dream’ is used seventeen times in Nausicaa, largely during the internal monologue of Gerty MacDowell. She sees Bloom’s fantasies for what they really are: lame romance fancies. Likewise, Tom Hallem still invades my visionary realm, albeit with a loss of fact over time; not to mention gaps, misremembrances, impossible intrusions and plain misnomers. Dreams go by contraries, interjected Florry. Tom in his own oneiric catalogue witnessed Ana’s wasted mane spreading across the fizzy black lemonade of Serpentine Avenue like a sodden carpet. A loose brown dress clung to her frame. Blued feet clapped the slummy sand. No longer to trudge. His hand moved under the cotton seam until it encountered an askew needle. He turned her over in shock only to see Willy’s creamfruit face. Ace of Spades climbing the staircase to Bella’s place of business. There is no odour in dreams. The smell of a bedroom can affect the content of dreams however. This conclusion was supported by a study of 3,372 dream reports by Zadra, Nielsen and Donderi (1998). Thus, Stephen Dedalus could not have experienced the smell of wax and rosewood – except from observing live candles and dead flowers in cut glass vases – in his dreams, let alone delineated the stench of wet ashes. Go abroad and love a foreign lady, said Zoe reading Tom Hallem’s inky palm. See Sylvana. Wilhelm Meister was an ineffectual dreamer who came to grief against hard facts. Bloom would never face that trauma. He kept dreams in dreams-place and lived by cold realism. Chapters 3 and 15 chronicle three dreams linked to the figure of Haroun al Raschid, who was the audience for many of the most famous stories in 1,001 Nights. They all turn into nightmares of history. Joyce uses this historic figure and his theocratic interface with Leopold Bloom to explore the hypocrisy and failures of nationalism, ethnic cleansing, Colonialism and Zionism. For Joyce, the persecution and aspirations of the Jews were directly applicable to Ireland. Like Aboriginal genocide. Every country hides its shame. That’s why nations are a tragedy. Whereas individuals are just babble. Simon Dedalus’ version of Croppy Boy is the Siren’s song in episode 11 of Ulysses. Its lyrics describe brutal betrayal. Joyce presents it as a call to violence by a bunch of useless drunks. Bloom’s breaks wind as he leaves the pub in their honour. “I like this song,” said the driver. Hallam nodded meaninglessly. “But that singer,” he laughed. “He does like his idioms.” Bloom remains a pacifist at heart. Yet he is constantly trapped between identities. In Circe, he invokes the war record of his father-in-law to defend his patriotism. This occurs again when he is saving Stephen from the British soldiers. Later, he buys a snack of pork meat from Dick Stone Butchers then feeds it to a starving dog after guilt at consuming unclean food assails him. This is an acute political symbol by Joyce. Why did you leave Ireland [asked Tom Hallem]? “Ubi panis, ibi patria,” replied Joyce. “It’s the migrant’s creed.” Q: I’ll tell you a joke if you like. A: Go right ahead. Q: Riddle me this. How does an Irishman get a university degree? The Australian shook his head. “You catch a ferry to Stockholm, throw a brick through a shop window and get put in a Swedish gaol.” Hallem snorted and grinned. Michael Collins at Frongoch Prison. Physical Force Republicans. Criminal scholars. Wolfe Tone. Young Ireland. Fenian dynamite. Sent to the Tower. Millais’ Two Princes. Harrow Road cache.

“Will you ever go back?”

“No. But I return each night.”

Michael Davitt Green Yeats Joyce. Bobby Sands who died on a hunger strike in Maze. Bernadette Devlin shot seven times on her own doorstep. Spirit too strong to yield. Eight hundred years of British sponsored bloodsled. Tread softly for you tread on my dreams. Graveswarm and sweet. Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael banjaxed the State. The Troubles caused another wave of mass emigration in the 1970s.

“Parnell said that Ireland could not spare a single son. But we’ve been leaving in droves for three centuries. Tans stole our providence.”

Inselaffe. Farang. Angmor Lang. POHMs.

“I know a lot of Irish boys,” replied the passenger. “I grew up amongst Devlins and Mullany’s in Campsie.”

“O’Dobhailein and O’Maoldhomhnaigh. Grandsons of the Unlucky and servants of the Catholic Church. The poles of our heritage. Australian has always been a proxy for the Irish nation.”

Chisholm’s Popish plot. Morgan hanging off a gibbet. Second Vinegar Hill. Two thousand strong the Rum Corps came. True to the shamrock, we were flogged to death or bravely died in chains. Therry’s chalice. Certificates of Freedom. Mary Kelly’s lash. Rich emancipists. Fenian convicts. O’Reilly’s escape from Bunbury on the sloop, Gazelle. Clan na Gael. Breslin’s deception. Six wild geese snatched by the whaleboat Catalpa while the English garrison watched the Perth regatta. Donegal Relief Fund. Derryveagh evictions. British landlords withdrew the right to graze. Three hundred armed constables were sent with a Jury Warrant to collect 3,000 pounds for alleged stock losses. Forty-seven families evicted.Cruel John Adair. Two hundred police demolished their homes. Half the children were still of tender age. Swift’s sweetmeats. Five shiploads brought to Sydney. Loyal Orange. O’Farrell’s mad pot-shot at Bunny Prince Alf. They hanged the loony at D’hurst gaol. Polding’s seven thousand sacraments. Patrick Francis Moran buried in Saint Mary’s crypt. Les Darcy bent double with Daniel Mannix. Easter Uprising. I.N.A. Sinn Fein police. Fig-leaf Empire. The problem lies with the Australian character. Give London bank-blood. Irish beef tasters. Ba mhaith liom bainne. Celtic wogwords. Gaelic is a rude tongue. Learn your own language. They gave us our national songs and epics. Rediscover Ossian. Seosamh Ó Foirbhilhe. Genial climes of a minor literature. Australia is the Irish idyll. Honest Joe Cahill leaning on a palm tree column outside Saint Brigid’s, Marrickville. Vietnamese Vigil each Saturday night these days. Diem’s cronies. Latest gag of refugees. Thanh Le Tai 6g toi. Illawarra Pho Ga. I married Bob with my pale belly blaring under a plain cream dress at the nave(l) of Saint Mel’s staring all the way down Evaline Street to the stagnant sludge of Cooks River.

“Is that why you came here?”

“Nah. It was a process of pure elimination. I wanted to get … far, faraway,” he said concluding the discussion with a bellicose wave of his wrist and a breathless sigh.

The taxi careened down Crown Street nin’ty to the dozen. PUNKS + POOFTAS YEH HUP, announced a painted hoarding. The alliance between alternative music and gay culture in the 1980s turned Darlinghurst into the most humane economy in Australia. YOU ARE NOW ENTERING PINK ZONE. Worker’s terraces crunched together with wire. A third of all families lived in one room in Dublin in the time of James Joyce. Fetishism of place. See Proust, Ruskin, JJ, Sydney. Never multiple locations just a kaleidoscope screwing down on one place. Joyce only leaves Dublin to invoke Paris as its antithesis. See Berlin > Sydney. Also, Shanghai = Sydney. Write a book about Sydney w/out describing SHB or SOH. XI NI DA QIAO. XI NI GE JU YUAN. We passed the demolished Women’s Hospital site. Sydney’s Holles Street. Birthplace for one-child Penelope and only-child Helen. A wild sea breeze, coming off Baird’s stonecutting works, sweeping off Botany Bay towards Newtown, in Talbot Place from George’s Dock, east of Loopline Bridge and Monto, always made Stephen think of Ibsen, always recalled Elizabeth Archer. Joyce went back to the great Norwegian dramatist whenever it came time for female characterisation. SEE GHOSTS. The setting of an impossible quandary like some Hellenic paradox. Ulysses was a simple tale by comparison. The Wangels in LADY OF THE SEA provided the model for the Bloom marriage as well as Blazes Boylan. Ellida chooses her husband over a belatedly returning lover, a sailor, when he finally grants her freedom of choice. [LOTUS EATERS] Elizabeth Archer withdrew behind the thick walls of her brownstone gallery. The patrons were herded inside. Tom Hallem followed like a pin yielding to flesh. Bright floodlights suckered powdered moths. Their nutmeg wings spotted freshly whitewashed walls. Industrial melanism. The crowd shifted in spurts. Tom forced his way into the ruck. Make your way upstream, unthinkingly. Apply the antmound method of characterisation evident in Ulysses, as well as its earlier models like B. House and M. March, to this chapter. Use references to books and paintings like they too were players. READ was play-acting for SLUT HAROLDE and MERLIN in his posh Bowral accent like some pious Peter Carey slumming down Phoenix Park. THE COLLECTOR giggled and rubbed his head. Not a single hair ever rested in its rightful place. He had been dispensing funds and fake giggles since his return from London in the early 70s to collect his family inheritance. He was still engaged in interminable court action to bleed his brother dry. Read bumped against a tall accent table in the course of wild gesticulations about the new version of “Tangled Up in Blue” on Bob’s live album. It shook a rich native bouquet. Tom grabbed the vase. Protea and Leucospermum wrapped in sinamay scratched at his cheeks. Sprays of Geraldton Wax. Dry gumnuts. Dead stalks. He sneezed. SKINTPOLE was scouring for a free taste. Also, any neglected handbag with cash, fags and lollies to nick and pawn down Darlinghurst Road. His daughter was almost 3 months old now. He was coming down hard. Ros couldn’t help him score. She’d been taken back to Kirribilli by The Boss. Dickens based all his characters on real people. Elizabeth Archer registered a sense of profound unease as if she had just stepped groggily out of a long bath. Bloom is obsessed with sex in this episode. He watches a well-kept woman crossing the road while he talks to McCoy. A passing tram blocks his expectant view of her fine hosiery. He fondles Martha’s letter in his pocket letting it poke his half-herded cock. He has decided never to meet Martha, it is too much risk, although his next correspondence would pinch harder. Shanghai dog is like Odysseus. He is restless. Adulterous. But to no end like Bloom. In this work, there is regular sexual contact. This aligns with the Classics. But there are descriptions only as necessary. As symbols of power (Elizabeth > Tom), $ (blowjob), violence (Ana’s rape), and false fatherhood (DP). Connection only occurs without soft touch. There is no passion. Only the perfunctory clashes of thin-lipped Anglos. In order, the following sex scenes occur in T.MAC: Tom and Elizabeth (C2), Tom at Camperdown Beat (C3), Various (C5), Leer and Tom (C7), miscellaneous deleted scenes [Ana raped; taxi-fare hand-job (C9)], Merlin’s masturbation (C10 – link to LB/Gerty also Charlus), failed congress by Tom/Frances & S.Dog/Gu (C10 – compare). This does not include erotic recollections such as Welles for EA, S. Dog for Judy et cetera. The election was going to be close. Closer than anyone expected when the long campaign began. Peacock had been hammering Hawke on drug policy. Last week, the PM broke down in tears at a press conference. A rush of bad marrow had entered the bones of the body politic. Elizabeth turned. Hallem paused. His head spun. The crowd pressed into him making the walls disappear. He surveyed sallow space. Kubrick’s chapel. Censerpall. He closed the lydgate of his soft eyes momentarily. RED waved frantically until he got the boy’s attention. Tom smiled back. He fingered Leer’s kit in his coat pocket. Bloom is killing time before proceeding to Dignam’s funeral in “Lotus Eaters.” He is waylaid by Bantam Lyons. Inadvertently, he presents a tip to the pesky skiver. Next, he visits a Catholic Church. His only interest in Mass is the opportunity to sit next to attractive women. It is a low palace otherwise to Bloom wholly devoid of lifeblood with its Latinate crooners and begging bowls. Man deserves a decent interment. Don’t want to end up like Elpenor. Or Polydorus abandoned in a cheap motel room. Tom’s dim cell in Prahran. Empty bottles of scotch and orange juice by his bed. The coroner found a mix of heroin, opiods, aspirin, methadone and whiskey in his blood. The Coroner determined accident and misadventure in all three cases. He had an extended meeting with Dylan just one month before his death. Nobody has been able to ascertain the exact content of their conversation, although it is known that they discussed life and art. Dylan never wrote about drug addiction or subjective attraction to suicide in his work. Occasionally, it would be associated with story-song characters. Rosemary in “Jack of Hearts” even once tried suicide, for instance. His oeuvre is really imbued with the force-of-art as an elixir. The eighteen songs that Dylan performed at the State Theatre were a typical set of reworked classics and oddities such as a Joan Baez cover and a version of “Female Rambling Sailor.” This remarkable folk song inverts the strict gender roles of maritime ballads. It was first heard by Dylan in his early days in Minneapolis from a field recording in 1932. The main character’s name is Rebecca Young. Her hand slipped from the ship and down she fell into the sea like ALP in The Lake or some junky dragging a canula in his frailed forearm. There is no evidence of deliberation in Red’s death. He played Dylan constantly throughout his career. Tom Hallem found himself listening on high rotation to Planet Waves, The Basement Tapes, Blonde on Blonde and Bringing It All Back Home while he worked in Red’s studio. It helped his brush-rhythm. There was also a fantastic bootleg of the Royal Albert Hall concert with a pig stamped on a cream cover. We’ll never know the truth about what really happened that night. Various stumbles, dead-ends, setbacks and betrayals occur over the course of any life. Walkers on wire bubs. Standing on a bonfire of Aeneas’ goods on Battleship Hill with a sword in your guts like Eurydice. Antigone, Jocasta, Phaedra. All hanged. There were two items of foil containing heroin and four used syringes scattered around the bedroom and bathroom. According to his dealer, Willy bought three grams of smack on Thursday afternoon. The coroner found three fresh needle marks, including two on the back of Tom’s hand. The cocktail of medications and liquor suggests that he was trying to detoxify. This started with a small hit of junk followed by a full cold turkey with its affects mitigated by lesser drugs. Poison sometimes. Never blades. Dido’s suicide is not typical of Classical females. Leon’s darkened hospice room was illumined by a horizontal slit in a warped vinyl curtain. He did not recognise Elizabeth now. His slippery face was contorted and split like “Dylan Attempt 2.” Chaim, he bellowed. Ellen Higgins’ brooch gleaming on her milky fat chest. Ennis hotel. Death by Monkshood it shall be. Rudy unscrewed his head and tucked it under his arm. A new straw boater from James Cullen’s drapery store remained obstinately in place. A poultice of Aconite and chloroform was still stuck upon his grandfather’s forehead. A slower more painful form of death than ingestion. First there would have been nausea then vomiting. A numb maw. Burnt abdomen. Writhing. Paralysis. Maybe chloroform would have aided unconsciousness. The lungs stop. Heart seizure. Aconitum means “without struggle” in Greek. Ironic name really. The Queen’s Hotel is a well-regarded establishment located on a prominent street corner in Central Ennis. It is painted clotted cream today. The hotel signboard is still mounted on the first floor overlooking the junction of Abbey Street and Sraid San Proinsias. Proceed up the stairs. It has only 2 sets of staircases. Enter the death room. Walk to the window. Pull back a cheap chemise. It looks straight down the roadway. Aconite can kill mice with a whiff. The window has been opened a crack. What still survives is a sly sweet odour. The places where people have died always betray the atmosphere of the human spirit at impact. Site of the last show on Earth. Or the first retrospective, depending on how you look at it. Sometimes acute; sometimes obtuse (self-referring). Bloom left church. He had observed the Mass with complete detachment as usual. Brittle cheer of an otiose economy. False booms founded on soft budgets. Keating needs more time, said The Collector. We’re like France in 1849. Long years of brooding. Fraser’s gone with snotty gulps. Present Hawke as Arthur, Keating as Lancelot. Elizabeth passed Tom an envelope. He did not have time to open it. She hooked his arm and advanced into the crowd. The band was setting up its sound equipment in the far corner. Ewan McLeod unpacked his saxophone. He was fitting the reed. His hair stood upright in blue, copper and pink curltones. Madge connected a guitar strap around her shoulders. Tom repositioned his drums and depressed the bass drum once. At this point in Lotus Eaters, Bloom recalls the audience reaction to Molly singing Stabat Mater. Music composed for text. Pater’s dictum inverted. Take the letters of ART out of his name and all you’ve got is a meaningless spray of letters – WLE PE. Here Joyce picks up Flaubert’s use of music as a critical device from Sentimental Education. His description of the harpist’s song evoking “eastern romance, all about daggers, flowers, and stars” is a template for how Joyce integrated music into his narrative themes and imagery to cast new meaning on his storyline. It also incorporated the facile Eastern flair which besotted nineteenth century Europeans. Rossini was a true hustler. He ripped off Tadolini to execute his commission then double-sold the score. It is also called a “series.” Numbered prints. Acts of masturbation. Bloom holds back from self-abuse. It symbolises his first attempt at withdrawal from narcosis. He succumbs later in the day before Gerty. Chidley’s shocks of self-abuse. But Bloom is on his path to redemption. Skintpole had gone lame from a bad groin shot. It clipped a nerve on the way IN. Still it was better than hitting the femoral artery. Need to get some half-inch tips at the new AIDS clinic on Albion Street as soon you you get some bucks. Then go see Mick at the X. Put all your dosh on Throwaway. Discarded syrINges. Sit on a toilet. Drop your strides. Feel for a pulse. Find the Tank Stream. The target vein is adjacent. Inch towards your nuts. Skintpole always shot blindly waiting in trepidation to see if he pulled-back bright frothing blood. That meant trouble. Suck. Rich carmine. Great rush. READ (past tense) watched enviously. He needed to trust in Skintpole’s fine needlework. Rossini was burnt-out by the end in need of fresh cash. Quando corpus morietur. He finished it off later. Dali’s students did the paint job. He just added his signature. Could have hired Elmyr for the job and gone on holidays. After all, he was only in Ibiza just eight hours drive along the coast from the house that Dali and Gala shared in Port Lligat near Cadaqués. Molly sang the soprano solos in Movements 3 and 8 as well as sharing the stage with the other 3 soloists in Movements 1, 6 and 9. Her starring solo in Movement 8 asked the Virgin for the strength to share Christ’s wounds and death (“in die judicii”). Molly would have felt a theatrical identification with Mary as a grieving Mother fixed beneath her dying child on the Cross. She would have rendered the assonant lyric with insouciance as it turned to invocations in Verse 9. The prospect of a Last Judgment would have left her chilly. It was not her type of party. Tom became uncomfortable. Elizabeth felt him stiffen. She looked askance. He gave a neutral grin. She decided to place him under her husband’s wing. A waiter with a tray of drinks pressed the circle. Orange Juice. White wine. Water. Drink that. Eat this. Wave-sensers. Prefer kidneys and pac-dots. Get some sperm inside. Insert metaphor: men wriggling inside a horse. Gallery chock-a-block like Easter matins. Tom’s routine involved getting supplies from the local food market, turning on SBS TV, stripping down to his BVDs and placing a vomit bucket by the bed while he went through withdrawal. A second waiter executed a pincer movement on the right-hand flank piercing the square with small collations. Enfilade. He had nearly died the previous month trying to detox at his sister’s place near Orange. Leon took up a salmon canapé. Someone slid the first slice out of a gourmet pizza medallion. Hawaiian Eucharist. Modernist individual. Add anchorvy. PACMAN. Baudelaire’s Flaneur. Arcades. Success is staying alive in the maze chase as long as possible. Read really wanted to kick his habit. He felt that if he just kept trying to detox then one day, he would get it right. Benjamin stomping back/forward across the Spanish border. Oikake and Otobake on his tail. He must have noted correspondences with the trope of the Wandering Jew. See Queen Mab. Walk faster you lazy Fuck. WAKA WAKA WAKA. Thoughts of suicide had been omnipresent. He did not go to Palacetine with Gershom Sholem. Arendt able to get into the USA he not, the cable wrote. O’Varian Fry [unravel tripartite pun]. Sending the boats back. Gestapo waiting at the border with their Heroin Clocks. Machibuse and Kimagure positioned themselves in front of his mouth. Benjamin took a handful of morphine tablets in a cheap hotel room in Portbou like Rudolph Virag. It was only eight hours drive north from Ibiza, where Hory would later ply his craft. Modernism was designed to have no ending so long as the walker could retain a single life. You should be able to play the game indefinitely. Another fraud. Some software bug is triggered when the count reaches the 255th fruit. Roll back to zero. Split image. Random symbols rain down the right-hand side. Kill Screen. You can’t consume enough fruit fast enough to live. Enemies coming at warp speed, Cap’in. Shields down. Baudrillard + Virilio. A rent sky gone black. The subway train smashed through the tunnel scouring the walls of Jingan Temple Station with the shriek of screaming brakes. Lines 2 and 7 intersecting. The platform was packed. Shanghai Dog opened the note. My sweet little whorish Nora, it said, I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. The narrative style is hackneyed. Bloom slips into the role of flaneur on Sandymount Strand on a fresh summer evening, cock-in-hand, watching a trio of young girls – Cissy Caffrey, Edy Boardman, and Gerty MacDowell – whose babies play by the seashore. This is an image with REAL SHOCK VALUE. It should set alarm bells ringing for any critic trying to unlock the true character of Leopold Bloom. To be clear, BLOOM IS LITTLE SHORT OF A PERVERT in this scene. It should cause us to re-evaluate our entire estimation of the moral firmity of Joyce’s avowed Everyman. Joyce’s shows the Homeric scene on Scheria for what it’s worth: a ragged old man appearing buck-naked before unprotected young women at bath. But we are subdued from passing moral judgment by our happy association with Mister Bloom over the preceding 300 pages. We have become fast friends, nay fellow travellers. Joyce anaesthetises the reader against the perverse side of Bloom’s nature with all his technical tricks, recalling the stylistic shrouds around pornographic content that typified Swinburne. In addition, Bloom does display a continuous pattern of decency in other aspects of life. This is a consistent message of the author: that there is no such thing as unalloyed good, no such state either as untainted evil. Scenes of Bloom’s civic allegiance are also rendered more clearly by Joyce, distorting the reader’s moral ratios. But there is little doubt that, placed in front of a court of law, with an empanelled jury of sensible men and women, there would be a high chance of the defendant being found guilty of a heinous crime on the weight of hard evidence and sentenced to a custodial term in Her Majesty’s Prison. This is the hidden meaning of Bloom’s dream trial in Circe. He knew he was guilty, in Trollopean terms. His level of culpability is only exacerbated by the naivety of his target. Gerty MacDowell is a simple young woman, wholly inexperienced in the ways of the world; what with her silly head still-filled with girlish fancies. She has never had a real boyfriend, let alone experienced sexual relations. She is a typical Catholic girl of her era. Her lack of emotional development is evidenced by her infatuation with a boy riding past her house on his bicycle. She is in no position to handle a seasoned rake like Bloom. Ironically, Bloom is much more like Blazes Boylan than a superficial reading of the text suggests. They are not so different, you and I, Mister Powers, with Boylan’s ‘blazing’ being a clear reference to Shelley’s time-limited ember which will soon be snuffed out. Gerty fantasises about Bloom as a mysterious foreigner in mourning, unhappily married to a shrew or the sad husband of a madwoman in need of her soft comfort. This is not so far from the truth, of course. She displays her ankles and hair for his gaze. She knows that he is becoming sexually aroused by voyeurism. Bloom is only a passing policeman away from infamy. But he doesn’t care. This is the raw heat of male sexual desire on full display. Joyce is writing the temple scene in the Iliad when the marauding Greeks desecrate Athena’s temple and rape and murder the population of Troy in a bestial frenzy. Bloom took up his pen. Cissy, Edy and Gerty represent the NEW WAVE of Irish womanhood, seizing the moment and living for the Dublin of today! NEW LINE. Gerty MacDowell exclusively uses HYDROLOGICA brand products to maintain a bountiful Celtic glow. It’s made from boilgeoga rising from the streams of Loch Ghleann Bheatha in the Derryveagh Mountains of County Donegal. It refreshes the flesh and the mind, even at the end of a long day of ACTION! (insert line drawing of fashion model). Fine cursive penmanship. He finished composing the script and submitted it to Myles Crawford for approval. Lotus Eaters is full of Joycean denseness and irony. It begins with a supplication to the Virgin at the Star of the Sea church, a temperance retreat for men. As Bloom masturbates, shielded by thick shrubbery, Gerty is concerned about the foul language of her friends in front of such a fine-looking gentleman. She shows off more leg. Joyce’s climactic image of a roman candle bursting in the sky above the Mirus Bazaar to gasps of delight juxtaposes Bloom’s despondent orgasm. At this moment, Gerty rises from the seat. Bloom sees that she is lame in the leg that she has exposed to him. He feels sadness and self-disgust. They are both linked by the very essence of human vulnerability and frailty at this moment – Gerty’s raw physical exposure being matched by Bloom’s shame (albeit the causation is completely different). Joyce even throws in one of his rare metempsychotic linkages to bind them: Bloom speculates about women becoming more sexually dynamic during their menstrual cycles; Gerty notes the onset of her own period. In addition, there is a regressive connection to the young Molly Bloom, while Gerty’s limp may even allude to Bloom’s own impotence with his wife. For everything in Joyce is always interconnected with such ferocious intrastitching that the text reflects the relentless correspondences and disassociations of life itself, both predictable and random. But Bloom quickly recalibrates his mind onto carnal obsessions. He speculates on sexual competition between women, citing his wife and Josie Breen. He ponders new seduction strategies. He wonders if Gerty is really Martha Clifford. His thoughts turn to motherhood, his ex-lover Mina Purefoy and erotic magnetism. He wonders if his watch stopped at the moment when Molly was fucking with Hugh Boylan. Shanghai Dog pulled a small graph paper note from his wet pocket and studied Xiao Fang’s elegant handwriting. It made him think of Judy’s body. Strokes of a brush feint across a loose, defined surface. A firm tablet beneath. Inscrutable of meaning. He would need to give it to a trustworthy translator. Not Ricky at the front desk. Maybe Maggie. It would flush out any feelings for him if it contained a plaintive love tone. Martha Clifford includes a yellow daisy in her correspondence. Could have been a lotus. It was addressed to Mr Henry Flower, Poste Restante, Westland Row Station. Bloom’s pseudonym. A safe place out the back of the town centre far from prying eyes north of the Liffey. Nabokov was right to instruct students to study a map of itineraries if they wanted to understand Ulysses. He was wrong to discard what he called “the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings.” These were also an essential part of Joyce’s cosmology both earnestly and as mockery. Also as a quiz. Virag means “flower” in Hungarian. It is a pun and a clue. One so obvious it would be easily detected by Molly Bloom (Google Search: ‘H. Flower, Anatomist’). The taxi driver walked down Palmer Street with eighty bucks rent swelling his trouser pocket. Four Hargreaves halved. Ironic origami really, given the fate of his box kites at Stanwell Park. This coastal resort is set beneath a prominent escarpment just north of Thirroul, where the celebrated artist died in a three-star motel bathtub. We drove to the funeral parlour at Organs Road, Bulli. Bloom describes floating languidly in a barrel like some reborn chrysanthemum blossom. Sperm floating through clear hot water like a ghost. Redolent of discarded spirit. Flowers re-opening in a glass teapot on a shiny black café table in Suzhou. Phoenix in brine. Flower is called hua in Mandarin. Chrysanthemum tea is simply juhua cha. Chinese friends shake their heads and laugh in dismay when they try to pronounce this Latinate term. WOKA WOKA WOKA. Shanghai Dog shook his head at Xiao Fang’s mild entreaties. Stephen pressed the buzzer. Martha’s letter is full of insipid sentiments and anodyne romantic teasing. Nick Hagy shuffled down the hall in his tartan dressing gown and beret; toothless as old Mother Grogan. Joyce uses their puerile exchange as a contrast to the climax of Molly’s monologue. That is REAL physical. Now it was still too early in the novel. Early enough for readers to still believe that Martha might be the full extent to which Joyce would take female characterisation. Nick opened the reinforced door of the Private Hotel and made gums at Pseudo-Stephen. Come inside, he said. The reader must undertake an odyssey to reach the visionary force and uninhibited commentary of Molly Bloom. How could Leopold Bloom of all people live with a woman like Martha Clifford? What would they say to each other after the fact? He needs Molly’s frankness, her tolerance and ribald tongue. Stephen Joyce sat down at the circular dining table and passed his rent money to Nick. Nick wrote a receipt methodically. Carbon stained the edge of his hand. XF is a cunning girl. S-DOG admired her skills. But he would never marry her. The more trickery she displayed, the less chance she stood. Judy never manipulated him. O never read his texts. She didn’t ask him what happened at karaoke. More people penetrated the carriage. The mass lifted S-DOG. He surveyed the long open cabin. Pseudo-Joyce returned down the long lightless corridor of pummelled doors like blanked-out teeth. They stood under an advertising sign. St Outer Inn, it read. Cyclops is the climax of the public theme of Ulysses. Various people returned Shanghai’s gaze until they seemed to anthropomorphise into a panoptic eye. Quixotic Asia. A hive of human cliché. Leopold Bloom perceived the Orient as an indolent place defused by opium languor. How wrong he was. Imperialist spin. Indians were chronic masturbators, according to Mayo. Now we’re stuck on the rim of the Asian Century. Joyce displays Bloom’s limited range of experiences and uncritical use of stereotypes in this section. But always to an imaginative end. It is the capacity to make reverie – not its content – which Joyce seeks to impress on the reader as a positive feature of Bloom. The city government had built new malls and hotels around Jingan Temple until it became a walled citadel. They sold off slices of Jingan Park. Stephen Joyce walked up Bourke Street until he reached the Oxford Playhouse. They were busily refurbishing the whole site for Expo 2010. Er Ling Yi Ling Bolanhui. It resembled a siege zone on the banks of the Lupu Bridge. The Guanyin Hall was dominated by high scaffolding. Its six-metre goddess had been gridded with iron bars. Stephen Pseudo-Joyce gazed across Taylor Square. A fine site for a monument, he reckoned. Nelson’s Cock. The Colossus of Taylor Square. This thought represented an act of metempsychosis with the narrator (see C10, p.1 & 7). Bronze Leatherman spreading crotchless cowboy pants over Oxford Street like Tom of Finland. Gonads hung with traffic lights like bondage weights. Massive erection thrusting towards the city. Shade for the weary. Jade Buddha upright and tense within a stark grey concrete frame awaiting new gilt panes. Ewan blew the arse out of his saxophone to kickstart the band. Gag of Corom hung from a torn bedsheet banner. Madge bit a guitar pick. Tom Hallem was swept against the tidal recession of the stunned crowd. His body suspended in fluid. Lourdes cure. Waters of Lethe. Pure oblivion. Statues bleeding sockets. “I.N.R.I.” Against a white-washed wall, he examined a small photograph by Juan Davila. The artist faced the camera wearing a dirty singlet. His lover reclined across his chest. He was topless and unconscious with his jeans open. A Renaissance figuration of Christ’s limp carcass in the arms of Mary Immaculate. “I.H.S.” Need a cake of soap, pondered Fuller. Palms against yielding flesh. Fingers pressing rib ripples. Clean out the cage. The narrative is internalised and personal here. All inside Bloom’s head. He observes a sequence of advertisements responding to them with a cool professional eye then dredges up a list of narcotics: wine, cigars, soap, warm baths, religion, opiates, tea. Bloom repeats subjects raised by Stephen in the first three chapters. Telemachus redux. More metempsychosis. Stephen leading. Joyce emphasises contrast not confluence between SD and LB:

Joyce conforms to Homer’s morphology by placing Stephen’s narrative first in the novel then making his Odysseus figure follow the son almost telepathically. His characterisation of SD in the first chapter of Ulysses is located in the sentimental tradition of the Bildungsroman; in particular, the opening scenes of Flaubert’s Sentimental Education. However, Joyce gives SD relatively soft-lens treatment. By contrast, Flaubert portrays his erstwhile hero, Frederic Moreau, in a state of mawkish infatuation with Madame Arnoux on a paddle steamer. Moreau is relentlessly outfitted with Romance clichés. His overblown rapture at Marie as a Vision of Beauty (which is not shared by other passengers) is echoed in Stephen Dedalus’ naivety towards women and love; although his romantic feelings are not fixed on any individual person in Ulysses. This makes it less intense than Flaubert’s characterisation. Flaubert also directly contrasts Frederic’s elevated sentiments towards Madame Arnoux with his rudeness towards servants and off-handedness with his mother. In fact, he is only polite to people who can further his ambitions. A similar contrast is created in Ulysses when Stephen Dedalus bumps into his sisters – although this episode is used by Joyce for quite different effect. Joyce conducts a much more incisive class and gender analysis than Flaubert, who is simply interested in exposing the fripperies of the haute bourgeoisie. Joyce does not overtly damn Stephen Dedalus. He discloses how the social structure and poverty of Dublin has created gross anomalies between genders – even within individual families – simply by articulating the contrast in education, status and opportunities between Stephen and his sisters. Stephen is seen as selfish and self-interested but that is really just a product of youth. He is not damned for lack of feeling by Joyce. He is just relatively helpless (unlike his father). Tom Hallem turned back to the sound. Bloom admired an impeccably attired socialite sitting in a deck chair sipping a champagne flute. She saw him and uncrossed her legs to disclose the garter of her black silk stockings. Her hard smirk shrank Tom to his station like coarse Mellors. He turned away. His dealer grabbed him by surprise.

“Tom, this is Marion Hackett,” rasped Elizabeth Archer. “She’s joining our little gang next year.”

“I’m glad to finally meet you,” said Marion holding out a hand.

“Same. What type of art do you make?” asked Tom Hallem gripping then releasing her palm.

“She’s a curator,” interjected Elizabeth.

“What?”

“A curator,” added Marion firmly. “Think of my role like that of an impresario. Or an entrepreneur. I’m putting together a show called Naming Rights. Each work will be labelled “Untitled.” Then I will insert my own choice of title in parentheses.”

“Like appropriation.”

“Precisely. And there’s one other thing. I sign all the works.”

“Pardon?”

“I put my signature in the bottom right hand corner of each art object on show.”

“She’s critiquing the individualistic artistic ego.”

“It’s mobilising Feminism against the heroic male.”

“We want you to participate in Naming Rights,” said his dealer.

“Do I get to sign my work as well?” asked Tom Hallem.

“That isn’t aligned with my praxis,” replied Ms. Hackett.

“Couldn’t we both sign the work? I could sign on the bottom left side. You could sign the right. Like a contract.”

“That won’t work either.”

“It’s all way too complex for me,” giggled Tom Hallem waving his fingers in the air like tiny propellers. “What’s the profit split?”

“50:50.”

“That’s a good deal for you,” he replied emphatically.

“I’ve got the connections.”

“Well, I haven’t heard of you. But I dare say you have.”

“She’s got an international profile.”

“I’m an enabler. My business model enables obscure artists to create saleable commodities. All the best conceptual artists have turned to marketable product in recent years.”

Peter Booth’s thick oils. Parr’s charcoaled elfs. Anthropomorphic skulls of John Walker. Local variants on Cy Twombly. Imants Tillers’ assemblages comprising small plaster boards are now being sold individually. Make art out of coins and notes. Numismartics. Macquarie Bank will launch a new closed-end fund for contemporary art to HNWs next year. Fund Number One will be raising $100 million. Three-year term. Minimum entry level five million dollars. Target IRR of thirty per cent on equity. The Straits Times reports that Community Pirate Group is preparing to list a Business Trust for Chinese toll road assets on the SGX. BT structures enable distributions out of available cash funds rather than distributable profits. 1M WORDS (see C11) will examine the commercial equation facing all artists – can you be interesting and obedient? Matt Supplejack answered YES. The Stooges NO. Thom Hallem also. Billy Capri YES, EVENTUALLY.

“You can’t just paint pictures anymore,” stated Marion Hackett.

“But I like … painting,” Tom Hallem replied.

“It’s not enough,” she answered.

“I know that,” said Tom stoically.

“So, what are you going to do about it,” demanded Marion.

“Well, I’ll start by doing whatever you want,” he concluded gaily.

“I told you he’d see reason,” interjected Elizabeth Archer touching his sleeve. Her fingertips left swipes of make-up on his brown coat. Also, taint of some perfume he did not recognise. Note symbolism.

“I’m glad that’s all fixed. Now come and look at the rest of the show, Marion. Tom’s work is titled “Speed Painting.” It’s hung next to Matt’s portrait of “Merlin.” He just bought it for his conservatory. It will look majestic against the harbour view from Lavender Bay. I’ll also to introduce you to Ray Hughes. He’s just come down from Brisbane. Going to make a big impact on the Sydney scene.”

Elizabeth extracted Marion Hackett. They withdrew into the throng. Tom observed their coat-hanger flanks receding. Shanghai Dog stepped on a tiny shoe. A lotus-shape foot is most highly prized by husbands. Baihua Yundong. Putrid blooms. Too crippled to walk without support. Chained. Fake solicitations. Oedipus Swellfoot. Left to die in the hills with his ankles pinned together. Lester squashed down a shaft. Byron was called a lame brat by his mother. Changed his name to Noel to collect his inheritance. Signed NB. Gull everyone into presenting their opinions. Then bag em. Collective mutilation of thought. Link to Tom’s supplication. He pressed through the throng. READ caught Tom’s regard. He put forth another reticulated smile. Cassius in a clown’s curly orange wig. Tom unsealed the envelope. A crack in lamella. Robert’s unprotected spine. Dead child wilting on a stone slab. Refrigerator door closing in a bare paddock. Chaim. Breathe withdrawing. Stay still wait for rescue: uncome. Tom extracted a sheet of A5 paper from his pocket. Crease of O’s nape. Laugh lines around semi-diluted eyes. Horizon crinkling. Our love affair. Useless and misguided as the flight of paper airplanes. More passengers entered the subway at Nanjing Donglu. Tom shielded the contents from view. Groggy Elpenor. HE FELL DOWN SHAFT LIKE LESTER DONE DONE. Better to be a slave of Marion or Circe than Hades’ King. He read Elizabeth’s note. Be on your guard tonight. Beware, love. We must talk. I can type sixty words per minute, sir. Oh Henry, I do so long for your vitals next visit to Mullingfar. ENSIGNED MARTHART. Joyce uses epistolary text in a variety of ways in Ulysses. Rudolf Virag writes a suicide note. Deasy proselytises. Milly sense mail that shows favour to her father. Bloom and Martha flirt. The anonymous postcard to Dennis Breen is an impermeable practical joke. Boylan sends a message to Molly in advance of his arrival. Rumbold the Hangman writes a job application to the High Sheriff. Joyce got a telegram from his father with a misspelling about his mother’s impending death. Nother dying, it said. Come home. See Chapter Six. This type of linguistic error stayed with Joyce as a template for displacing emotional climaxes. Good Friday 1903. He borrowed the sea fare off one of his students and went back to Dublin. Thus, was the entry point of Ulysses made. It made him fear postal deliveries for the rest of his life, just like his terror of lightning. Ezra Pound wrote to the unpublished author in Trieste in 1913. “Dear Sir, Mister Yeats has been speaking to me.” Still no publisher for Dubliners after 8 years grind. Let alone a bite on Portrait. Pound had a keen eye for talent. They had a hate or two in common. That’s a problematical bond, said Joyce. Eventually, he turned against Pound. Orlando hung letters on trees all around the Forest of Arden. No jewel like Rosalind. Lear is powered by false correspondence. Missives that confuse or deflect. Downright lies. Polonius reading Ophelia’s private mail from Hamlet aloud to Claudius and Gertrude. “Dear F, art-to-groans reckon. Return used machines to stores forthwith.” Aeschylus introduced a second actor who delivered an oral report of past or external events to the play. This was the start of dramatic dialogue. Sophocles turned the stage into a mail room. Or rather a telephone exchange with many operators sporting Bakelite mouthpieces. Serving girls hooked between the walls with wires. Telemachus moved carefully beneath them through a flyscreen of limp legs. Tom Hallem crunched his benefactor’s message into ribbons and discarded it on the bare wooden floor. Crumpled throwaway. Elijah is coming. Marat’s hand slowly releasing a foil. Cold bathroom tiles. Ana bent over the bowl. Another rejected meal floating before her eyes in soggy blocks. Last words of the Old Testament. Jesus has returned in the form of Dr Sun Myung Moon, Korean car manufacturer. Malachi’s prophecy. A rank outsider. Heavily hyped by his lady trainer. Gather shekels while you can, stated Lenehan. Boylan put two quid on Sceptre: one for himself and one for Moll. Thames tide rushing through North Sea brine. Ne Plus Ultra. Calpe Mons | | Abile Mons. Pass between. Go to New South Wales. Island of Lotus Eaters. Cast off from Phaeacia bound for Ithaca. Gibraltar was a colonial version of. Trawl the remains. Never the same. Dog returning to old sick. Aeneas blasting his way out of Troy. The Gods placed Leer on a mail train all stops to Broken Hill. Wait for a lift from Athena by the last rail buffer at Ivanhoe. She’ll pick you up in a truck. Eighth Army surplus. Desert currents flowing brack and froth. Operation Bertram. Bantam Lyons at Bloom’s armpit bludging squizzes at the threadbare Freeman. Emblem of democracy. Give it to him, just to get rid of him. 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane). Let the tide take me under Loopline Bridge down the Tank Stream to Customs House. Spouter Inn. Zhu Di dressed my body. Her markings on my form. Tight shirts locked my chest in a synthetic stockade. Cuff links I could never get off. Hephaestus’ chains. Broken pipes. Black hair on the wash basin. Gold cologne. O holding tight to the window. Marion Hackett had Matt Supplejack pinioned under spotlights. A blankety canvas. Bacon’s carcass. Gouged in streams. We are the Orangemen. Stuffed fellas. Umbrella ribs. Skinshine. 1493 self-portrait. Beautiful Durer grasping flower spray. Symbolistic Thistles. An aphrodisiac. Shanghai Dog felt his frozen crotch. Dutch glory. Myj sach die gat. Als es oben schtat. Give myself over to a higher force. Tom Hallem analysed the multitude as IMAGE. Christ entering Brussels. Brueghel’s “Babel.” Crowded-out space. Caius Martius arrives at the grain silo in Coriolanus with thanks for nothing and immediately discloses his rhetorical skills with a complex parody of Menenius’ metaphor of the State-as-body. His language is richly alliterative. It mocks the mutinous crew. He is wearing his trade-in Agnomen. LINK TO BURTON’S ANATOMY. Frye’s fourth place. His disdain lets the mob feel its own value; albeit in negative terms. Instead of paradoxes, he employs raw dichotomy. He encourages ferment. Revolution is his natural function. It’s like O said (C7, F/N 74). To alter the natural world, metaphor is piled upon metamorphosis with Spasmodic zeal until no-thing is left untransferred/untransformed – first animals (lions become hares and fox become geese) then cosmic phenomena (“coal of fire” on ice and hailstones living in the sun). Maxims follow with human metaphors of illness and depravity. He descends into the ocean to conjure oxymoronic “fins of lead” then flies into the sky to flap against a wild oak. He longs to be present at any site where he can continue to make antinomian utterance. Like Mao, he is centripetal by disposition. Literary minutiae becomes the driver of social upheaval. A poem. A play. One word. A letter. Theatre reviews. It all started with The Dismissal of Hai Rui by Wu Han. An anonymous review by Yao Wenyuan unlocked its symbolism against Mao (Dikotter, 48). The Dilemma of Peng Zhen followed like the second act of a Sophoclean trilogy. The final instalment was always the arrival of Kang Sheng. He was the dreaded security chief who tortured confessions out of detainees. There had to be a record of admission to justify redress. Everything Mao read was charged with meaning. He was quintessentially a literary critic. The closest models in the West at this time were F.R. Leavis and William Buckley. Mao had stooges who could transmit his thoughts intuitively just like Murdoch. The media magnate got an AC off Hawkie this year. The Australian is endorsing the ALP in 1984. Always cheer home a clear favourite. Adds to the kill ratio. Caius Martius could never erase the impact of words. They ate away at him like battery acid. Language compelled him to demolish Chinese culture. Replace it all with slogans. Broadcast them through loud speakers. Pedestrians pressed mutely into a dispute between two transport policemen and an agitated migrant worker. The circle closed. Like Polyphemus, the little man implored his neighbours for assistance. They were mute at first. Just watching. This is a symbol of the social apathy that Homer predicts unless a regal system is restored. Anonymous voices started to berate authority. A van approached. Horn blaring. Shanghai Dog edged off. Unlike Mao, Deng Xiaoping couldn’t be bothered with word games. He played life like a card game. He was addicted to bridge, after all. China would industrialise in Stage One. This would require more bending before the West. An urban proletariat would form. This was consistent with Marxist dogma. Government officials and phoney entrepreneurs would become haute bourgeoisie. This structure would induce the conditions for REAL REVOLUTION. Deng was also a pragmatist. He learned the value of performance surviving Mao’s dynasty. Like any actor, he could recite any lines. He did vaudeville. Went on the road with a pantomime troupe. Visited the States. Wore Carter’s cowboy plumes. But he had always been a hardcore communist since his bandit days back in Guangxi. Bloom reflects on his own life and starts to feel ambitious for Stephen near the end of Ithaca. He would like to provide advice to the younger man on the pitfalls of existence. However, Stephen can only learn by hard experience. He doesn’t respect a middle-aged clerical worker. READ grasped Tom’s shoulder and turned him towards a small coterie of supporters.

“I was just telling the team that I went to London at your age, Tom. I met all the movers and shakers. Stayed for the best part of a decade.”

“Didn’t they put you down as … convict stock?” asked Merlin.

“Actually, it was a great advantage coming from Australia. The pop groups all dug Oz magazine. It’s how I met Lizzie. She was almost full-term. I got to hang out in the Scene. Not just with stale old art types. Where is it all happening now, Peter?”

“Who knows?” replied Fuller dully. “I’m just a critic.”

“Not true,” replied READ theatrically. “You’re an agent provocateur.”

“In some places, I am considered reactionary. Even a traitor.”

“Because of Ruskin?” asked Hallem.

“Because I didn’t follow the Party Line,” replied Fuller to the unintroduced face.

“What about your writings on Cultural Imperialism,” asked Harolde. “Surely your Marxist cronies approve.”

“That was my last gasp,” answered Fuller. “And my book on Berger was the final straw.”

“He just didn’t like your goldfish, darling,” snapped READ in retort.

“He missed a plane once when my car broke down on the airport overpass at Heathrow. I think that was the last straw.”

“Tres Ballard,” concluded READ winking at the critic.

Fuller shrugged and emptied his glass. William Morris dancing upon a dime. He adjusted giant anamorphic spectacles and gazed at his smoky reflection in the pane of a Tramp Art frame. Narelle Jubelin’s petit point. Marion and Elizabeth returned to Tom Hallem’s side. Goneril and Regan never such glowed.

“I was just looking at your painting,” said Hackett. “It’s aligned with my current leitmotif.”

“Which is?”

“The Fall.”

“Great Band. Saw them at the Trade Union Club last year.”

“She means Postlapsarian culture,” added Elizabeth sagely.

“As a symbol of industrial decline.”

“Maybe linked to the debility of Modernism,” offered Tom Hallem.

“Correct,” replied Marion.

“Tell him about your next Gesamtkunstwerk, Marry.”

“I am going to construct a hollow tree trunk from floor to ceiling in the centre of a dark exhibition space. It will represent one leg of Odysseus’ marital bed. The archetype of the patriarchal anchor. Penelope’s chain. But this phallic motif will undercut by an internalising representation of Femaleness.”

“There will be an entrance to the installation shaped like a vast pudendal cleft,” said Elizabeth.

“Like Georgie O’Keefe’s flower paintings,” added Tom Hallem helpfully.

“At last, we can travel inside the prostrate female in Duchamp’s ‘Etant Donnes’.”

“Precisely. Inside, layers of shattered glass on the floor will be covered by a blanket of fallen leaves.”

“Symbolising Autumn,” continued Elizabeth.

“As well as a pun on the act of falling,” added Tom.

“The risk of a sudden fall is omnipresent.”

“The leaves signify environmental degradation and the death of Nature.”

“The audience will be required to remove their shoes and change into work boots to protect their feet when they enter the installation.”

“It’s an OHS requirement,” said Elizabeth matter-of-factly.

“This act will critique the modern obsession with fashion.”

“It also alludes to the redundancy of workers in a post-industrial state.”

“It will be almost totally black inside. The walls will be moist, sticky and soft. The viewer will be exposed to a recording of the soundscape inside the womb.”

“The beating of a mother’s heart,” added Elizabeth hopefully. Amor matris. Chaim.

“Wire sculptures will hang from the ceiling.”

“Metabolised human forms.”

“Emblems of State suppression.”

“What Foucault calls Bio-Power.”

“Biopouvoir,” added Marion with faultless French assonance.

“We are going to film the whole event,” said Elizabeth.

“And run LIVE tape loops through the gallery.”

“Everything will be documented,” said Elizabeth.

“I’ve already pre-sold it to the NGA.”

“This reflects Marion’s praxis. Nothing is out of bounds.”

“Last year, I stuffed a plush unicorn skin with used tampons and posted it to MOMA in protest against the Modernist Masters exhibition excluding women artists. Then I produced a limited series of 20 replicas.”

A scoop of Merle Oppenheim’s spoon. One of the great household images. Up there with Cezanne’s fruit. Yayoi Kuzama invented soft art in the 1950s. She was a precursor of Oldenburg. His success was re-gendered plagiarism, if you like. His first wife, Patty Mucha, did all the inglorious sewing jobs like Penelope. No Wikipedia entry for her. Eva Hesse didn’t live long enough to get sidelined. She died of a brain tumour at age 34. Excellence has no sex, she said. The first superstars of the recorded era were female blues singers. There was no equivalent until the 1980s. Fifty women artists in the Armoury Show (1913). Photography was not an established form when Cameron snuck into the frame. Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer are notable artists working in this medium today. Suzanne Valadon was not a great technical artist. But she was a solid second division painter who achieved significance in her last years. “The Blue Room” (1923) is a brilliant painting. It reworks the odalisque composition into a piercing critique of gender, age, the gaze, exposure, body image and female labour options (prostitution). It indicts a hypocritical society. Her other female nudes in the 1920s were all strong. She was largely known as Renoir’s dance model and Utrillo’s mother until the 1980s. Louise Bourgeois is another artist who found her milieu in sculpture later in life (c. 1967 onwards). The American Mary Cassatt was a consummate technician. She was the equal of any Impressionist painter in the 1870s. For examples of her best work, see the brilliant colour and tone of “Woman with a Pearl Necklace” (1879), the highly innovative composition of “The Boating Party” and the perfect execution of a classic structure in the “Child’s Bath” (both 1893). Cite also Hale, Coffin, Nourse and Beaux. Kath Kollwitz and Georgia O’Keeffe have been noted elsewhere in this chapter. Cecilia Beaux was a portrait painter. However, “Landscape with Farm Building” (1888) is a ground-breaking image which reverberated through American art in the twentieth century. Romaine Brooks also found a unique palette and subject matter after 1905. “White Azaleas” (1910) has a unique take on perspective. “La Trajet” is a landmark symbolist painting of sex and death. It has become a model for countless inferior Gothic illustrations of Albino corpses since the 1970s.

“Marion was saying you should exhibit in Perth.”

“Why?”

“It’s my hometown, Tom. I know how it works. I can help.”

“READ went there last year. Highly successful show.”

“It’s such a long journey,” mused Tom almost whining.

“Fifty hours driving time,” stated Marion knowingly.

“I could fly there, I guess.”

“You would profit more from a road trip,” Elizabeth responded.

“What would I do?”

“You could experience life on the road. Visit abandoned mining towns. Draw roadhouses. Have you ever seen the Outback?”

“I’ve never been west of Katoomba.”

“Perth is a really good place to get rid of second-rate works,” said Marion definitively.

“I can vouch for that,” added Read clinking champagne flutes.

“I can’t support you forever Tom,” blurted Elizabeth.

He faced their silence.

“I know,” replied Tom quietly.

She drew him away.

“Did you get my note?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I have an idea for generating some extra cash. But we need to discuss it in private. I’ve also arranged a post-show soiree. Will you come?”

Hallem nodded. Elizabeth walked off. He followed her. Blinded by light then darkness they moved beyond the gallery walls backstage. Elizabeth’s disembodied voice filled his ear.

“Go upstairs and wait. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

She led him to the elevator and depressed the call button. He listened to cables grinding up and down the shaft. The elevator doddered to a halt. He wrenched back the brass latches on the outer and inner doors. The cabin ground skywards. The city cast its glow through blockhouse grates. Clouds closed on cracked panes. Squalls of wind and rain touched his mouth. He proceeded across the floor (see C2). Pictures lined the walls along the corridor to Elizabeth’s office. He sat down in an old armchair chair. His palms rested on cracked leather. Her touch. Gentler than before. He rested. Sleep came quickly. Narrow but deep. To propitiate Poseidon and close the Odyssey, Odysseus was required to find a race of people who had never seen the sea. Out beyond the never-never. Perth. Pass Boake’s dead men. Lying. On the way. He wasn’t that type of chap. Neither was Odysseus. He tried to dodge the draft. Busted by Palamedes. Elizabeth’s footfalls, distant but crisp like typewriter keys, closed. Soft humming. His body swivelled. She swept past him, pushed open the door and went inside. A stream of drops from a glass of iced water disclosed her trail. She unlocked the top drawer of a filing cabinet and extracted a small plastic bag.

“Want some blow?” she asked.

Elizabeth burped a mound of cocaine onto the desk and placed a worn palm over the powder. Brittle skin on the back of her hands. Tom stood mutely. She cut four lines and took two herself immediately. Tom followed. His eyes wept.

“I’ve got good news. We’re going to have an exhibition in Paris next year to coincide with the Biennale. I want you there, Tom.”

She gripped his hand.

“I’ve already sorted out a stipend with the Australia Council. It will cover your airfare and accommodation. There’s also a three-month residency at the Cite des Artes. But you’ve got to take it up in January.”

“That’s a really tight timeframe.”

“The sooner the better, I say.”

“I’ll need cash.”

“That’s what I want to discuss.”

“There’s no time to mount a show in Perth.”

“That can wait. I’ve got a better idea. It relates to READ. There’s a lot of demand for his work. Record prices. Investors aren’t fussy. They just want to own the name. But he can’t produce substantial pieces at the moment. He can only … doodle.”

“Send him off to Detox.”

“That would be a complete waste of time and money. No, what he needs is help to produce new work. Look, Tom. You’re going to be at a loose end for a few weeks until you go to Paris. I was thinking you could spend some time with Read in his studio.”

“Like an assistant?”

“More like a proxy.”

“What do you mean exactly?”

“You could pick up the gist of his current interests from his notebooks. Turn them into paintings. He signs. We sell them privately. It’s a bit like the academy of an Old Master.”

“That’s forgery.”

“Warhol did it.”

“Screen-printing is different.”

Good business is the best art, said Andy. Just get your camera in focus on somebody famous. Celebrities always generate sales. He produced nine hundred works per year in a big warehouse on the Lower East Side. See Benjamin (WAAMR). Fifteen assistants. Approximately one work each per week. Not a new occurrence. Innovation in industrial arts had been driven by the profits of mechanical reproduction since ancient times. The stamp mill in Ancient Greece. Woodcuts, etching, lithography, engraving, even photography more recently. Warhol worked the margin between mass reproduction and the unique individual art product. This was the sweet spot. He inverts every maxim like a glib libertarian. Insert mall-shibboleths. You can even make outsider work into a franchise. F for Fake. Don’t look too long. Make it all jump cuts. Create a sense of haste with images and words. Ulysses was mainly fast dialogue (external + internal). F(W)ake by contrast is mainly monologue. Its portmanteau vocabulary bogs down the act of reading. Magritte was an expert forger. After the War, he produced fakes by Picasso, Braque and de Chirico in Paris. He moved onto counterfeit banknotes next. His surrogate son was put in charge of sales and distribution. See Leer/Hallem. Selling fake Soviet badges at Camden markets for pin money. Buying fake bags at Ke Zhi Guan. Give them to cheap girlfriends. Rachel buying majong tile bracelets for one buck at the markets then selling them in Sydney for ten. Mariën Magritte was part of a Belgian gang. He invented Étrécissements because he couldn’t draw or paint. Cut-downs and assemblages. Spiked photographs. A knife passed from Sade to Lenin across a woman’s breast. Blucher’s bloof. He abandoned formal production in 1954. He was a renowned prankster. In 1962, he published a fake catalogue announcing steep discounts on Magritte’s works including a new system of pricing-by-size. Magritte terminated their relationship. It would have been the same with Bloom and Stephen inevitably. The former would never have been able to accommodate the latter’s hubris. The latter for his part would have tired of order.

“It’s easy money.”

“Why me?”

“I can trust you. You need cash. And you’ve got the best technique out of everyone I know.”

“I am a legitimate artist,” replied Tom Hallem defiantly.

“All the more reason to make it our little secret. Nobody would suspect someone like you. Look, I need money as well. Stan’s tied me over for a few months. But he won’t bail me out this time. I need to look to my future.”

Tears filled her pale blue eyes suddenly.

“Leon is sick Tom,” she said faltering. “He’s got AIDS.”

The heavy thud of the band worked through the floorboards. Passionis fac consortem. Their eyes met for a moment then desynchronised like two lighthouses scanning the invisible sea. Hallem contemplated the proffered act. Collective workshops in the style of [INSERT NAME]. Renaissance patrons inscribing their signatures on someone else’s masterpieces. Do not forever gaze with veiled eyelids, Hamlet. Cezanne never signed his works. Picasso authorised an employee to forge his signature. DALI’s production line of acolytes. Duchamp transformed a leaf of red paper into a commodity by adding his seal. He sold boxes of miniatures.

“What’s my cut?”

“Twenty-five per cent.”

“What are they worth?”

“His best paintings are selling for eighty thousand dollars. These works would be one rung below that. Maybe fifty.”

“I want half.”

“Don’t fuck with me Tom,” replied Elizabeth harshly. “I don’t have any room to move. Read is taking half. That means we’re splitting 50:50. It’s a take-it or leave-it proposition.”

“When would I start?” asked Tom Hallem.

“As soon as you like. Tomorrow! I’ve got clients waiting.”

“How many works do you want?”

“I was hoping to get five large oil paintings plus related studies. I need it to look like a legitimate series.”

“That’s one major work every two weeks.”

“Correct. Can you do it?”

“Sure. How do I get paid?”

“Cash post-sale.”

“I want to get paid on delivery.”

“I don’t have the cashflow, Tom. It’s got to be based on sales.”

“But I’ll be overseas by then. You can pay my mother.”

“Can you trust her?”

“Got a better suggestion?” he asked.

Penelope’s diligence in the Odyssey has been universally admired. She sacrificed everything for her son. It required a cold persona. This is the principle trope transferred from Homer to this work. Plus tactical wit. Elizabeth Archer exhibits all these traits. Tom would get his mother to make periodic wire transfers to Europe. She could store the rest of the cash in her safe deposit box. Not even Les knew about that. It was also a good way to wash the proceeds. In PAYM, Joyce wrote that “whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.” But he was obsessed with his own mother’s self-sacrifice. Catholic guilt always drove him to absolutes about Mary Joyce. AMBITION is an apt substitute for ‘love’ in this quote. And/or PERSISTENCE. You could insert COMPETITION as a codicil. There are many apathetic, downtrodden and passive mothers. Ones who don’t make a lot of difference to their children’s experience, and thus have meaning only as LACK. Conversely, there are stage mothers and fucked-up sadists who torture their offspring. Their kids act as mere surrogates. Mothers like Mrs Bennet in P&P. Mothers who never build you up, only push you back down like Gertrude. Mary Dedalus has already reached the end of her ordeal by the start of Ulysses. She is “beastly dead,” in Mulligan’s crude phrase. (Insert results of Page Find). Stephen Dedalus is now an adult. His father is running amok in Dublin. Cite Larkin’s famous poem. Stephen is thus without ballast. But he hasn’t grown up with ABSENCE. Telemachus was two years old when his father left. Only Elizabeth’s daughter in this work would come to know the same lack. She also had to work through the lies about his identity. My mother sent me to grammar school to learn about men. Everything was fine for the first decade. It was only at the end that things went wrong. Suitors besieged Penelope. Molly Bloom runs too hot and fast to generate true affection from Milly. She is more in the vein of Emma Bovary. She has a performer’s ego much like my own mother. This puts an artificial film over everything. The Bloom family represents repressed rivalry but it is kind of apathetic. This contains some resemblances to the author’s relations with his wife and daughter, although the general consensus is that Lucia was spoiled by both parents until she showed signs of madness at which point her father’s guilt created an obsession with finding a cure.

“So … are you in?” asked Elizabeth.

“His style is pretty basic. Yes. Count me in.”

“Great. I want you to focus on harbour scenes. It’s his best-selling point. Take him down to the jetty with his sketchbooks if you can get him out of the house. Or drive him to Woolloomooloo Bay. That’s the closest waterfront to his new studio. You can use the Merc. That’ll give the works more credibility. You should go now. Here. Take this bag,” she winked brightly. “I’ve got to get ready for dinner.” The Lady departed the tower at this point to go down to her subjects below. [CYCLOPS] This episode opens in the style of Old Celtic sagas. It describes the marketplace as a land of plenty. Joe Hynes and the unnamed narrator arrive at a pub. They greet The Citizen and his dog, Garryowen. The Citizen is described mock-heroically. Tom Cornwall (not “I”) was waiting at a low Formica table next to a row of poker machines when Don Cane entered the Crest Hotel. Shanghai Dog felt a sudden dizziness. He squinted. Double vision, he thought. A homophone. Twenty-six eyeballs set on the carriage vault arched with a fringe of bay trees. He returned to the street. Cyclops contains the only first-person, present-tense narrative in Ulysses. It is split between two voices – a growling reporter (Narrator A) who reinforces the prejudices of The Citizen and a pompous raconteur (Narrator B) who undercuts both characters in a sequence of faux parodies. For the purposes of this sub-episode, Citizen = Ocker. He represents the Captain of the Push. There is a sequence of allusions in the Strine passages to the ribald poem, “Bastard of the Bush,” attributed to Henry Lawson. The use of a military rank for the principle drug dealer in the area provides ironic counterpoint to the genuine service status of Cornwall and Cane. The clock struck Nine. His whistle loud and piercing woke the echoes of the Rocks. A stuffed cuckoo popped out of a clock on the wall. Nearly took me eye out. Freemason’s boy was coming back to the table with a silver thread hanging out of his pocket. He had a big win today on the MALLBURN CUT. He’s out and back, out and back, up and down, in and out like an Irishman at church. Solange on her haunches. Leer lapping like a dog. The paper lantern rocked gently above Billy’s head as he wrote. Joyce uses 33 stylistic parodies over the course of the Cyclops episode. They act as a precursor to the more satisfying chronological sequence of prose styles in Oxen of the Sun. I say ‘more satisfying’ because the Oxen episode has a precise structural goal: to trace the evolution of English prose to its apogee in Joyce. This linguistic project commenced in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with Baby Tuckoo and ended with the hybrid vocabulary, melded languages and neologisms of Finnegans Wake. By contrast, the parodies in Cyclops are intercut into the narrative as stand-alone units to extrapolate the subject matter at hand. They are not necessarily intended to cast meaning. Rather they often seem designed to bewilder – even bore – the reader, mirroring the impact of Bloom’s own speech on listeners (an ‘outside text/inside text’ parallax). Some replicate Bloom’s pedantry (e.g. “Herr Professor Luitpold”). Others parody the effusive style of nationalist legends echoing The Citizen (i.e. the “sinewyarmed hero” and his erroneous list of famous Irishmen). The specific style of each lampoon appears arbitrary. They act as anti-masques to expose the authorial hand (AKA postmodern gesture). Joyce’s Narrator B is the stylistic and thematic opposite of the streetwise POV of Narrator A. They represent extremes placed in a dialectic in which the “real” author is revealed by inference (synthesis). Narratorial voice is effectively abolished, enabling Joyce to detach himself as author from all opinions and float free through the text. This is critical for Joyce as he is thus able to mobilise The Citizen’s racism and chauvinism to goad Bloom to finally SPEAK OUT at the climactic end of the episode. This is the only example of forcefulness by Bloom in Ulysses. Elsewhere he is always fussing and fudging even when he asserts preferences. Only when he thinks about sex does he become decisive. Don Cane glared at the ageing newsprint. Giants Clash at Belmore! Steamroller props, Artie Beetson and Merv Hicks, will go head-to-head on Sunday when Balmain clash with Canterbury. Kronos v Uranus. He looked for a date in the bottom corner of the page. July 1969. A match he’d never seen. Players he’d never heard of. Foreign wars have been the cause of all our problems, says Citizen. He was seconded to MACVSOG on Operation Footboy that year. His detachment of Hmong commandos climbed into the highland fissures across the Cambodian border to plant AK-47 magazines on dead NVA. Charlie always picked-up any spare ammo off corpses. A booby-trap in the ammunition made gun barrels explode. It maimed the user’s hands and blinded them. Not a clean execution. Put a palm over your mouth. Breathe subtly. Kill them with K-Bars. Eyes bulge then fade. We emptied their pockets on the jungle floor. Never stuff to plunder. Just a few balls of rice. It was time to go down to his rendez-vous with Cornwall. Private Arthur Chase. Also, Toad Smith. Joe Gann in Bootle jail. The Citizen outlines the political crimes that got these three men slain. The subjects of Joyce’s satire of styles in Cyclops include: Irish legends; the Bible; society journalism (a wedding of trees); medieval romance; Rumbold’s correspondence to the High Sheriff of Dublin (op.cit.); medical journals; a poetry review (ostensibly by Garryowen); even a child’s primer. Joyce illustrates how different authors utilise specific styles to validate their texts. For example, mythic writers elevate characters to absurd degrees of strength, nobility and beauty. Academics mobilise technical language to contend intellectual authority. NICK CAVE employs a lowbrow twang with religious imagery to elucidate a Southern Gothic argot (AKA Mildura Grotesque). Joyce created a postmodern assemblage of styles and forms in Cyclops. To work towards extreme technical innovation like Joyce, or to try to be inventive within well-established forms like Nick Cave, that is the question. Alternative bands in the Eighties had to deal with the exhaustion of innovation in core motifs from VU to post-punk. Some tried to find new keynotes with country or hip-hop flavs. They were trying to get to the methods later developed by Tom Waits and Beck. Tom Hallem sought originality in technical nuances across a broad range of subjects like Walter Pater. He wasn’t living in an era of massive origination like Joyce. New matter of a highly personal nature using remote historical backdrops as scenery was his principal style. In this regard, he echoed Van Gogh, Munch and Kirchner. The colloquial Irish speech of The Citizen is replaced by Strine in this sub-episode. It is one of the few occasions in TMAC when the author directly intrudes into the space occupied by Joyce’s greatest technical invention: that of Modernist High Style.2 Strine was a comic form of phonetic English designed to represent Australian parlance. It was created by Alistair Morrison under the pseudonym Professor Afferbeck Lauder (Alphabetical Order) in 1965. It may have been inspired by the comic gobbledygook of Stanley Unwin, known as Unwinese or Basic Engly Twenty Fido, and popularised in the Carry-On movie, Carry on Regardless (1961), and the Small Faces record, Ogden’s Nutgone Flake (1968). Both of these linguistic novelties owed a debt to Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” (1871). The style of this sub-episode in Ulysses is GIGANTISM. SHIFT TENSE BACK. Cyclops is written IN THE NOW. Tom Cornwall stands when Don Cane enters. I seen it with me garryowen eyes. He pushes out one greyt fat mitt. Don grasps it with his own basted plate. Twin screen halos above their garrets show boxing classics and monochrome ruggerbeeleegah. Ron Casey in the commentary booth. Famechon returns for Round Fourteen. TC ducked his head left slightly. One BLUE eye was clear and sharp. The right ball glowed piscine inside a bung crater. Protruding jaw. Harada is showing signs of tiredness. The Organ of Cyclops is Muscle. It is a VIOLENT chapter. All characters are male. The Japanese raced to his corner at the end of the last round to get his swollen eye treated. There are no females in the audience at Budokan. Top Cat stomps over to the bar. It’s a very different fight to their first bout in Sydney. He chews on beef jerky while the barmaid pours. Famechon has been much more aggressive this time. Prominent maxillae crunch. The bell sounds. Odysseus withdrew to the back of the cave to lure Polyphemus in. Famechon advances across no man’s land and launches three massive lefts which force Harada back on the ropes. Battle of attrition back on. Canterbury won the Giltinan Shield this year in a low scoring game against Parramatta. They dethroned the three-times champion with almost impenetrable defence, enthuses Mossop. Famechon follows-up with both hands. “Change that channel Nola,” spat Ocker. The referee orders a standing count. “I can’t stand to watch that match again. I’m a one-eyed Eels fan. I mean you can’t knock them Dogs.” They made the most of what they got. It’s not my bag but. I don’t want to see.” Ocker preferred the breakthrough at Passchendaele to the siege of Tobruk. A jaunt across no man’s land fixed bayonets flaying. Finally, Haig was able to set his cavalry free after lingering en masse behind the frontline for four long years. There’s more content/ment on the plains with Achilles than holed up inside a pillbox. The narrator entered. Ockerbeck Louder was seated in a velvet cubicle periodically dispensing brown sandwich bags to mules. Harada throws his arms around Famechon’s waist in a rugby league style tackle, announced Casey. Don Cane sat down facing bright machines, unheeded like wallflowers. A small cash-flow problem had reduced me to a pocket full of dumps and a ticket which would yield a small profit on the Big Race. Fortunately for Yours Somewhat Truly, Ocker likes me ugly mug down the peanuts. Stops other horses drawing at the well-inside gate. So, there is every likelihood that he’ll employ my services. The Freemason returned to the table like a dog to its own sick. Me snake wept. Tom Cornwall set down a bright metal tray. Its contents were itemised as: one jug of draught beer, two empty schooner glasses, two shots of single malt Scotch (Macallan), a pack of Dunhill cigarettes and a box of Redhead matches. It’s only a matter of time now one would think. He fills both glasses. I lick me lips. If only he’d brought a third eye. Empty moans. I kick its hind. They toast Choc / fallen comrades / the enemy. The referee struggles to separate the fighters. They start to drain the beers only stopping in the interim to skull the Scotch and clash glasses. Last island before a Pond.

“I don’t need to tell you this conversation is classified,” said Tom Cornwall.

“Naturally,” replied Donald Cane.

Joyce codes Cyclops with metaphors and allusions to Jewish lore. The ten plagues of Egypt are worked into the plot: 1. blood (continuous use of the word “bloody”); 2. vermin (as a metaphor for freeloaders and scabs who undercut Ireland); 3. beasts (garryowen); 4. murrain (foot and mouth disease); 5. syphilis; 6. boils (typhoid fever); 7. hail (the storm before the hanging of the malefactor); 8. locusts (“filling the country with bugs”); 9. darkness (“sun never rises”); 10. slaying of first born males (Rudy’s death); 11. frogs (many references to fish). Cyclops also contains continuous references to the Passover: the barflies drink beer four times, which is the equivalent of four cups of wine (finally, Famechon gets a free swing and stuns Harada with four consecutive lefts); the dog’s biscuit equates to matzah; bitter herbs = “bitter experience” (Joe Hynes); a cup is set for both LB and Elijah but never drunk from; there is the misconception that Bloom has a special cup (Bloom’s prophecy on the Gold Cup race). Narrator A is knowledgeable about Bloom via Pisser Burke. He wrongly believes that Bloom has won big on the race. Thus, he expresses dismay when LB will not shout a round of drinks at the bar.

“I’ve started a new outfit. It’s called Australian Direct Investment Group. Our head office is here in Sydney. But we’re opening branches in Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong. And we’ve just leased an office in Manila.”

“Where?”

“Ayala Avenue.”

“Good location.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“What’s the play?”

“We’re servicing family offices. We work hand in hand with the State Bank. We’ve got some high-profile clients.”

“Like Pete Rocka?”

“Correct. We’ve also got a strong board. Do you remember Jim Bates?”

“Strategic wonk.”

“You can put it that way if you like. What about Bob Coe?”

“Ran Head Office Asia. Went on to great things in Washington.”

“They crucified him in Congress over Crown Jewels. Did you ever meet him?”

“Yes. His front was Pacification. I worked for him on Phoenix.”

“Good. He certainly remembers you.”

“If they’d stuck to his game plan, we’d still be in Saigon.”

Burn down villages. Herd peasants into barns. Shut the gates at sunset. TET68. I slip out of Barney’s bar to collect my small dividend. Politics by other means. Nixon’s Vietnamisation. Beaucoup Dinky Dau. Giap squatting on the DMZ like a lean-eyed cat. The Japs are not showing any mercy to Harada, announced Casey. The queue died down long ago. NVA moving along the Trail under the jungle’s skin like ticks. A war of blind movements. Oedipus at Colonnus. Gloucester on the cliff. I reach the counter. Harada is thrust back through the ropes. Famechon’s barrage has closed his right eye completely. Hamlet’s vacillations. Lon Nol floating bodies down the Mekong River. The swelling on his eyelid makes it impossible for the Jap to see. Invade Cambodia. Lam Son 719. He scours my slip. The referee starts the mandatory count. One. The betting clerk – two – mumbles some – three – rubbish. Four. Harada is passive in a neutral corner. Five. Thieu was fixated with coups. Six. When Tri’s chopper went down – seven- that was the end of the whole damn show. Eight. Famechon comes in hard. Hue Offensive. Mine the harbours. Harada beats him back. I retreat from the betting shop. Polyphemus claims that Cyclopes are stronger than Gods. Ticket enters gutter. This set him directly at odds with Ancient cosmology. SALT. Linebacker 2. That’ll show the Soviets. Force Tho back to the negotiating table. I loiter on William Street hoping to gouge a fag out of an unrequired street-walker. Famechon closes in for the kill. Polyphemus stuffing his face with prey. Harada is done. One-eyed Nelson sucking plums. Nobody will meet my gaze. Lester adjusted his eye patch as he motored down Johnson Street, Collingwood in an ill-fitting brown suit (1998). Famechon has retained his world title! Bouncer at Porky’s says he’s kicked smokes exhaling nicotine air. Nixon’s goal was to create a false sense of finality out of this hiatus in the North’s inevitable victory. It was all fake. To get out with some dignity before the campaign starts, that was Kissinger’s instruction. Dump all our old ordinance at Vung Tau. That will create an impression of ongoing patronage. It was a good trick. Didn’t get discovered until it turned into a rout. Like using Chennault as a back channel to double-cross Thieu and win Election 68. Last stand at Xuan Loc. Nixon was long gone by then. Congress had finally lost faith in the word of any President. They denied emergency funds to Ford. Charlie drove right down the centre of the country to Saigon.

“What do you want exactly?”

“We need a smart man in Manila. Someone we can trust. And we’re running out of time. We need to work faster and on a much bigger scale.”

INsert Subheading – See Appendix B, Extract 1

“Where’s Eyesenears,” says Ocker.

“He duck touted teeheybee,” says Chindrip.

“Did he bag Blankite,” says Ocker.

“Nuh. Shaggerma etch why,” says the Kiwi Scatt in broken Bondi English.

“That’ll bare leek other his ouch groins,” says Ock.

“Yairs. He woe beach outing barduntight,” says Scatt.

“Gear rim bag inner OWE.”

Chindrip camera gob me. Ocker cignulled with his middull thinger, beaned lichen arty-curated beau. Eye took ought twat sciss bouff, wary words whirr kink for the Caws with formguy, penicillin ledgend. I sledding tether CHANNEL ether cider his tar bashops (Scatt and Chindrip).

“Whooshem,” says Ocker jerkstickulaching o’finneganat two newt carnts on the kerr. “Lucks lie Feral asians.”

“Nar,” replies I.

“Coveys from Bush then?”

“Vets, I wreck.”

“This is not a game of who-the-fuck,” says Ocker (snarling). “Your job is Eisenears. Git dun veer end fie ouch!”

“Eye delay oggs air Viet-namers from the jibandjab.”

“Gay war treatied moist shard billy,” says Ocker nodding his nog. “Butt awe hour Diggers gear crapckt wend day finer lea git bag hoe.”

“Thebes beak homere go stints the corp suss,” says Leaphole Bloo slidling into the converse nation.

“Warty elle u mean by vat,” says I.

“I havana glue wharf Blue’s goanna bout hearth-thyme,” says Ock. “Chime jester air fridge bloke. Got bim bye yak-yak bug. Dry blow bonkers.”

“People just want them to disappear,” says Loomb, “so they can forget the whole dang show.”

“Purse owner nong rather,” says the Captain.

“Bungee noah aims,” says I.

“Emasculinatored,” says Ock bloking lard.

“Got air bush oysters snipt,” I says.

“Not menymore,” says Ockerbeck.

“Yairs. No/men,” says LB.

“Send ’em down a brace,” says Ocker dropping a Lawson on the tote. “Purr bar stars. Sid owe end yak whiff em. File out the fats. My jest beat in a sense blowks. Could be pig plants. Huno’s.”

Boyne arse awl beards! Ocker always lays off smart odds. Calls it ‘rixavision.’ XrayTV. Both Polyphemus and The Citizen seek out the identity of intruders. Odysseus is cryptic in reply. Bloom ambiguous. Both investigators (A + B) want Odysseus and Bloom to stand still and be quiet. But they are mercurial chaps. Indeed, Bloom remains “NO/BODY” for The Citizen. He is never named in Cyclops. Anonymity, aloneness and elusiveness are the starting points for Joyce’s characterisation of Bloom. He starts out as a small-world man. His life is mundane. He is mild and deferential. A cuckold. Beginning in Cyclops, Joyce starts to reposition Bloom. Like Cu Chullain, the Irish Achilles, he becomes that little bloke who puffs himself up for battle with crazy war cries which raise him to a colossus who can slaughter his enemies from a horse-drawn chariot. Note LB’s EXIT on Martin Cunningham’s horse-drawn car. But Joyce also intensifies Bloom’s sexual perversity as a counterweight to enhanced positive characterisation. It is typical of Joyce to balance the swing. I lolled uppendan bare rare ear. Waitering. Nobbodyabba. Fee-fie-foe only the balm aid wary longer ray cum bye. Sheet rejuiced the eggnishning. Hernia pulls stewed quiet-wrecked. Bit coal, eye gas. I arksed her for bun charcoal bollers beard. INSERT Eartrumpet. I lean a little closer. Every speech in Cyclops is attributed to a specific speaker by the Narrator through use of the third person singular form of the verb, ‘to say.’ This repetitive device in the hands of a ‘third party’ is used by Joyce almost like a lowlight to provide direct contrast with his usual innovation. Or else it could have just signalled his exhaustion of new options. PRESENT TENSE (as per cyclops episode) = USE OF STRINE (as recounted by Eyesenears). PAST TENSE = OTHER CONVERSATION (outside his range of overhearing).

“Giffer me boss,” says I to them, squatting omni R’s and placing the boggles in owl minced. “Louder’s mean aim. Have a Bet LOUDER.”

We shakes. They snivels twats Ox. He raysez biggs arse bag.

“Tar mac,” says A.

“Dimension it,” says I. “Keg to loam mea gasper?”

“Take the packer,” says the bigger barstead earn the ride-and-snide.

“Didger boss have a bigwig on The Cut then,” says A.

I egg gnaws his insinner ratings.

“Wasyernames,” I says bowl asp bras.

“Null … and Void,” says B. Ore nunner yer big sneaze, bays sickly. I leddit pars. It’s knocks kin off mine hose. Noman, nopackerderms. Vats mine otto arse will. NULL = DON. VOID = CORNWALL in this short inner lewd infer stile of Sourmule Baguette. Dough kneeder mate nose eggs uses. Neffereffer gift nuffing way. Sew I jest crasht me knuts cunt bentley. Salmoned me snot. Litter frensch durrie. And wheel got stark inta throg.

“Jegoda Grab Thighnell fish ear,” says eye poindextering scream.

“Dingo,” sayz NULL. “I live in Gorillerbeans.”

“Sawrit on tearavizchurn bunkt,” says VOID.

“Sea gals got rip off,” says I toovey. “Rare ferry and touch ease mustard bow got a sex fuller semi-itches ink myop onion. Egg girls had claws fur sow grapes.”

“They were most unfortunate on the day,” says VOID nodding gravely like he’s got a great big dong up his strides.

Ah-hah, I dead used Holmes like at this junk tuna. Vat arsewiper musk think eyesore turtle dared debt. COURSE NO SEA GALS PLAIT INK RUB THIGH NIL THIS EAR!!!! Dogseelsplate!!! Sea gals got knock doubt out by ray bigs in weak won! This deafing nightly roused my sucks pigeons. Maybe they’re numb butter coupler mummers of the constant burglary snouting the truff. Caws the Filth got a bigamous ebbtide when hungary. “Avalanche play dough cheeps with a rare side off charlie charmpuck,” Plod soys. It’s all suck ozee. Why don’t weasel cum tumberling dunhill lie Chair Congeal or suck sum sheilas tungs lie owl George Porch. Jezz snore wharf it. Aorta piss the holelet toff. I could get a semi-decent job like Joe Hynes. He’s always flush from debt collecting for old Mowers Herzog. Gu & Elizabeth bov debtors. SD and TOM bovine debt. I could make them cough up dosh with a little snip of Scatter Chinnedrip. Gonad Cane wiped sum scupper coins threw miretacondrical and spoked.

“When eye lief Siddha knee,” says Foreskin Fred wreckolexing, “wee stilt had pents sillies amp hounds. Imp eerie alk currant see. Nunner this dismal guernsey.”

“Didgerie leigh?” I says.

“Frack,” he says firmly.

“Howl on lube bean gown firm Sinny,” I says.

“Twinny ears,” says VOID.

“Wear yule iffed invert intern hymn?”

“Every two-up school from Darwin to the ’Loo,” he says halfing.

Pause. Suck piss. Gulp.

Gnarl Leoplodoom joins hour grope and co-minces mao thing off, were king his elf in tomb a friendsie bout the cord of urine piss tree from Sock radic wog-in-tunic dire log to Charred Doorwindows ‘surf evil of the flitters’ feary. Thirsty shrimp. Nobody can understand him, let alone interdict. “What constitutes a nation?” asks Bloom. A language is a nation, he says back. Then he starts bungeeing onan sum stryn land wedge. It’s the produce of corrective aquariums – pube by pube in ancient times, he agues – until septic is applied to each’n’never e-thing. Personally, I think we should just roll Bloom like a barrel, extract the wad of winnings from his purse, of which he is too stingy to share nor even boast of, and go on a spree. He’s loaded like Lawson’s dog. S-DOG leaned against the fuselage to suppress nausea. His cock pumped. A security guard hustled him along. He wanted to speak but his swollen tongue filled the maw. The crowd congealed into a massive eye observing him. Hopenheimer and Adorno equate the largeness of Polyphemus to the proletarian mass. The cyclopes lack order, systems and civilisation. They therefore act like a single blind beast, which is what Polyphemus resembles as a metonymy after Odysseus strikes him blind. Insert supplementary reference to the crowds in Coriolanus. Don Cane followed the lead of Tom Cornwall. They emptied their schooner glasses in honour of Bob Coe as if he was the Humanist successor to Charlie Parnell. Bloom has a complex, multi-faceted identity. He is able to negotiate both HIGH and LOW subject matter with some semblance of authority from Don Giovanni to cheese. He is not exclusively High Romantic like Stephen Dedalus. Like Parnell, Bloom becomes an ostrich-eyed hero. His positive traits are perceived as negatives in the context of the Cyclops episode – (a) his ability to articulate complex multi-perspectives is perceived as a penchant for irrelevant digressions; (b) sobriety is seen as foreign and anti-social; (c) moderation becomes lack of conviction; (d) passivity is weakness. Bloom turns the other cheek until it becomes impossible for him to tolerate The Citizen’s ill-treatment anymore. He backs off momentarily when John Wyse Nolan tells him to stand up for Jews. This is not his preferred ground. He also rejects the use of force. “Love is the opposite of hate,” he says with Christ-like sincerity. Eventually, however, he must confront The Citizen in HIS OWN DEN. But like Odysseus (or Hamlet), he is impelled to interrogate ethics from all standpoints before taking decisive action. Each hero accepts the risks of approach. Delay can be fatal if the Fates are against you. They bide their time until the logical instant to escape. By contrast, the Irish people are seen as lost in ineffectual rhetoric like the inhabitants of Babel. They grasp the wrong moment. They are passive at the wrong time. Alfie Louder withdrew to brief The Captain. Bloom’s final confrontation with The Citizen represents a new assertiveness that empowers him to later retake his home and marriage and acts as a model for Ireland. It is the catalyst for Bloom’s reawakening. It is the core of 16 June 1904. Alfie Lauder withdrew.

“Tell me about Ambrose E. Welles,” asked Don.

“Stan’s our in-house counsel. Worked in Hong Kong since the Seventies. Sound as a bell. He was one of the Nugan set. Good links in rural Australia. That helps a lot with logistics.”

“How does it work?”

“CIA runs the show out of Laos. They airlift heroin from Vang Pao. Air America flies it to Griffith. They take on board large quantities of dope then they fly to the States. All the cash is washed through Sheun Wan. Stan arranges the bank transfers.”

Cornwall laughed gruffly. Politics is the Art of the Cyclops episode.

“The beauty of it,” he concluded pointing decisively at the floor, “is that NOBODY in their right mind would ever believe that Australia could be used as a back door.”

Ocker sipped at a warm glass. He gazed upwards. The Australian Treasurer walked across a foreign tarmac slowly. He sent Eyesnears to the bar for more drinks and rose. ‘Mister Keating was in the US to receive Euromoney’s award for the World’s Best Treasurer,’ announced Channel Nine’s top-rating news anchor Brian Henderson. Off on one of his quests. The Captain of the Push descended to the bar area.

INsert Subheading – See Appendix B, Extract 2

“Now there’s a low-dead dog to be sure,” says Ocker loudly. “John Stone’s new puppet.”

He sits. An uncomfortable shuffling of seats flows. It is clear neither party will yield an inch. They butt against each other gruffly like Agamemnon and Achilles.

“My Colonial Oath,” Ock says pointing at the screen. “That Accord will ruin the ALP.”

“Old George Reid has finally won,” says Cornwall. “It took eighty years. But he’s beaten Deakin and the whole damn Set.”

“Kelty’s the brains behind that operation,” says CotP wily. “And he’s playing another game entirely.”

He pauses. Kelty as Merlin. Construct ironic Camelot.

“All those bloody bastards are drier than my bluddy throat,” he says, sculling fiercely then slamming down a dead glass as he contemplates the forthcoming tray of beverages. Beer spills over the brim of a cluster of fresh schooners that Einsteinears lays before the players. The television screen scrolls through a sequence of video grabs of powerful figures in quick succession.

“Orc art off custard gins sluts to salve is hole may it,” says Ocker, now hole link ought.

“Anna tike error exhume ate,” says Cornwall twirlet.

“Probe texted speakies,” says Ocker.

“Wiped his arse all over the NCA,” says Cornwall.

“Vats wine brick oven mint beaked thick ace mummeries,” says I.

“Mick Villains wall loaded fat old occulere mint,” says Ocker.

“Wooden beam aid quiet hasty,” says VOID.

“Go annal mustard splash tonner grey bib lobber iz bechel sores.”

“It was [REDACTED] ward robbed the mall inch it,” says Ocker.

“Hey Tea O’gavelled the leap,”

“Beamspack dim.”

“Board anew owl up Mawl landinnies pry vet jed.”

“Goanna’s cunt wooden beam a fool Brick,” says VOID. “Just firm weeding the kick.”

“Vat’s own lee onedecent punt for the Squirrel,” says Eye.

“Well, that’s certainly the kind of remuneration that would have motivated me,” says Bloom. “What about you gentlemen?”

“Would I dong a bloody copper if I caught the cunt alone?” I says retorturing votesyphillisy. Ock nodes a ream mint. Sweet silence after Kookaburraburraburraburrayackyackyacks. He examines large slow bubbles as they expire in the dregs of his beer glass. Cunts, he thought.

“Lockyer, Beames and Brian bloody Maher,” he says moorkishly. “All modelling Greens now.”

“Bali suite with blowjobs,” says VOID for effect.

“One hundred condoms of hash oil,” says Tom Cornwall. “That was the run. Customs sent it straight to the bond store. Nobody even touched it at the airport.”

“Fed poked his pen into the package,” says Orc. “Got his elf a canvas rez income shot.”

Ocker chuckles hard-heartily. Tom Cornwall and Eyesnears join hymn buckismet, Eckie Killy One, lobs erved deaftly, knot partaching nether puelling his vein.

“Sew hu shut Cootey vend,” says Ogger lewdly.

“Fine vat ow tatties inquess,” says Eyesnears (AKA LAWSON).

“Carver, eyewreck.”

“Nah. Worse Greedy dun hurt. Brungingut form Mawburn. Gotter runway ticker tomb an iller at stumps.”

“Norway. Ten bucks saz wazza Sinny shooter.”

“Ipaneema the Ks vend mealebs wooder wizened me arp.”

“Weirdigig the catch toe pen Oddies Barthes in Ma Nulla vend?”

“Well, if you’re talking about Dennis Smith,” says VOID, “then he’ll want to get that cash back out pretty quick.”

“Before Marcos falls,” says NULL.

“Correct,” says VOID. “He doesn’t have long. May bless spanner ear.”

“Mother of our custer myrrhs,” says GNARL choir glee.

VOID dissims no legerbill smite.

“Bay art ptolemy Squeerall wasshe clunt,” says Eye.

“God nevving do wart Squirrel.”

“Pro-Vital’s morkids kinder eel.”

“A jaffa,” says Ocker. “Absolute peach.”

“Like all pain odd set.”

“Wretcher’s stuper fun, they cork tit.”

“End more bunch bee rind that joke. Tomby Doorknocker provitaled the mow bill and a boxer deadheads. Vas nude Labor fourier.”

“Stealth lingering a feud odd wogs at Shifty, says Ocker. “He noser mean ingot whirred ‘mate.’ All waste stooled up furl Oil Murf. No backarseslidelicker. Buy the sane toke end I wooden give err new Mummer fer Ciggerknee a fake feller cum. They was very fark ink cunting turf arc him often Camp error wary wooden caws morse tripe.”

“Thinksellgeddon Sinny-sty firm noh won.”33

Mutual amusement was registered. A feeling of camaraderie infused the participants. Each other, they realised, was not so different. Worm silents descended. They imbribed artily. Ocker made a structural adjustment to his nutsack.

“Wens his E-legshin campaim goannerend,” he says. “I sinner nuff O’Bub Orc’s snot-rails toilets meal Eiffel time.”

“Heaves aching the Killerbilly snowbloat lacrosse Shimmery About necks weed foreskins clam pain lawn adder Uproar How’s,” says VOID.

“Beggar wedge ouch. See Eye Eh! my synch ease bar lie Cutterbull,” says Cornwall.

“Witlemming coupe Partout,” says Nog egg reaming.

The assembly bowed sagely at this point, raised their glasses and toasted both the fallen Prime Minister and those brave deluded japs still canned upon the floor of Sinny Hardpurr. At this poignant, Ocker rises to go slash. His goons follow. This enables Tom Cornwall some time to engage his target directly.

“Bag too bliss nets Don,” he says. “Weed lie nuker ordinate our war clout earth Fillerpleins. Weak knead ex-peery ants dand. Summon toucan waltz whore lover Asia.”

“Shoe dent beetroot ardour get ack cess soup goo entelechants vile Trial and.”

“Greed. Hanoi is turtly foe kissed urn Chimer vat preset.”

“Dung reel east aft an ole hellofart inter Le Duan’s dunny.”

“That little wart wasse marstroke. Deng demon straighted toother hole whirled Chainer wars pre-paired tar thatcherstrife a whorl army to proper Pol Pot. Rear guardless ovumen colost.”

“Liars cheep forge om eunichs.”

They toasted the new Chinese administration. I in my troth ray my glares to Sitter zen, hood rezoomed his plate eye up onyx throwin’ unmurphy ark omissioner. Joyce’s repetitive use of “says” to identify each speaker shifts focus to speech, mimicking the style of drama. Shanghai Dog felt a cold back-breeze as he rose to Lujiazui. His eyes incommoded. The strain of interpreting Strine can be relieved by reference to Appendix B. It becomes a game of fast page-turning. A blind harpist slid his bow across an erhu’s twin strings. Its low timbre spoke of China’s deep, lonely soul in all its self-pity. The tired snake skin barrel shone like mica. SD gripped the railing. Hawke was troubled throughout the second half of 1984 by a splinter of glass that had become lodged in his right eye after he was struck in the face batting against the Journalists in the annual Parliament cricket match in July. His spectacles were smashed as he attempted an ambitious hook shot. Glass shot into his pupil. He was taken to Canberra Hospital. The ophthalmologist who treated him said that Hawke would have lost the sight of his eye altogether had it gone a fraction deeper. It caused the PM agony throughout the election campaign. This is presented as a simple correspondence with the Cyclops trope by the author. He found it hard to concentrate – especially under the glare of television cameras – blinking and wiping his weeping eye with a handkerchief incessantly. The injury neutralised his legendary small screen rapport with the Australian public. The English scholar stood on a milk crate precariously to speak. He had notes in his withered right grip. He used the other hand to gesticulate. Merlin steadied him at the hip. Link to “Chaucer at the Court of King Edward.” Also, Tom Roberts’ “Big Picture.” Angle is everything in art. Turnerian shards cross a deep Piranesian case in his portrait of the instant of Federation. Light pipes down a steep shaft. The crowd recede to a flat-pack mass. The Imperial figurine is perched at the front of a wedding cake stage. Two hundred and sixty-nine dignitaries were depicted individually by the artist. He travelled the nation making sketches of each participant. This commission took its toll on Roberts’ eyesight. It was his last work for ten years. He made picture frames for a living. This recalls Furphy working at his brother’s forge while he wrote SizzL like some Bushbard Hephaestus. Roberts spent the Great War attending gas victims in an English hospital. Lines of Diggers with roughly bandaged eyes. Palm upon shoulder in step. Clinging under the belly of a ram. Blistered torsos rolled before the lens for propaganda purposes. Thigh-flesh face-masks spread smooth and tight over dissymmetrical eyes. Prime the troops with patriotic speechifying. Bovine Poilus, Tommies and ANZACS climbing onto No Man’s Land to die. The visiting British aesthetic theorist and commentator commenced machine-gun utterance.

“Contemporary Australian art,” announced Fuller decisively gesturing at the walls.

A thin strand of tawny hair slipped over his spectacles regularly, obscuring his right eye. Spotlights blinded him. He could not see any warm face in the audience.

“This is IT,” he said waving a catalogue in the air manically.

“I saw the same bunch of artists at the Eureka show in London this year. There’s nothing original about this art. We’ve got loads of this kind of stuff in Europe.”

He exuded a bored and frustrated energy.

“It’s like Warhol’s soup-can. It CLAIMS to ‘appropriate images from mass media.’ It claims to CRITIQUE MODERN CULTURE. It labels itself an ALTERNATIVE PRAXIS. But it’s really JUST A PEEP SHOW IN A FAKE BORDELLO.”

He paused to gain breath and let the weight of his assay settle on the crowd.

“But there is a counterweight in Australian art that adapted the rich tradition of the British landscape to new conditions. Streeton, Roberts, Nolan, Tucker, Boyd and Williams, even our good friend there, Read, all went Bush with a capital B, like Holman Hunt a hundred years earlier, to produce art of eye-watering clarity that is distinctively Australian. They are now being joined by Indigenous artists like Rover Thomas. His ‘Dog and Emu at Lake Gregory’ is the Aboriginal complement to Nolan’s ‘Pretty Polly Mine.’ Indeed, his great painting, ‘Crossroads, Argyle Hill,’ should really become your new national ensign. It is the Aboriginal rejoinder to the flag of Eureka.”

Fuller’s entire body shook as he contemplated the walls.

“So, in closing, I would urge all the young painters here tonight to turn their backs on the type of art in this room. Celebrate what Bernard Smith called Australia’s Aesthetic Conservatism. Get into a battered old Kingswood, travel to what Barcroft Boake called ‘the wastes of the Never-Never’ and develop your own touch – your own feeling for paint and materials – as you work in nature. Find the Good, the True and the Beautiful like John Ruskin. Paint what Nolan termed, ‘a landscape one has never seen before … . The landscape you were FEELING as you started.’ And Merry Christmas to you all. On that note, it is my pleasure to officially open the marvellously titled show, E.A. Times X Mass.”

Everybloody through their bluggy tickers tubs in the eire. There was a dingdong barney coming along. Young Dedalus was tauntalising sum doughpea Englick pievats. Bloo, I swear was going to take The Cities Urn on. The littered Pommy blowk dispeered underwaister bombingupnowinthen furanuvver powk-in-I. Wait a minauteur, said Polly Psychlobs. Tom Hallem grassed the cricketic’s cote and whaourled his elf udd.

“Professor Fuller,” he says. “My name is Tom Hallem. I love your work. That was a great speech. Truly inspirational.”

“That’s very kind, Mr Hallem. I noticed your painting over there. I nearly gave it a personal endorsement. But I thought that might be counter-productive to your career.”

“It was good to see you chow down on some sacred beef,” added CRITIC squinting through circular spectacle veins. His face was marginally ovular like a broad Victorian glass paperweight; lipless and all nerves. RED/READ joined them.

“Now I know exactly where I fit into your Ruskosmos, Professor Pete,” he said.

“You’re one-of-a-kind my friend,” replies Fuller smiling.

“Not so. We’re all simple Bush artists in Australia.”

“I can’t totally agree with your thesis,” retorted Tommy H deferentially. “The bush motif can be overplayed. Australians are an urban race these days.”

“Joyce didn’t write about potato farmers,” added READ.

“Nonsense,” replies F. “You lot sound like Ford Madox Brown. But let me pass in peace. I’ve got to go to the loo.”

The author raised his head and stared at the Japanese paper lantern above his head, which left a pale, counterfeit shadow on the stained ceiling. His neck cracked. Had anything changed in aesthetics in the last 30 years, he pondered. Art (or he) had sunk into one of those long periods of introspection when refinement of existing forms was paramount and lighter content came to the fore. Gigantism ruled. Emerging art in Asia displayed political intent. Feminist themes remained current. But the art world was still dominated by white males. Tom Hallem surrendered painting when he felt like there was nowhere new to turn. He was bored by his own commentary. He didn’t possess that sardonic, even comic, and self-deprecating comic-book edge of the great Australian painters. In retrospect, I think he was disillusioned by his role in Elizabeth’s art scam, not in ethical terms, but in seeing that style was essentially manufactured, not springing from some deep source, and could be coerced into being. The famous forgery case turned him into an outcast in Sydney. He relocated to Melbourne shortly before his death at the age of thirty-six. Fuller was jostlead inter yon wesshe rhume. He clung to a masst. You can read “WORK” as a model for Ulysses. Both are imaginative recreations of modern life, packed with pinpoint-detail. The genius of FMB is that each character evokes in a single portrayal the types of rich narrative fancies that Joyce gives so much pen too. The central figure is a glowing navvy in profile holding a spade. It is cocked and ready to strike. He is part of a road-gang digging and bricking a new sewage tunnel in a steep English lane. At a glance, the site discloses the dying village character of what had become peri-urban places by the mid nineteenth century, where feudal existence was being upturned by urbanisation. Turner’s steam-engines puffing through foggy rural idylls had arrived in town. Poor and rich pass either side of the pit as if they were striding along the banks of the River Liffey. Some gather to gaze at this strange new infrastructure (a pipe). The Manchester version of “WORK” has greater use of chiaroscuro and is the greater painting. I count nineteen characters in total, not including horses and dogs. This includes unemployed labourers sleeping on an embankment behind Thomas Carlyle and Frederick Maurice as well as the roughly-drafted face of a workman peering out of the excavation with a full brick-pan held aloft. A religious throwaway hovers before him like rent silk (Eli is Coming). One ganger is only visible in the form of a hand like Molly Bloom when she is first introduced in Ulysses. We cannot see the face of a girl at the front of the image but we receive the direct gaze of the baby she holds in her arms like one of Gerty MacDowell’s friends. We also get to see the reaction of a delinquent boy having his hair pulled. He leers. The bare feet of a flower lady are a prominent detail in the Manchester version (left lower front). They represent a masterpiece of painterly technique. Only four characters are focused on the void. The rest go about quotidian tasks. A lady passes in a blue bonnet. There are posters for an election campaign. A sandwich-board reads BOBUS. It is the name of some Tory Elijah. Mrs Leopold Evangelist is distributing copies of “Drink for Thirsty Souls.” Residue from a mound of lime powder one can almost sniff pollenates the atmosphere. The dense, complex arrangement created by Brown stands above the technical capabilities of today’s painters. They never bothered to learn their trade. No artisanal instinct. The lasting impression of “WORK” is the capacity of great art to depict humanity in the fullness and diversity that constitutes LIFE. Fuller mediated the queue. He stumbled inside the cubicle. Lock the latch! Shut out the world. Alownutlars. He contemplated the scratched black Bakelite lid. Moulded remnant of Empire’s appeasement era. Open cess me. Violet turd-gazing. Fuller broke each corner of the Cradle without fuss. It slumped under gravity. Another type of art object, he guessed. Maybe call it an ‘instoolation.’ Fuller chuckled at his own pun. Flushflush. He sat down on another watery dump. Soft wet (f)ragments of great art like Barthes’ dead pen-hand. Allow the viewer to de-amputate Venus. Henry Moore was always re-fusing mother-and-child in iron-or- stone. A brown smear. Something by Tapies. Fuller was a High Victorian like Ruskin and Churchill. Whirl a clacker for British Art. In the Aeolus episode, Joyce presented the Irish as the Jews of Europe. In Cyclops, he presents them as Egyptians enslaving the Jews as represented by Bloom. The Citizen represents everything wrong with Ireland. He is constantly proclaiming the greatness of Irish culture. He rejects English oppression. He berates his fellows for their ignorance of the Gaelic language. He has even trained his dog to respond to orders in Celtic. Yet his nationalism is ultimately insular and exclusionary. A palm started banging on the door of the adjacent cubicle. Tinkering of a lock. Suddenly, a guard leaped over the brown partition. VUMP-clup. A voice called: ‘get an ambulance.’ The lock was unbolted within. Fuller waited until the emergency had passed and went out to the basins. In the mirror, he watched Skintpole slither from the bathroom. One eyeball dropped like a bloody red plum. It was like that “enormous dice / blinking a mournful eye” that Huysmans describes in an image by Odilon Redon. A single tear fell from the Prime Minister’s eye. President Mahatir registered its passage down Hawke’s sunworn cheek. He took the Australian Head of State in his arms. They sent Hazel to front the media. Shanghai Dog ascended the staircase at Lujiazui Station. The crowd condensed around him pushing out of the subway. Hawkers badgered him with souvenirs. Spinning LEDs. Keep your nerve and hold your tongues, Odysseus warned. Expat life in China was a series of enclaves through which you passed with eyes averted hoping no one would observe your passage. SD raised the gift-bag to his chest. The mob solidified into a single unit. He dragged a withered leg. It was stiffening quickly. At street level, he confronted a new pedestrian overpass. Smell of freshly poured concrete and cement dust. Oriental Pearl Tower poked Olympus. Its geodesic globe gleamed like some vast unyielding eye. It was the symbol of Shanghai’s emergence from exile after the Cultural Revolution. Deng allowed it to be raised like a finger against the remnants of the Gang of Four in the local Party. Pudong clung to its underbelly. S-Dog stumbled through a sequence of iron and plastic barriers. Commuters hastened towards bus stops along Lujiazui Ring Road outside Super Brand Mall. Judy went from this terminus deep into Pudong. Shanghai Dog was swamped by a human tide. He waited for the right moment to detach. The gutter shone. A greasy fleece. Negotiating passage by memory. He split off from the pack. East Road was quieter. A group of expatriates passed. He avoided their gaze in case they wanted assistance. He approached Jinmao Tower. To his left, the financial sector of Shanghai was packed around Lujiazui Central Green Space. Giants at a campfire. A street vendor was roasting lamb skewers on a forty-four-gallon drum. It gave off a stench of charcoal and burnt spices. Incinerated humans. S-DOG crossed a short access road. A black Audi with government plates idled. This thoroughfare went all the way down to Century Park. He turned onto the concourse. It was a long concrete channel. He set his sights on the revolving doors. A guard smiled. He struggled across the atrium to the hotel entrance. His face felt swollen. He started to gulp and choke. He tested his larynx. Querulous utterance. He entered the lift lobby. It was illuminated by golden LED torches. The marble walls burned. He waited for an elevator with some tourists. An old American was explaining to a young woman how he had been stationed in Shanghai just before Liberation. He called it a siege. His ship assisted members of the KMT to escape to Taiwan. He mentioned the plunder taken on board. Seven large containers full of gold bullion and antiquities. It all disappeared down the hold as if consumed by a great monster. SD was anxious about his own gifts. Gu could spurn them straight onto the sofa without even examining them if she felt it was a con. They entered the elevator. The Americans were complaining about their guide. They wanted to go to the fake product market. She kept taking them to bogus souvenir stores. The concierge was a ruthless conman. He was ‘in on the game.’ They had missed the mini-bus back to the hotel and made their way home by stealth. Luckily, they had hotel business cards in Mandarin to show the taxi driver. Billy took the elevator to the 67th floor lobby. He went to the porter’s bureau. God be merciful unto us. His head dropped. The chapel leadlights – like those elevator bulbs, like the thick glass holding out Shanghai’s rank sundown, like the faux dragonfly lamp on the desk – glowed with sick autumnal light. He leaned heavily on a maple lip to rest his aching thighs. A gentle voice inquired about his requirements in English. He strained to speak.

“I am here to see Doctor Gu,” he said. “She’s expecting me.”

“May I ask your name, sir?” asked the Concierge lifting the telephone receiver.

“Mister Norman,” said S-Dog.

The porter contacted the room. He apologised for bothering Doctor Gu. He said a gentleman had arrived. His name was NORMAL. OK. Thanks. He chuckled, replaced the receiver and walked around the counter. S-Dog turned. His hip ached. Blind Rory. Calling pipes.

“Let me take you to the elevator.”

The concierge took a security pass from the top pocket of his olive jacket.

“What level is Doctor Gu’s room,” asked Billy.

“Liu shi ba.”

“Auspicious.”

“Yes, sir. This hotel is actually located at Number 88 Century Avenue. So, your friend is at 8–8–6–8 in Room Number 8.”

“Is there a 44th floor,” asked Shanghai Dog.

“Oh yes, sir. We are not superstitious in China anymore.”

Shanghai Dog smiled. He knew buildings all over the country still skipped the death levels. Chalk skips on paths that went one-two-three-HOP-five. The concierge led him as if by a nose ring towards a guard seated behind a low desk. They exchanged glances. Shanghai Dog was allowed to pass. There was a single elevator to the penthouse level. The concierge waved a card over a sensor. The doors opened. He leaned inside the cubicle and used a second card to open Level 68. Billy entered. The elevator moved so peacefully that S-Dog felt suspended in space. A sharp pang above his temple made him shake his head. He blew out his eardrums. His outer thigh had started aching. The doors opened. He stepped onto the landing. The walls were covered with burnished wallpaper highlighted by blood red Fleur-de-lys. Thick carpet silenced his steps. Electric flambeaus were mounted along the corridor. A single floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the passage provided a strong vein of particulated light. Instrumental music was piped over an invisible sound system. The sun was setting as he walked towards Room 8. Nightfall came quickly as if a huge stone had been rolled across the sun’s face. He knocked on the door. He heard no footsteps. The door opened suddenly. A small, heavy woman stood before him in a white waffle dressing gown. Her short toes kneaded the carpet tensely.

“Good timing,” she said.

She let the gown flop open. His gaze surveyed her. Godard panning-up and down Bardot’s body. Horns of primary colour. About the hollow cave, a garden vine trailed. Fragrance of cleft cedar and juniper burn. She was humming with a broken voice before her loom weaving a gold shuttle. Gu closed the door and leant into his embrace. The gown dropped.

“Can you see my bottom in the mirror,” she asked pressing her belly against his cock.

“Yes,” he replied. His body tilted to accommodate her. She found a warm place for her cheek against his shirt.

“You’re already hard,” she said approvingly.

“And you’re soft,” he said kneading her rump.

“Yes. I am fat. But I am also smart,” she said turning from his arms and walking into the main compound.

“I can always get thinner.”

She looked back at him.

“You’re lean,” she said moving towards him. “But you’re not so smart.”

She touched his skull with a firm finger.

“The real question is whether you can get any smarter.”

Shanghai Dog had to chuckle. He bit her lip hard. Her eyes felt water. Link this vassalage between lovers back to Elizabeth and Tom (See above. Also, C2). Also, Odysseus and Circe. Also, Calypso. That affair cut both ways. She and Odysseus were locked in a crude game. It was motorised by the constant threat of exit. This held them in thrall for almost a decade. A luxuriant grove of camphor and sweet cypress grew around them. Soft meadows of violets and dragon fruit blooming. Steep-spanned seabirds were wont to nest there. Chattering tongues. Homer is full of embraces. Joyce doesn’t do LOVE imagery as such. No humans physically bond in real time in Ulysses. It is all past tense. Molly offers detailed comparisons of Boylan and Poldy only in retrospect. Bloom himself is confined to erotic re-pasts and a single act of masturbation. The only actual coitus in the whole novel occurs between prostitute and client. In TMAC, there is continuous carnal exchange. This directly aligns with the Classics. For example, Don Cane as the delegate of Odysseus has had a very active sex life over the last 25 years. But depictions of animal activity are limited to instances where the act possesses a symbolic function: e.g. power (Elizabeth > Tom); $ (TH blowjob in C3); male violence (Ana’s rape); false fatherhood (the famous DP brothel scene); and acts of resistance (Tom > Merlin, S.Dog > Gu, XF > SD). In each instance, description is kept to a minimum. There are also amatory recollections, such as S.Dog for J, XF and O. His multiple partners repeat the pattern of his birth father. Connection always occurs without soft touch in this work. There is no great passion. No soft mouths or tongues. Only perfunctory clashes of hard-lipped Anglos. S.Dog knew that he remained present in this place at Gu’s disposal. She could make him disappear. His cell phone would vanish. The Australian consulate would register his disappearance. His wife had alerted them to the unusual length of his absence in China. The police would make cursory inquiries. If they traced him to the hotel, the staff would feign bemusement. All guailo look the same, the concierge says with a shrug. The CCTV footage has disappeared. Or been spliced to erase his image. He would become a staccato ghost felt only in its tape spasms. Like Hamlet Senior to Horatio. Gu always controlled their assignations. They met in private tea rooms. Hotels she booked. He used false names. Never showed his passport. There would be no record of his attendance. The staff knew him as Messrs. Norman, Normal, Flower, Iron, Barry Cane, Bob Cane, Eric Killion, Ernie, Don Capri inter alia. His USED name was another man’s name like his brother. Also, not that of his mother. Bloodless conveniences. There was no paternal recognition on his birth certificate. Recycle names from my past for characters that bear no resemblance. Use nicknames. Stage names. Initials. False titles. Virag becomes Bloom. Migrants confecting English names in Australia. Misunderstood words etched in ink by apathetic customs officials. Backwards names. Asians put family names where we put first names. Chinese syntax flows from big-to-small for dates, places and names. My birthdate would be presented as 1962 July 18 in Australia NSW Sydney, for instance. Capri William Robert. Gu Melanie. Fang Xiao. Chinese kids use each other’s name tags with alacrity. See LUKE 2:49. A martyr who used another man’s name for God’s convenience. Temple in Nazareth. Why were you searching for me? Joyce always played with naming. HCE goes by 190 naming variants and allusions in FWAKE. The choice of Dedalus as a character name was an act of pure will (invert Q&A 45, C8). Only the greatness of Ulysses spared him opprobrium. It cancelled critical interrogation. SD bore NO RESEMBLANCE to the Classical inventor. Not age. Not skill set. Not personality. Not behaviour. Icarus wouldn’t have been relevant either. He was a tragic figure (cause of death – hubris). I was twelve years old when my mother told me the facts about my paternity. We were sitting in the car outside Doctor Kan’s surgery in wet winter rain. He was a man named Eric. Not her ex-husband who shared the same first name. EDGAR was also a bastard. Insert biographical details. I look like my father as I grow older. I am now the age when I met him. I look in the mirror after shaving and see his six-decade face. At least Telemachus held naming rights. His business partner suggested I change my name by deed poll. Great sport when you’re drunk with a mouthful of lemon chicken leaking lemming-like into your lap. Sordid whims granted legitimacy. An episode of “Prince and Poor Girl” was playing on mute in Doctor Gu’s suite. “I am a big game hunter,” said the sub-title for Tiffany 21 of Wenzhou. “I want to catch a guy with my great new looks.” She batted black contact lenses at the camera. Eclipsed moons. “Do you want me to kneel,” asked Billy. “That won’t be necessary,” replied G. The government-appointed panellist shook his head. A diatribe on family values followed. The Citizen in Ulysses recalls Flaubert’s Regimbart in Sentimental Education: a revolutionary chauvinist who becomes a shell of a man by the end of the book. He complains that the Irish can’t even speak their own language. No music no art no books worth reading. Law and history in dispute. Tongue-tied sons of bastard apparitions. Narrator B lists 89 famous Irishmen including star recruits Julius Caesar, Dante, Beethoven, Charlemagne, Napoleon Bonaparte and Muhammad. It seems like a joke. In fact, Joyce is deconstructing concepts of nationhood. He is appropriating complementary spirits for his race. Shanghai Dog stood awkwardly scratching numb thigh muscle. Doctor Gu lay on the bed. Her gut settled to the sides. A small crop of black hair sprang upright from her loins. Shanghai Dog knew the procedure. He started work. Paris in Troy with Helen. A weak aristocrat who marries an heiress. His head ached. His nose was blocked. He struggled for air with his mouth pressed into her cunt. Doctor Gu held him fast until orgasm then released his hair. She drew his face up to her mouth and placed her hand on his cock. Normally they fuck now.

“It’s the start of my cycle,” she said. “You don’t need condom.”

She flipped him over. A giantess. The mattress shuddered. Her hand maneuvered his cock. He closed his eyes. Judy tastes like honey. Xiao Fang is tender. Gu leaned back, snapping his cock like gristle. Tatlin’s scaffold. A single chopstick askew in a bowl of rice. She pulled out abruptly.

“You are hard but there is no life,” she said slapping his rigid cock.

“Not so rough,” he requested of Camille.

“Your face also looks wrong. Like jiaozi,” she said gripping his deadened cheek. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.”

She pinched his lip. A rash was spreading on his belly. She squeezed a small blister on his cheek hoping it would burst.

“You will be OK,” she said firmly. “You just need time. Relax. Tell me your concerns.”

She lay down and opened her legs. He started to manipulate her clitoris absent-mindedly.

“I’m concerned about business,” he said.

“Oh, your Financial Crisis,” spat Doctor Gu. She shut her thighs on his palm. “There is no crisis in China. Our economy is strong. This is a Western problem.”

She released his hand as she reached orgasm again.

“You go to Gansu. See my father. Cut a deal. He will fix you up.”

Lanzhou. A city where people have never seen the ocean. Shrouded in fog. Can’t see it from space. Can’t see it as you land. You are already trapped in its smoky guts by the time you register focus. Proceed down a narrow valley lined with chemical plants. Sichan Dalou. Northern Silk Roadhouse. Famous for mutton. Dressed-up as lamb. Gu was wearing a frilled garter on her leg. Camille (BILLY) is disgusted because she believes Pavel (GU) has somehow “offered” her to another man (HER FATHER). A place to make restitution. Restoration of funds. GO there to appease Poseidon. Get back your family. It’s a long shot. Make a movie with the worst ingredients. Il Disprezzo was a potboiler. Lanzhou noodles. Godard always uses ‘back-of-a-napkin’ plots; shredded as usual. Some deals are incubated from unlikely stuff. Some fail. See Neil Haywood in Chongqing. Doing very nicely at present. Bai Shoutao. Family in Beijing. Vacation with his lawyer on the Casa Malaparte, Capri. Fancies himself another James Bond. Jaguar with the Jack. Toto Against Hercules. He advised me to find more remote regions. Grey areas where local officials constitute the SCENE. Odysseus travelled five moons past the Pillars of Hercules. See Dante, Canto 26. His ship was suddenly sucked into a whirlpool. Sudden death. That was the end of the CLASSICAL PERIOD. The text could end now. Reboot. “Go on,” like Beckett said. Past Joyce’s YES.

“You can always go back to Australia if you like. When times get tough there is no better place than Australia. Unless you’re black, of course.”

Doctor Gu sneered.

“Australia is a racist nation,” she continued. “There’s no brown, black or yellow in your flag. Only white for your skin; red for blood; and the blue sea. England colours. They’ve got nothing to do with Australia. You should make your own flag like China.”

“I agree.”

“You should also get rid of their queen and all her family. One day, you’re going wake up and England’s axed them. Then they will all go to Australia in their big boat.”

“You’re right. Australia will never be a Republic while the English Queen lives.”

“So sentimental,” she scoffed. “The UK today is like China in 1840. Except it will never come back. Soon our economy will be bigger than America. Just wait 20 years.”

Bloodloss. Eggloss. Bloodegg. Hidden Fromelles. Pozieres. Stuck on a salient in front of Achilles. Hector fighting alone in front of the Trojan lines. Keep the pressure on Fritz. Haig conducted the war from his chalet map. Vico’s cycles. Same thing happened at Greece and Crete. Malaya. Changi’s sacrifices. Penelope waiting for Odysseus to come. Kokoda’s clerks and kids held out until the men got back from Egypt. Churchill wanted to divert the Seventh Division to Rangoon. Would have been futile. Odysseus was always ready to waste yet another crew. Ship after ship got sunk from underneath him until only the King of Ithaca was left. Doctor Gu collected a heavy Xinjiang jade rat from the dresser and started rubbing its smooth white folds across her temples. Its milky surface cooled her cheeks. Shanghai Dog flinched.

“Australia is a new country. You can just make it up as you go along. It is also an island. Everything on the island is Australia. It’s easy to defend. China is much more complex. We have borders with fourteen states. We are surrounded. But there are Chinese people all over the world. Even Australia. We all identify with Chinese history first. It is 5,000 years long.”

“Western history is also extensive.”

“It is not continuous like China. Sure, the Greeks had some ideas. Rome was OK. But Western culture disappeared for one thousand years! You lived like beasts. We used chopsticks while you ate with bare hands.”

“Those are the same hands which created the industrial revolution.”

“Yes, that was clever. But China was responsible for the Four Great Inventions. We built the Great Wall and the Silk Road. We were experts in astronomy and mathematics. Chinese medicine is much older than your drugs. We created porcelain and silk. Your monks stole silkworms and black tea. You couldn’t even grow tea you were so stupid. Then you got lucky with coal. You humiliated China for one hundred and fifty years with machines. But that short era is over. Now we don’t need to grovel. We are proud of China.”

“What about freedom?” whispered Shanghai Dog.

“You think democracy is special,” replied Doctor Gu. “But your governments are corrupt. They never get things done. We need strong leaders. Democracy is wrong for a big country like China.”

“You still have the same system that produced the purges, struggle sessions, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. There is nothing to stop it happening again.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about. Look at Pudong. China is a superpower. America is getting weak. Europe has gone. China is different. We’re not stupid like Europeans making big wars. We will get Taiwan to yield quietly. Asia will acknowledge us. Australia also.”

“You’re correct. We misunderstood China. We thought Deng was following a path of liberalisation. But he was just following conventional Marxist theory. China is building a massive proletariat. It plans to take over the world.”

“You’re crazy, Billy. You think this kind of talk won’t get back to the police. You’ll get us both in trouble.”

She shut the blinds manically. Stalin had all the rooms bugged at Yalta. Nixon taped everything. Poe’s blinking portrait eyes. Kang Sheng-Li Shigan. Dai Li. Trotsky sitting at his desk. Enter Mercader. Ice pick in hand. He plunged it into the neck of the great general of the communist revolution. Hamlet withdrew his sharp dagger from the khaki folds of a trench coat and plunged it into Polonius’ wet palette. Pocketknife geometry. Paris hid his bow under a loose tunic. Claudius snuck out of the King’s bower with an empty vial of poison secreted beneath his leather vest. Enter Beria with his nutcracker and wry wires. Persian Jones stole a glance either side of Belmont Street. He proceeded through the part-open gate. Leer prepared his chamber. Weasel Bob scuttled over the back fence. Still a chance to bail. Deny Christ like Peter. Confess. Hide-out. Flee. Become a fugitive. Famous exiles. Dante shuffling between Italian city-states like blind Oedipus. Rimbaud running guns in Ethiopia. Shipping coolant from Gansu to Maputo then overland to Luanda. 1067 gauge. Portuguese relic. Ovid never made it back to Rome. Seneca neither. Hugo in Guernsey. Napoleon on Elba. As if Odysseus got stuck on Ogygia or Aeaea. Deng was sent down three times. Stalin also. At Kureika, he lived like an animal thumping his Ossetian chest. Koba the bear. Zhao remains under house arrest to this day. Jiang reclining in his Taipei pleasure-dome. The Young Marshal was dragged to Taiwan like a slave trophy. Churchill at his Indian maps. End of Empire. Sailing nowhere at the end of the Heroic Era. Pouring concrete down Maputo’s drains. Let them choke on independence, said the last governor (Crisco). He was feared for organising the hit on Mick Sayers. That was a revenge attack for the murder of Barry McCann down Mahoney Park. He was wearing a workingman’s blue singlet emblazoned with the Eureka flag.

“Your problem is that you are not flexible or strong,” she said pursuing him. “You bend but it only shows weakness. You lash out sometimes but it is futile like China in the Japan War. I am different. Do you know my two zodiacs? In China, I am a tiger. In the west, a crab. That is why I am successful. I have learned to move sideways fiercely.”

Gu stood over him. She cast a jaundiced eye. Yellow. Pope’s essay. An infected spy. It all started with a simple plan. Chase money fast like Arthur Rimbaud. That will give you free time to write. It didn’t matter about ethics. Orson Welles would act in any movie, television show or advertisement to get funds for his latest work. Balzac was always churning-out new stories to keep his head above water. Dickens was the same. But he never lost sight of his political purpose. Orwell ran a shop with a market garden to reduce the cost of living. He had already produced the greatest chronicle of the European underclass (D&OIP&L). Lawrence tried Australia. He ended up dying in the desert in New Mexico. Steinbeck wrote the definitive Depression era legend. Patrick White bred schnauzers in Dural. Woolf and George Eliot hooked up with rich men. Shelley was destitute in Europe, living off Byron’s royalties. Joyce put financial stress into the centre of all his works, using it as a governing metaphor that drove character behaviour. He had been exposed to the declining fortunes of his family since birth. If anything, this was sharpened by the fact he received preferential treatment as the eldest son and prize scholar. The most poignant scene in Ulysses occurs when Simon Dedalus is confronted by his daughters for household funds (E10, S-E 11). Everyone is scrounging all day for drink-money. Parasites latch onto Stephen Dedalus to get at his salary. We observe wealth from without, like a poor boy scraping frost from a window pane to gaze in on a lavish table, only partaking of its complacent consumption when Joyce wants to induce caustic satire, such as the scene where Mulligan and Haines have afternoon tea at the Dublin Bread Co. (E10, S-E16). Boylan’s ostentatious affluence provides a key contrast with the petit bourgeois grind of Bloom. It is Molly Bloom who ultimately passes judgment on the relative value of material wealth in human relations. In visual art, the production velocity facilitated by Modernism’s simpler style enabled painters to become rich by shifting high volumes of product like a supermarket. This was very different to the days of the Academy when artists produced rare set-piece works. Such paintings required the unlimited purchasing power – and large viewing spaces – of wealthy patrons to generate sufficient proceeds to adequately reimburse the artist. Painting in those days was, thus, a high-risk exercise in which the artist bet the cost of art products and time against the prospect of a fast sale. This inevitably reduced aesthetic freedom. Modernism changed all that for a brief period like the striking of a dry match. But ultimately the inherent DNA of visual art as a tradable commodity combined with the lower production standards of Modernism to create a much bigger new art market. This is what Welles’ explores in F for Fake, albeit as a metaphor for cinema. Picasso got rich. The Cubists and Expressionists regressed like Millais a generation earlier. And, ultimately, Barr and Rockefeller conceived its sarcophagus. MOMA (1929) boxed Modernism into a museum, reducing it to the consistency of slush inside a Campbell’s soup can. CONVERSELY, MONEY REMAINED A PROMINENT TOPIC IN MOST MODERNIST LITERATURE. For writers, it has always been that way. As we have noted in previous chapters, Joyce was obsessed with commerce. This reflected the fallen bourgeois setting of Ulysses. Dublin had been a city in decline since the late eighteenth century when Britain relocated heavy industry to Belfast (see C8); a move redolent of the realignment of the finance sector from Hong Kong to Shanghai since 2008. This demotic strain in Joyce is akin to Balzac, Dickens and other writers who relied on the uncertain profits of their pen for sustenance. These authors spent their younger lives in the ghetto and were never far from returning to its maw. It is can also be linked to the themes of Dostoyevsky, Ibsen and Naturalism. Writers like Pater and Wilde would never have sullied their exquisite prose with references to pecuniary affairs and usufruction. They imbibed the emerald atmosphere of the Victorian aristocratic milieu where money was only broached in the obligatory hunt for American heiresses. Ulysses was a lucky accident of the economic zeitgeist in that the common themes of Irish life soon became apt globally in the inflationary aftershocks of the Great War. This is the world of Doblin’s Alexanderplatz and the artwork of Dix and Grosz. It is the landscape of Lawrence’s Black Country and, from a feminist perspective, Woolf. This is very different to what happened in France, where Joyce came to reside. The effete – in the sense of artificial, mucid and enfeebled – imagery of Proust and Gide predominated in prose after 1918 reviving the hieratic modes of Pater and Wilde with Dionysian candour. The radical inversion of taste and form by Dada and Surrealism were avowedly anti-capitalist. Yet they had an uneasy association with capital, probably because of their perennial grinding against Communism with its core theories about gross inequality in the distribution of wealth and power. A distinctively Parisian atmosphere of decadence and ‘undoing’ explains the rationale for Thomas Piketty’s otherwise incorrect theory that “novelists simply stopped counting money” and it “virtually disappeared from literature.” Perhaps the insouciance of Montmartre and Montparnasse influenced Joyce as a resident to such an extent that he gave predominance to (“capital A”) Aesthetic Adventurism over incisive portrayal of everyday life in F(W)ake. This was the first time that Joyce had ever suppressed the quotidian in his work – Dubliners, PAYM and Ulysses are all uncompromisingly Naturalist in plot, themes, imagery and narrative.

“I could fix all your problems just by selling this single piece of jewellery,” said Doctor Gu withdrawing the curdled yet succulent chunk of jade from her cheek. “But you’re too difficult today. Get out of my room. Go!”

Doctor Gu dismissed Shanghai Dog with a flick of her wrist. The issue of nationhood is critical to Joyce. Writing against the backdrop of the Great War, Joyce methodically detaches Bloom (and by extension Stephen Dedalus) from any sense of self-identification being restricted to a nation state. Joyce sees Nationalism for what it’s worth – a means of social control by the ruling elite that reaches its nadir in the jingoism attached to war. It’s all well and good now, thought Shanghai Dog. We will know that the Chinese Communist Party is in real trouble when it invades Taiwan. By contrast, Joyce’s EVERYMAN must stand alone as an individual – not become defined through the default setting of nationality. The struggle with The Citizen is the key to this process. Joyce portrays The Citizen as xenophobic and Anti-Semitic. He is reductive. By contrast, Bloom is open-minded and inquisitive. He represents Joyce’s new ‘global (humanist) citizen.’ But to reach a point of self-realisation, Bloom must stand-up for his beliefs against external attack. Joyce presents this moment of self-definition at the end of Cyclops as a spiritual epiphany in which the contrast with The Citizen becomes physically pent. It involves spontaneous and defiant acknowledgement by Bloom of his TRUE identity. His statement of Jewishness can seem to sit oddly with Joyce’s relentless denunciation of the Catholic Church in Ireland. However, this theme is not so much a value judgment about the merits of different religious systems as a means of completing the evolution of his key character in terms of cultural heritage – reconciling Bloom with his past, family, current location, religion and self. Bloom must take his own journey to this moment over the course of the episode. His initial definition of nationhood in Cyclops is facile: “A nation is the same people living in the same place.” It broadens and deepens as the episode evolves. Bloom adds new elements such as the notion of a diaspora (Jewish and Irish). Language comes into play. Arbitrary definitions of nationhood become seen as futile – indeed, impossible – because all nation states are artificial constructs put together by Power. Shanghai Dog struggled to pull his trousers over his dead leg. Drool dropped out of his bent head from numb lips. He must escape this pen. Gu went to the bathroom. His heart raced. He made for the door with his shirt unbuttoned. An object smashed into the back of his head. Perhaps a slipper. The landing was deserted. He pressed the elevator button a couple of times quickly. It opened. He buttoned his shirt as it descended. At the foyer, he changed elevators without looking at the concierge desk. Inside, there were a couple of tourists. He ignored them. But it gave him some comfort. They wouldn’t try anything while foreign eyes were watching. The lift dropped fast. He hung on. The past replayed through his mind. Odysseus knew it was time to go home when he left Calypso. As this is my last article, I will take the liberty of leaving my readers with a three hundred word list of the things that I will always remember about China: long distance travel, banquets, mongering, scraps of affection from gentle prostitutes far from home, nothing ever being completely realistic, well-evolved urban intensity, people morphing without contact, getting lost on complicated ring roads, skyscrapers flanked by open piles of scrap, debased historical sites, tiled housing towers all dirty white, cotton brown air, over-stacked bicycles, overloaded trucks, sweating labourers in filthy singlets exposing their greasy brown bellies on a hot summer night, girls in sequined T-shirts bearing slogans like “slut puppy,” short shorts too short, high leather boots and argyle patterns, fashionless bureaucrats in costly garments with prominent brand signatures, a solitary demonstrator squatting outside the Shanghai Planning Museum disappearing under a swarm of riot police, grotesque public sculptures, the lenience of Chinese translators, CNN going blank at the gym, hatred of Shanghainese, crooning Delilah with my shirt open, a drunk businessman fondling my arm-hair, KTV games, potholed dusty local roads, garage doors along high streets, pristine airport terminals, kids squatting to split their diapers and deliver a steaming wet turd on frosted winter footpaths, eating fish heads in Jiangxi adjacent to a filthy river, coal loaders leaking black glitter into green-eyed water, eyeballs bobbing in a boiling hotpot, massive expressways floating above earth, the kindness, the generosity, the exuberance with just having … Life. Chinese society displays all the extremes of human behaviour. The North is orderly and neat. The West is dangerous by comparison. The whole landscape is demarcated by grids. Government even uses grids to define policies. People approach survival with unbending will. Everything is mixed up. You let the wind bend you. That is how Chinese people have always coped. I will miss them. I hope I never forget how to float through a crowd. Thank you, China (289). The elevator doors opened. Shanghai Dog’s cell phone rang. A text message from Xiao Fang told him she had left his apartment. This was some comfort. He didn’t want to deal with her. He wanted to go home. He proceeded into the revolving doors pressing them faster forth. A tempest was sweeping Shanghai, straight off the South China Sea. The rain tasted like oily brine. It battered the hotel awning. A long queue of hotels guests hung off the taxi rank. He would never get a ride here. He walked straight into the deluge towards Huayuanshiqiao Lu. The earth had been shaken hard. Mud coagulated in the grooves of his soles. His shirt stuck to his body like a pelt. Water seeped down his forehead flowing over his cheeks. A taxi came trundling straight at him. He fumbled in his pocket and waved a one hundred kuai note. The driver stopped. The window slipped slightly.

“Wai Tan, shi fu. Guangdong lu lukou, xie xie.”

The driver gestured with his head towards the back door. Shanghai Dog entered the warm cabin. He passed the bank note to the driver. Provisional safety from Poseidon. An advertising screen in the back of the driver’s head rest started playing a promotional video for Shanghai Expo. There was a quick quiz. The answers were NO, NO, ZERO, ANYWHERE and NO IDEA. S-Dog muted the volume. In Joyce’s ontology, LB is represented as Elijah. This explains the recurring appearance of a poster pronouncing, “Elijah is come,” throughout Dublin on the day of Ulysses (18 hits in total). Joyce has created Bloom to remind the Irish and humanity of our shared humanist values. This message is especially apt as Joyce was writing during the Great War. The false foreign gods that he fights are the Roman Catholic Church and the British Empire. The argument between Bloom and The Citizen is the equivalent of Elijah’s victory over the prophets of Baal. Elijah uses a sword; LB uses words. Bloom adopts a just and righteous tone. The Citizen is Pharaoh. The Old Testament language of the final parody in this exchange invokes Elijah as “Abba Adonai.” Bloom’s vision of his dead son, Rudy, is his reward for his benevolence towards SD. Temporarily, Stephen becomes Elisha, heir of Elijah. Bloom also reconciles Christian and Jewish lore: Christ was crucified at Passover; the Last Supper was a Seder meal; the Eucharist ritual is the equivalent of eating matzah and drinking Passover wine. Bloom’s copy of the Haggadah (Exodus in the Bible) is bookmarked by his spectacles at the passage of thanksgiving in the ritual prayers for Pesach (the Passover). Bloom returns to its themes consistently. The Captivity of the Jews in Egypt is a metaphor for all diaspora, pogroms, ghettos, imperial occupation and institutionalised racism. Elijah was sent to remind the Jews they had strayed from the Commandments into idolatry. Haggadah looks forward to the ultimate return of Elijah who will deliver them from bondage. It is ironic that Odysseus poses as NOMAN in the Cyclops section of the Odyssey because LB is finally revealed in this episode as a man of cosmic significance. INSERT BLOOM’S LIST OF JEWS (link to Citizen’s Irish list). Bloom’s confrontation with The Citizen hinges on his strident statement of Judaism at the end of sustained provocation. “Your God was a Jew. Christ was a Jew like me,” he says. This is not an original statement. Bloom is not an original thinker. It is only given fresh meaning by its context in his characterisation. UPDATE TO AUSTRALIAN IDENTITY. Ocker attacks Don Cane. He remains passive. He dodges the test. This distinguishes him negatively from Leopold Bloom. He is fundamentally callow and self-serving. This shines a retrospective light on his behaviour before the start of the novel. It exposes him as a false father figure (FFF). He had very little involvement in his sons’ lives after his visit to Sydney in 1984. He outlived his eldest son. Took a maiden’s baby, a baby’s maiden, her cousin and various folk down.

See Appendix B, Extract 3

“Kant a Jewel oath fizz sundry jest lie kith necks fallow,” says John Wyse Nolan near the end of the Citizen episode. It is a manufactured question by the author, too basic as leading narrative for such a natural dramatist as Joyce. The author also succumbs to unwieldy devices during this section, like the long recital of a report of chief cotton magnates by The Citizen (p.332). Even though it is a good demonstration of The Citizen’s bombast, it remains unsatisfying as a piece of narrative to the reader.

“Eye goy nope emblem tuche mentshion withdues,” says Ocker. “Monash his elf was dewish.”

“Ten thousand Jews fought for Australia,” says Tom Cornwall.

“There’s no such place,” says Ock. “Thoughs blows all dired for Ingham lie peddlers chooks. Lang was the first bloke whatever stood it uppem in Whizz mister. Swine they sentenced Kneemeyer. FIX was IN.”

“Eye veer own lean bean bag a feud ours butt Eiffeel lie Horse rail yards ewe him my grey shun poly seed heirs dunce sum hood,” says NULL pearl likely. “Versa ng yugo viet itality inks Skidknee!”

“World lest see wart apples wen wheat elem go chute Indo’s up end Darwin,” says Ocker. I nods. “Londonterrabrickurn veil be smarmsallakimbo again like Sigh gone.”

“We owe a debt to the good people of South Vietnam,” says Tom Cornwall bold-like.

“Weal yore might Frazor tuk severin tee severn though send off alm entomb Horse trailer,” says Onk manner ceiling knee.

Eyesenears wry sensors form the tribal, eggs cue sing hymn sell.

“Thee steeples two’d-up took con new prism,” says VOID.

The Captain’s mendicant slipped out of earshot as Cornwall’s voice rose.

“They worked with us,” continued Cornwall. “They died with us. AND WE LET THEM DOWN! You wouldn’t talk such nonsense if you’d gone and fought in Vietnam – and seen first-hand what we did to their country – rather than indulge in armchair oratory.”

Eyesenears paused and returned to range. “There should be a stoush now,” says Narrator A running madly into the text. Scatt and Chindrip stands bolt upright. Where is he till I murder him, says The Citizen at this point in Ulysses as if blinded like Polyphemus. “‘Hold on, citizen,’ says Joe [Hynes]. ‘Stop.’” A very bloody all writhes affa stable simmer train helos. Bug big NULL nobaitacorns. Heap owlish soft his spear sops. Cap and putsch shove arraigns hyst knights. Are you game ter smash a winder, he arcs escrow. Eyed no go far king howls dowel, answers Scatt. Wood youse towel the swells,” he queers Chindrip. Starbashers roach NULLAVOID. Eyesenears slipped out the back door onto Victoria Road. At this point in “The Bastard from the Bush,” the members of the Push try to take down FF in Jones’ Alley. Their dark ambush flounders against the wall of Riley’s pub as the Bastard makes his stand wielding a bike-chain in each hand. There is NO SUCH VIOLENCE in TMAC. This reflects my fundamental distaste for the use of murder as a plot device in modern film and literature (see C8). QUICK CUT to Don Cane standing over a corpse, shielded by an old woman, in a ruined hamlet. A wife holds up a small framed photograph of her dead husband in uniform. The Shelleys stand by a graveside as their child’s coffin descends. A masked avenger stalks the cemetery copse. A taciturn outsider, uncompromised by worldly possessions, and largely shunned by society, except fellow outcasts, and kids, who have an intuitive clarity as to his true status, looms into frame (insert close-up of Robert Downey Jnr). He proceeds with Old Testament zeal. Yes, violence is an integral part of Homer’s classics. Yes, there have been epic books and movies about war and crime. But the automatic lapse into slaughter to display a character’s inner strength, often tarted up with moral shibboleths of justifiable revenge, has become a drab cliché to desensitise the masses against liability for the plight of modern society. This is particularly true of anything emanating from American culture, which consistently deploys metaphors of extreme violence and death when it is trying to describe strong emotions and power. Joyce limits actual violence in Ulysses to the symbolic attack of an English soldier on a drunken SD. The potential escalation of this incident is defused by Bloom. It is presented as a sign of Odyssean cunning. The Vets commenced a strategic withdrawal. The sky was crackling. Ocker strained on his perch. Coriolanus advances to the front of the stage. Doctor Gu snorted and spat into the sink, clearing her head. Enter Cunningham, Power and Crofton. Cunningham calls for a Christian blessing. Cornwall held Ocker’s gaze with an unbunged eye. A member of the local constabulary entered the bar. He walked straight towards the Giggle. Ocker blinked and checked his watch. Swiss incabloc. A gift from his mother when he was a child. Still full of hopes and aspirations. Playing wargames in the backyard at night. This moment of reflection gave NULL and VOID an opportunity to exit with dignity. Ock placed his hand on top of a bulging brown paper sandwich bag as the police officer approached.

“That was close,” said Cornwall striding towards the kerb.

Eyesenears leaned into a metal advertising sign for Vincent’s powders to avoid disclosure.

“Flab poke gluck yore dan drop,” says VOID. “Eye wooden ways my bereft purse only.”

“Sub ties, thebes kinder blows just gemme. I chest cough lick a fie cracker.”

Their footfalls exceeded the bounds of eyesenears scale.

“Anyway, it’s over now,” said Cornwall. “Are you interested in working with us?”

“Yes,” replied Don Cane with certainty.

“Good. I’ll let you get some rest now. Let’s meet tomorrow morning? Say Eleven AM. Our offices are located in Hunter Street. Just give the cab driver this card.”

Tom Cornwall handed his business card to Don Cane. I watched them withdraw under ill-fitting one hundred per cent finest pure Australian merino coats. Ocker signalled his intent to pursue battle with an ill-timed shot. It shattered on the pavement. Shards exploded across the wet asphalt. I don’t think those two blokes even noticed. I followed his instructions with desultory motion. But it was too late. The tartars were already standing on the far thread of the zebra stripes across Darlinghurst Road. They shook hands warmly. Tom Cornwall walked to the cab rank. Don Cane stood on the footpath alone. A sailor sensing breeze after a long lull. Street-pub-street, such are Leopold Bloom’s movements over the course of Cyclops. A lout hung out of a passing car. He propelled empty barbs at NULL. They shattered at his feet. Don scooped up a jagged stem. He looked ahead. The car had been caught at a red traffic light. His proud heart rankled. The occupants wound their windows shut quickly. Heads dropped. Clinging to shag seat covers. Don Cane stood over a single glass crescent, gazing at his distorted reflection as if in a still pool. Suddenly, the lights changed. The car got the chance to escape his clutches. It sped off. Link back to the start of C2. In that scene, Tom Hallem is a kind of Paris figure hiding deep inside the palace as the Trojans and Greeks trade barbs. He is also a variant on Hamlet, as well as Telemachus safe in the arms of Athena. Don laid down his weapon. The waning movement and sound of Kings Cross circulated in disconnected fragments that just couldn’t fill-out the heavy atmos of a humid spring night. It was coming to pass as the prophet, Telemus, had foreseen. Polyphemus complains that he was tricked by Odysseus’ countenance. He did not match the perception of a ‘tall, handsome’ hero. This mal-adherence to Classical tropes of male appearance was signalled by Homer at the start of the Iliad, when the Trojans described Odysseus in Book Three. Odysseus isn’t the main character yet. Nobody knows how Homer’s story will unfold. To Priam, he looks stout and strong like a ram. This implies he has limited mental capacity. Antenor sets him straight. He recounts the first diplomatic exchange between the parties when Menelaus and Odysseus were sent to try to negotiate the release of Helen. The Trojans immediately perceived his subordinate physical bearing as they walked towards the embassy, although he seemed to gather stature when everyone sat. But they still thought he looked retarded. He stared at the ground not making eye contact. He clutched his sceptre ‘stiff and still like a mindless man.’ Antenor said that he appeared like a ‘sullen fellow or just plain fool’ until he spoke. Only then would “the words come piling on like a driving winter blizzard that no man could rival” (Fagles, Penguin Classics, Book 3, ll.246–269). This is a talent developed by Joyce and an ambition for this work also. The wind blew. Don Cane turned towards his hotel to gather stores and commence his journey home. Shanghai Dog’s cell phone registered a new text. He unglued his Blackberry handset from the belt around his sodden clothing. “I am going to email your wife,” it read. For Homer, Polyphemus demonstrates the negative outcome of lawless existence outside a well-formed body politic. For Joyce, The Citizen evinces the ultimate impotence of hard nationalist rhetoric. Shanghai Dog leaned back. He didn’t hate Xiao Fang. Like DIDO, she was only trying to express her love for Aeneas. His shirt adhered to the black plastic seat. He cleared rain from his eyes. Suddenly the darkness was smashed by banks of fresh fluorescent strips at the start of Fuxing Tunnel. The taxi accelerated sharply and dipped under the Wangpu River. Soon, he would be back in Puxi. Let them plot. He started to compose a quick email to his wife in Sydney.

WHY IS AEOLUS?

Aeolus is a short episode in the Odyssey located between major exchanges with Polyphemus and Circe. The time-shifting structure of the Odyssey – which commences late in Odysseus’ journey and uses retrospective storytelling on Phaeacia to propel the text back in time then sequentially forwards to the present – makes it easy to forget that Odysseus encounters Aeolus at a very early stage of his journey. In fact, it is only a matter of 2 months since Odysseus left Troy. He is almost back home. In that time, he has sacked Ismarus, encountered the Lotus-Eaters and escaped Polyphemus. He spends one full month on the floating island of Aeolia. When he leaves, Aeolus gives Odysseus a bag full of winds, releasing the west wind to speed his passage. Odysseus proceeds to the very threshold of Ithaca. He is so close that he can see dawn fires illuminating gangs of fishermen mending nets on shore. It is at this prospect of consummation that his crew opens the bag. They unleash fierce new winds forcing the fleet back to open sea. This is the commencement of the real Odyssey, which only Odysseus will survive. His crew must die to close the moral loop of Classical ethics. Odysseus returns to Aeolia after he regains control of his boats hoping to get another bag of drugs. Aeolus refuses further assistance. He has grasped the extent of the Gods’ antipathy and drives Odysseus off. The Aeolus episode resigns Odysseus to a long exile. It thus sets the stage for his acquiescence to long relationships with Circe then Calypso.

A KEY IS RETURNED

After he left EAx, Tom Hallem retraced his steps across the Burton Street overpass and glanced right down West Street where swollen, punctured garbage bags and sodden boxes bedded a contorted figure slumped against a telegraph pole over an iron sewer-grate. Hallem felt compelled to render assistance, like Nietzsche throwing his arms around a horse being whipped in his final sane action. This is, in fact, a straightforward narrative transfer from Raskolnikov’s first dream of himself as a boy watching Mikolka beat a tired old horse to death. It was apparently confected by Italian journalists to give drama to Nietzsche’s madness. Another FAKE product. Link to all forgeries in this work. Also the narrator in Berlin in Chapter One. I clawed the battleship grey pavement (HEX #848482), leaving a charcoal indentation (HEX#36454f) in Berlin sludge (HEX#fffafa). Hallem peeled back a stiff overcoat to reveal the stalks of an emaciated drug addict. He pulled back the mop. This man wore a hawk’s beak. A scar shaped like gallows-poles separated his eyebrows. A full, dry mouth. Tom held his own breath to make silence and waited for the sound of a single taxi to pass so that he could test whether there was still life in this wretched form. Eventually, the chest plate moved almost imperceptibly but true. A lungful of bad wine sighed. He looks so content, thought Tom. Why disturb whatever peaceful dreams were passing through his solemn vault? Sometimes, I still feel Tom’s phosphorescence at night, so deep my epiglottis trembles (see end of C1). Molly’s sour snorts inadvertently range into my fear shuddering perception back. Tom Hallem propped the torso against the pole and withdrew. Compassion is a concept rejected by Nietzsche. It was a sentiment brought to prominence by the helots who started Christianity in Ancient Rome. They were all part of a ‘herd.’ What we would call a ‘demotic mass’ today like the mob in Coriolanus. Nietzsche tried to shift intellectual prestige from the logical procession of Apollo’s fugues, so feted by nineteenth-century thinkers, to the frenzied minor keys, driven by wind and hand drums, which in-sensed Dionysus’ dancers. The tragic denouement of this Classical dialectic is found in the figure of Orpheus, child of Apollo yet also Dionysus’ high priest. This is the type of rent personality that Pater translated into English and which was channelled by Wilde in Dorian Gray. A Hieratic figure needs ruthless self-interest to strive for dynamic peaks regardless of the consequences, according to Nietzsche. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a familiar trope to any student of Shelley (see “Alastor”). Tom Hallem failed in his quest. Billy Capri’s pursuit continues. That is the basic divide in this work. There is no artificial moral system embedded in TMAC. All characters are demonstrably flawed. Joyce challenged Nietzsche directly with his Everyman protagonist, Leopold Bloom, whose wife takes over narrative drive and secures the novel with a resounding YES. To declare space OVER, to strive to mark an unmarked point, to cause progress however impermanent, like Pater’s hard flame, which must ultimately expire, or Shelley’s ember, which must inevitably yield to the lifeless abyss of NIL heat, pulse and colour, that is success. Tom Hallem was happy to preserve a dead stone in his pocket like Beckett’s Molloy. Billy Capri, however, kept blowing through locked fists to try to retain some semblance of its glow even as life abstracted. In terms of Nietzsche’s concept of ‘eternal recurrence of the same,’ I would choose to relive this life. But would any of James Joyce, Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, Odysseus, Penelope, Hamlet, Lear, Achilles, Helen Capri, Penelope Hallem, Don Cane, Judy, Richie, Xiao Fang, Elizabeth Archer, Morgana Lafei, Lester, W-the-P or Tom Hallem feel the same? The answers in order are YES, NO, YES, YES, YES, NO, NO, NO, YES, NO, YES, YES, NO, NO, YES, NO, N/A, YES, NO.

UKIYO

The gallery was empty. Its core a hollowed carceral. Wind shook the rusty metal panes. A huge Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge’s barge, hung limp like a tonsured Chinese lantern (see C1). Elizabeth surveyed the blank palette. This tone of abeyance is very different to the opening of Joyce’s Aeolus. Bloom traverses Dublin at the start of that ep(is)ode. It is a completely different time of day to the current scenery. Clanging trams and grinding Post Office vans disgorge mail-sacks down brass slides. Drunken Guinness barrels tumble dizzily onto cross-river floats. Bleating animals beat each other to death on some Darwinian anvil (rats gulls microbes fleas dogs’ men). It all culminates in the decisive press of W. Brayden’s footsteps across the bare newspaper office. Elizabeth armed the security alarms. Her heels rapped on the tensile boards of the General Tobacco Company. A ghost bit her. She rushed towards the street. There were not enough sales tonight. Too many half-dots and pass-overs. She needed to call in some favours. Leon Daniel was leaning against a wall scrutinising the drawn master bedrooms of a row of common-wall terraces like Odysseus contemplating Achilles’ shield. He penetrated Hephaestus’ meaning in a way that the owner never bothered. She looked over her husband’s shoulder. Ekphrasis. Convex shape. Dome of heaven. Ringed by the River Tethys. Hopos. Eternity’s cycle. A mutability code. Bare brown plain. Human polis. Quotidian trafficking. Epilogue to the death of Patroclus. Shown thus to Hector. A prelude also. Images of bygone Troy brandished at his face. Worthless dead fate. His resignation. Achilles held it from his own eyes like a Gorgon. Don’t perceive, he directed. Bar recognition of. Nullify association. Reflect but don’t reflect. Be a mirror not a spur. Troy/Achaea. Elizabeth admired her husband’s sharp profile so sheer when in thought. So polished. Impenetrable ultimately. And for that reason, always tugging a thread. Odysseus was thus enclosed. Restrained. Not ruled by human passion. Imperturbable. Modest, especially compared to his peers and leaders like Agamemnon. But always operating with purpose. He acted courageously although he preferred to avoid risk by his wits. Treachery did not dismay him. He was not afraid of lying. A thin-lipped armourer, he proffered deception openly like a Sudanese pirate or a brutal Sussex Street union boss. Now her husband had been utterly mortalised. An unintelligible multitude of cells was moving column by column through his body in a tide of bad blood. She reared. Repulsed by its force. Elizabeth touched her husband’s forearm. His form seemed to have fused with discoloured brickwork like a human fresco at Pompeii. Odysseus was a relic of a strange, unnameable race. He did not look like the other Achaean heroes. Perhaps he was Hither-Asiatic. Greek with Phoenician ancestors. Something from a gene pool lifted by Homer from a pre-Hellenic bayou. Aly considered him Cretan. Dark bearded and hairy. Not fair and munificent like Achilles. Sitting he looked like a GIANT so broad were his shoulders. Standing he appeared squat. Alike to Palamedes, hero of the Achaean Troy legend and darling of post-Homeric poets. Both were Gulf people. Another Southerly gust was sweeping through the city from Botany Bay. It rushed under the traffic bridge at Hargraves Street across Paddington’s ditch-end. Darlinghurst stirred like a tired, cruel dog in its wake. Blowback down its gullet. Peristalsis. Junk mail trapped in eddies circulated like cornered mice. Ambulance lights flashed silently, hung at the entrance to the Emergency Ward. A stainless-steel stretcher pried open weeping plastic flaps. Elizabeth clung tighter to her husband as they pushed up the embankment. Dark figs veiled the Victorian bandstand in Green Park. Sticky bat shit and fruit adhered to their feet. Silhouettes of sunburnt-red, green-sequined prostitutes stirred visible and vanished amidst the tropical beds. Pale twinks were pinned in tight procession against the sandstone blocks of the Wall. Classical statues slouching soft in recessed porticos. Palace stares. Secret assignations. Cruising car lamps illuminated blandished mugs. Fishnet singlets exposed lank arms pitted with chill marks. Elizabeth scratched an infected track hidden by her muslin sleeve. Penelope has her own secrets. Perhaps it was in the interests of both parties to withhold the kind of sharp analysis that they turned on other people. A police van turning into Darlinghurst Road aborted a protracted deal. A frustrated rent boy jerked back into the worn tapestry. Elizabeth and Leon baulked to let him pass. The dark driver of a comm-plate car shrank low. Constable Carr passed. Odysseus called the lad back with thick, scarred fingers. Tempest blast. His car lurched into the straits. Leon and Elizabeth approached the far shore of Oxford Street. Sporadic pedestrians some cars a bus sometimes. Gusts heralded the next storm. Elizabeth opened her bag to extract a portable umbrella.

“I forgot my wallet,” she said in a discouraged tone.

“I’ll go back,” her husband replied.

“No. I should do it.”

“You need to be there,” he said pointing towards Taylor Square.

“Alright,” she said stroking his cheek. Her ceramic thumb slid into the contoured skin above his nostrils. A cold nail scouring. Yellowblock Christ gazed down from the Sacred Heart. Berachot. Numbers 6. A flat purple coin. Odysseus regarded his wife’s countenance unflinchingly. Elizabeth jerked his head into the deathly beam of a streetlight. A broad lesion was apparent on Leon’s nose. There was also a fainter abscess forming on his prow. She did not recall these imperfections on the freshly painted canvas that Basil Hallward had displayed in his studio last week. She handed him a bunch of keys.

FLAW MARS FAMOUS PORTRAIT! TERRORIST SUSPECT

“What are those marks,” she asked.

“Sarcomas.”

“Is it AIDS?”

“Yes. Alar and the tip. Typical locations.”

“So soon?” she asked forlornly.

“It’s a game of chance at the start,” Leon replied. “But it always ends the same way.”

(4) SYLLEPSIS/PROLEPSIS

A dice thrown in a marble vault. Trope of Conscience. Agenbit. Debts owed in marriage. Set equity against. Joyce inscribed the 1,000th copy of Ulysses to his wife and gave it to Nora at a dinner party much like the restaurant scene that follows in this chapter. She immediately tried to on-sell the book to other diners. I think she hated her husband by this time. Like Hitler, Joyce only married his common law wife when he realised the hopelessness of his situation. It was another binding gesture, but not in its literary sense. By November, Nora had only read 27 pages of Ulysses including the cover. Joyce added the cover to the page total to avoid hitting the number twenty-six: it was twice unlucky thirteen. LINK JJ & SYPHILIS TO LEON & AIDS – Kevin Birmingham’s revelation about James Joyce contracting Syphilis in the early part of the twentieth century in Nighttown occurs on page 289 of The Most Dangerous Book. Nora almost certainly contracted syphilis from Joyce. It is probably what sent Lucia mad. The bacterium that invaded his eyes was called Treponema pallidum. It is a classic syphilitic cell that wreaks havoc wherever it lodges in the human body. The first lesions appear on the skin and heal after a few weeks. But it searches for homes as it circulates through the bloodstream. It can inhabit blood vessels and bones, muscles and nerves, the heart, liver, spinal cord or brain. It induces illnesses as diverse as arthritis and jaundice, aneurisms and epilepsy. The most feared condition was GENERAL PARALYSIS OF THE INSANE. This was what destroyed Churchill’s father. Every night as I gazed up at the window, I said to myself softly the word ‘paralysis,’ wrote Joyce in “Sisters” in 1904. Kevin Birmingham turns this word, paralysis, into a personal confession of awe and fear. In fact, it refers to a character in Joyce’s story who has had three strokes. But I have NO QUARREL with a critic using this type of license. Birmingham’s exegesis is brilliant in effect. It links with examples of forgery and fakery elsewhere in this chapter. The horror of Joyce’s predicament is enhanced by Birmingham’s clinical prose. Leon’s got the flynim. Tom not. But I? asked Elizabeth. Nobody knows exactly how HIV is transmitted yet. I need to get tested again, she thought. Dark chance squats like a sharp-eyed gargoyle. The system has closed on me. Now I’m steeped in the past. Its above me as well. Weighted down by ballast of memories. NO FUTURE. A deep well of downspirals. Stoop the ditch. Fingers through Styx. Fizzing. Fade. Proust in black patent boots outside the Hotel Marigny squelching on the spot against rank sewerfrost. A spoiled Rose Guide drooping in his hand. Supplications of Le Cuziat. Mere blandishments. They enter the establishment together. He procures an adjacent closet to observe the adepts through twin peepholes. An oval portrait of John Ruskin is mounted on the fuck-side. Burnished wallpaper has been branded with faux velvet Fleur-de-lys. Bosie’s nickname. The critic’s strange eyes weep and wonder at such grotesque travails. Two flies buzz. Pies overflowing from the devil’s fat stumps. Witness Duchamp’s GIVEN. Its foil is Marion Hackett’s installation FALL described earlier in Chapter Ten. Approach the old Spanish door which Duchamp found on holidays in Morocco and had shipped to Pittsburgh. Place your inwit against two teeny drill holes. Gaze inna. Loop back to Page Five. Appears, shlock diorama! A naked female (Maria Martins) is prone on her back across a network of brittle switches (Stoppages), some harbouring clenched leaves, with her head and part of her upper body obscured (Duchamp used various tactics to compensate for the fact he was a poor portraitist), legs flopped open, her bald cunt fully exposed, so that the labia seem hacked out of her limp/id body (see “Female Fig Leaf”) like stark faultlines, and forced to hold aloft a lamp of jaundiced gas (1) in her rictic grip, we might think her dead if not for the muscular strictures of this posture, the converse of all those mucid Odalisques by Titian and Ingres, all runny flesh, no-boned, yes something more akin to Manet’s “Olympia,” whose own – and the viewer’s – discomfiture is exacerbated by the inclusion of a maid brandishing a fresh bouquet, no doubt the gift of some Comte de Focheville or Charles Swann, against a landscape featuring a mechanised waterfall (2). Pull back. Duchamp appears as Rrose Selavy on the far wall (see Ozkaya). The flat surface of GIVEN conceals an elaborate cloaca machine of jerry-built devices to create the diorama, thereby inducing a simile with the human form. CCTV cameras captured Shanghai Dog’s passage along the corridor. The butcher boy softened tensile chains. Bloom’s wrists droppt, his buttocks lifted together. The SUB paid umbrage in mandible Quebecois. Whip-spat rejoinder. Leon knew such delights. Odysseus also. He told Penelope all about them in the grimy hours before dawn after they were all fucked-out. This was the point at which Penelope realised he was no longer human. She makes no effort to hold him in Ithaca. Her last involvement is to hear her husband’s instructions and obey him at the end of Book Twenty-Three. He tells her to go to the upper room, “sit there, look at no one and question no one” (Oxford, 285). This proud and skilful woman appears to submit to her husband meekly. Order is ostensibly restored. Patriarchy reinforced. She has been told to stop speaking, thinking and composing new stratagems, as she did throughout the siege by the suitors. She must become a totem. This is the OPPOSITE of what James Joyce does with Molly Bloom. This instruction by Odysseus incenses a modern reader. Perhaps one could argue that Penelope is just relieved to have a period of rest. But I think she is JUST AS WILY AS EVER. Far shrewder at closure than her worn-down husband. He is now acting like the oaf that he appears to others on first glance throughout the epic. PENELOPE DOES NOT WANT ODYSSEUS TO STAY. She will do anything to make him depart quickly. Their DNA has become totally misaligned. How awkward this moment must have felt for Penelope, who had held onto a lasting memory of her husband trying to avoid war service and stay with his family. BUT ODYSSEUS IS LOST AT THE ‘THEN’ OF THE ODYSSEY. Onec upno tiem, it was winter in a subterranean bedsit in London, we were young, Leon had not yet given way to dare-not-speak-it-Love, I lay on my untended side glazing over a poster of Disraeli Gears when my waters broke through the sagging mattress another 5 quid fine from the landlady ‘dirty Australians,’ she said, link to Peroxide Girl in Chapter Five. Dark blood from torn bark. Pray to Father Mars. What if little Rudy had lived? Chaim also. Spina bifida had already ruined his prospects. Reptile corpse wrung on a slab. A skinned rabbit. Broken back blister weeping lymph. His father’s destiny now also. Walk into the Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto. Shine a flashlight across the subway walls of Saint James. A sandstone stormwater arch. LED holograms. Plato’s universe. Washed-out tagging. Ana rolled ahead of the pack like some cannonball Ophelia. She stumbled. Beach under kneecaps. She rose on thighfronts. Steepled palms. Threshold of a still dark pool. Tommy’s speed was too fast; his smack too pure. She crawled into cool dim waste. A willow grows askance. Resteasy. Watery seep down earholes. An orchid. Ophelia in garlands strown. Dragged down by puppet wires. Fleuves Impassible. Ana’s body twisted at the LAST. She rested face upwards on The Lake. This is the worst-case scenario for Stephen Dedalus after he leaves Bloom. That he was beaten to death in an alley by Cosgrove, Mulligan and their Pommy mates. Ana’s dice rolled to an uneasy stillness. Dead eyes gazed at a too-far-flung grate. A single car flashed overhead.

“What happens next,” asked Elizabeth.

“Sarcomas can be treated.”

“That’s not what I mean. I want a long-term prognosis.”

Brain on her sleeve like Bloom. Technical mumbles. She touched his hair. Meandering towards some Pissant pisgalah. Hyakinthos. Bloom’s list of social throwaways includes marriage sex pregnancy childbirth fidelity law madness death even disposal of the beastly dead. Modern life all usufruct, he sighed. Penelope’s suitors. Their business: to drink our wine. Her strategy: maintain process under siege; install ritual machines; make humans into apparatuses; mechanise 100% onto surface; de-sanctifile language [rebrand functions in Ingsoc (cc. Minitrue)]; commission a fake news campaign; detach all temporal hopes; accept death; enact attrition. INSERT GANTT CHART [Draft]. When the patient’s CD4 count drops to 30, the immune system starts to shut down. The body ceases to respond to treatment. Sarcomas infect the skin and gums before moving down the gullet. They can infect the glands in the groin and scrotum. This causes grotesque swelling. Meningitis makes the neck rigid. The head may also be impaled at an unusual angle. The body whorls. The patient is unable to extend his hips or knees without severe pain. This syndrome is called Kernig’s Sign. Often it occurs in conjunction with Brudzinski’s Sign, which makes the neck, knees and hips convulse unwillingly. This combination of counter-impulsive gestures instigates constant suffering. A suite of cancers is prevalent during AIDS. Any combination may occur. The blend can include Hodgkin’s lymphoma, mouth and throat cancer, lung cancer, melanoma, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, testicular cancer and anal cancer. The skin goes black and hard. It cracks and splits. Brain tissue swells until it presses against the inside of the skull. This results in what can best be described as ‘mind-hernias.’ Mental functions become severely impaired. The patient loses long and short-term memory functions. Winter occasions severe influenza which progresses methodically to bronchitis and pneumonia. Eating becomes distasteful. Incontinence ensues. The patient becomes extremely sensitive to light.

“At the end, you’ll struggle to even recognise me.”

“How long have you got?”

“Nobody knows. AIDS was only diagnosed as a disease in 1981. Most of the original victims are already dead.”

“Oh Leon,” she said cupping her palms over his broad dome. Galatea cradling the skull of dead Acis. Thetis viewing the shield. She looked over his shoulder searching for scenes of vines and olive trees ritual pieties marble cities civic citadels calves festooned in toilet seat white garlands.

(5) WHO IS TO BLAME?

INSERT ON LEON’S ILLNESS. LINK TO TOM’S DEATH. INSERT REVEL­ATION. On a too hot to move or think summer afternoon, Tom Hallem lay stapled against his sodden bed bloated by steroids rejecting his second-hand heart his sacked bank card askew on a low table digital alarm clock-radio flipping sluggish minutes slipping hit parade truth loaded cannula flopping out of his basilic forearm blind wet and frightened voiding periodically in no man’s landing. Tom called for help. Silently, Willy advanced to the threshold of his room out of sightline. He peered through the hinge crack. Tom’s kelpie was growling dark and hollow. He panicked as Tom yelped. GUYS I CAN’T SEE, he said. Willy stumbled back into the lounge room and dialled Nadine. She said call TRIPLE-O. It works against every instinct of a junky to summon authority so he did some cotton. It strung him out for a while. Five o’clock game shows started. Tom was quieter during “Wheel of Fortune.” Willy was deciphering the title of a recent film when he resumed. Champ picked four bad letters. Always mix two vowels with S and T. Willy pumped the volume. Ten second countdown. Talk it out. BUZZ. Adriana turned the tiles. Midnight Cowboy, it read. Canned groans. Never heard of it, said the champ. Speed to credits. Willy switched to “Catch Phrase.” Tom Hallem like a baby crying cut through and through. He picked up the handset and pressed ZERO-ZERO-ZERO. He swore to God he’d get straight if he escaped. He gave the address. They started hitting him up for data. “Look,” he said, “I just heard this bloke asking for help when I came to deliver a pizza. I got to dash. You need to get here fast.” Hang up. A pregnant pass. Radio news tolled six. Farsiren. Time for this poor soul to exit. At last, Willy acts decisively. Eject the Gear. Flush the cistern. Fill your pockets. Take his card. Race to the kitchen door. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Kick Dixie out of the way. Scamper over bald lawn. Northcote’s sky was blue. Crawl over the back fence. Hide in rushes. Oleander hedge. Watch from a safe distance like a fox. Ambos and cops massing. Discretely withdraw down a stranger’s driveway. Shanghai Dog shuffled deeper down the taxi bracing low and flat. It was twenty years since Tom’s death. He was still wandering it off. Guilt hardwired. Accomplice [was I]? Last phone call. He wanted more cash. More was sent. Hands wrung. Another six hundred bucks is cheap to get you off my conscience. I chose NOT to visit Melbourne. Abettor then by default. Did they score that final bag with my [$$$]? Joyce used Arthur Dignam’s burial to induce pathos. Perfect naming. Dig. Nam(e). Viet(nam). Dead. Die. Fly crazy like Odysseus-in-storms to Fairfield Station. Hurstbridge Line. Get to Flinders Street. CBD. Change for Saint Kilda. Empty the ATM before his account is frozen. Score. We caught a taxi straight from the airport to the suburban funeral parlour. His mother had choreographed the service. Nondescript box on stage. Bad image on the face of a cheap memorial program. Almost ironically poor taste. ‘When the sun has set for me,’ it read. HE DIED SIGHTLESS! ‘I want no rites in a gloom filled room.’ HE DIED IN ONE! ‘All part of the master’s plan.’ HE WAS AN ATHEIST WHOSE KINGPIN HOOKED HIM UP TO A SMACK MACHINE! Turn it over and get more rubbish. They play cassette music. Every line of the lyric was charged with meaning. His palms were cold now. Shadow on his second-hand heart. Pain behind unsighted eyes. He felt something touch him. This reference to the Lord sharpened the irony that he had died without the solace of human contact. Penelope’s last act of misplaced control. Our father did not make it from Manila. Steps of bearers heavy and slow. Slippery mourning gloves. Don’t drop even once the hole thereat. Pass straps underneath like patient bands. Lower. Loadbearing limit. Silent motion of passage. Bloom has some good points it is conceded by the end of Lestrygonians, albeit they are disclosed with errors of fact.

SUCH SOON-SPEEDING GEAR

“I don’t want to go on too long,” said Leon.

“What?”

“I’ve put some drugs in the safe. They’re already loaded into syringes. I want you to administer them if I get too sick to do it myself.”

She stroked her husband’s face. Deal kindly and truly, asked Jacob. Coup de Grace. Bullet in the head if you’ve got spare ammo. Otherwise, take a rifle by the barrel and force the butt in a downwards motion to smash the skull. Use a blade as with Kurtz to slice ear from ear. It cuts the windpipe. Last gurgling stemmed by Dionysus’ syrah. Perform seppuku on surrendering troops. Half chopped-off heads. Insert link to NARROW ROAD, DEEP NORTH. Make lists to intensify but also displace emotion. Leon hobbled off like a broken goat.

“The air bites cold,” his wife spoke hard at his diminishing form like regretful Bloom watching Stephen Dedalus retreat towards his father and new name in F(W)ake.

BOBBING ABOUT ON A RAFT UNTOWARDS

The wind reaped Leon’s bone-coat making flan-billows. Ghostbloom. A spirit wont to walk. S-Dog dozed in the taxi. It sped out of the tunnel. A boat leaving harbour. Aeaea. TV Soong’s ships loaded gold bars and ancient artefacts on the Shanghai docks. Next stop Taipei. He gazed left over Huaihai Zhong Lu from the Yanan Elevated Road. A giant TV screen on the Lansheng Building projected a smiling image of Jackie Chan. Jingoism with Chinese Characteristics. He was advertising chilli oil noodles. Suan tian ku la xian. Five types of Chinese cuisine. Sour Sweet Bitter Spicy Salty. Equivalent to Mao Liu Mao Deng Xi. Se xiang wei. Colour aroma taste. It conforms to natural order: see > smell > eat. A nation is what it consumes, according to Bloom. Dogs eating dog shit. German fat and cream. British slop. In the nineteenth century, China swallowed Tibet. Britain chewed its border. It almost got swallowed whole by Japan. Stuff a turkey with a duck with a quail. Mao spitting plum seeds. Eating mud cakes in Anhui during Da Yue Jin. Frozen weeds. History is the movement of animus. Joyce on Vico. Mouth to arse. Peristalsis. Shanghai Dog squirmed. His cell phone illuminated the cabin. Wall Street purled. Cannibal states. Joe Taxpayer. Credit binge. Asset booms. Massive SOEs. Fannie Mac. Gorging God’s body. GIANT SNAKE SWALLOWS CROCODILE. Tom Hallem, concealed in sandstone and fig shadows, observed Leon Daniel withdraw from the stage. Polonius was like a mascot inside a shroud. Darlinghurst Courthouse. Justice is blind to the poor man. Tamed by Miltown we lie on mother’s bed alone. Henry Lawson rotting in dry dock. Greek Revival. Britain annexing the power of dead Hellas. Empire signs. Zeus did a crap and sandstone was dropped all over Sydney. Rome left sewers. Leon disappeared along the ridge of the Bourke Street Escarpment. Tom Hallem observed Elizabeth Archer in sharp profile beneath a square bell tower. Diminished in scale the abysmal tower against. She lit a cigarette. He hesitated. She turned, walking away. Suddenly, he resolved to proceed towards her crossing point and commenced motion also. Ginger’s picture flashed on his screen. “Come to Glamour Bar,” she texted. “OK,” answered Shanghai Dog immediately.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Leon Daniel felt inside his jacket for two long sealed envelopes. One contained a proposal to the Jewish Board of Deputies. He hoped it would be published in the “Australian Jewish Times.” He crossed Burton Street and entered the foyer of a squat block house. The porter acknowledged him. He unlocked the security screen automatically. Leon placed the first envelope in a deep letterbox. He heard it drop to the base. Ana Lafei’s eyes pressed upwards blindly. Iokanaan looked from the pit floor through a grill at platinum Judean light. Leon walked down a long corridor. Resounding click-ETTY-cl-ACK of leather soles. Lights pledged late in the Boardroom. Agenda Item 3: A Jewish Museum of Sydney. He had reviewed the draft floor plan before he made a large donation. Mezzanine 1: Hitler’s Rise to Power. Mezzanine 2: First Arrivals in Australia. Mezzanine 4: Creation of Israel. Mezzanine 5: Judaism Today. Chad Gadya. Elijah is coming. So much to fix while he still had breath. INSERT GRID. Sudan. Beta Israel. Gondar. Starving in camps. Get them to Tel Aviv by plane. Tickbox visas. He approached the editor’s desk. She looked up at him.

“I have an article to submit,” said Leon Daniel handing an envelope to her. “It proposes that the United Synagogue prepare a resolution on AIDS.”

“Positive or negative,” asked the editor.

“It’s a public health issue,” replied Leon firmly.

“I don’t mean to be rude but I’ve got a pile of letters in that tray,” she said pointing, “saying that this is all Halakha.”

“To’eivah,” Leon replied flatly.

“Correct.”

“My argument affirms the mitzvah of Pikuah Nefesh as well as Bikkur Holim.”

“Hatzalat Nefashot.”

“Sanhedrin 4:5.”

“Now I recognise you. You’re Doctor Daniel.”

“I’m not a doctor. I’m just a dentist.”

“They all call you ‘doctor’.”

“It’s a mark of respect.”

“Why don’t you correct them?”

“What is this … investigative journalism?”

“Just asking.”

“I’ve tried many times. But they won’t listen. So I gave up. They like it that way.”

“It’s hard to get through to the old ones,” she grinned. “You follow Rabbi Deutsch.”

“Yes. In my personal opinion, Me’ir Naftoli Tzvi ben Elimelech epitomises all that is good about Yiddishkeit. I have spoken with him about this article. He concurs with my logic. There is a note of endorsement attached to the back.”

“I’ll publish your letter. But we might need to edit. Put it there in the tray.”

Leon positioned his article across the top of the other letters then left the newspaper office. He walked back down the hall quietly. Looking right, he could see the exhibition boards for Mezzanine 3: The Camps. He reached the donation box for Operation Moses, took out his keys, freed the lock and flipped open the steel box. There had been some new contributions since Saturday. A couple of small cheques which he would need to deposit tomorrow. There were also some anonymous bank notes. A few silver coins. Probably contributions from older Jews. Like the poor woman in B’riyt HaHhadashah. Jesus was right. Leon stopped to speak to the porter.

“How are the new dentures, Mister Vargas. Did the technician do a good job?”

“Yes, Doctor Daniel. Very good.”

The porter drew back his cheeks to display a row of over-sized front teeth.

“You look like a young man, Reb Vargas.”

The porter closed his mouth to speak.

“Only my teeth.”

“My professor used to say that the mouth is the causeway to the soul.”

“Well, in that case my soul can’t chew on red meat anymore. Just soft foods.”

CHLORIS

Food. Air. Speech. Love even. The body’s Gibraltar. A beautiful portico. Botticelli paints the floral vine as if it is a string of barbed wire. Contemplate its verge. Lips softened to kiss. An art invented by Indians. Neanderthals passing mush between their mouths like birds. Babies suckling. Source of all sex drive. Neuron verbs. Inflorescence. First yielding. Accept your lover’s lenient tongue. Conditional assent. To bear impetus. Invert. It becomes the power of invading. Merge. Locos. Pass beyond the lips the ardent lips to a soft wet vault. Gu like to recite a Chinese proverb: the tongue is soft and the teeth are hard but which one wears out first. An underground arch. A steep canal. Gaze up at its moist rendered roof. Uvula at apex. Teardrop sack. The keystone. Bloom was not a mason. Little grape. The mouth is a sad locale like our human condition. Mono no aware. Most melancholy part. A brink contemplated. Sail over its threshold into the black clogging guts like Jonah or Jason. Parts unknown though of ourselves. Themselves obscure. Mystery of the body. 90% meat. Close off. Just be surface and sense. Smile. It uses 34 muscles. All unconscious. Teeth defects exposed. There is more money in cosmetic than repair work. Vanity beats maintenance every time. Dreams crumbling my face. Self-esteem logos. Scars. Prising the jaw apart with stakes to get at the exposed bone. Drilling and wrenching asymmetrical rotten ancient or neglected teeth crowded together in knots gushing gore spit and dead wind-stink fetid gums systolic like curtains on the threshold between seen (fact) and unseeable (claimed). West Egg. Our organism: lamina/guts. Common clay. All poetry extracted from. Mundane images. Shame of patients at being prised. Slut Isaac on a slab. Dog with a porcelain turd stuck halfway out its arse. The porter’s smile shifted tense. It was past. Just lingering, lowered, on his spent jaw. As if he couldn’t force its dissolution but must wait stoically for it to lapse. Leon left the Jewish Centre. The porter retreated silently to his booth. Thawing rain. Mister Daniel walked towards Oxford Street. A damp rent boy grinned. Leon smiled back. Taste his pheromones almost. I could still suck and be sucked probably. Getanamylrush. Patches 3 am. Dark booth near the dance floor. Agendath Netaim. Warm lips. Rigid griff. No not tonight no. Nor ever again. Leon Daniel should have crossed Oxford Street but he turned towards Taylor Square. Food won’t help. Put on as much fat as you can now it’s useless. Dissolve to skinflags like some c.camp jew. He gazed through the iron fence at the unbreakable stone blocks of Darlinghurst Courthouse. British justice sustained on mighty columns. Temple. Royal Coat of Arms. Equality before law. Even for Jews. Rawlinson called Monash a slippery, clever, creepy-crawly Kike. Common Australians gave him the largest State funeral in history. 300,000 mourners lined Melbourne’s streets all the way to the New Synagogue. Leon turned down Bourke Street. Bloom is somewhat depressed in these episodes as he contemplates Molly’s adultery, carnality in general and the insults of average Irishmen. Hope has slid. Even winning the lottery wouldn’t help. Luck of Paris. Gods always playing jokes. Bradley kidnapping Graeme Thorne. Send 25,000 quid or we’ll feed him to sharks. Seven rows of teeth they have. Fifty fangs per row. Imagine flossing. Sharks shed 35,000 teeth in a life. He burnt his tongue on a hot Pastizzi. It stung thick. He was not sure how long it would take to heal. Leon felt in his side-pocket for a hard-plastic container and a tube of dental glue. Bloom approaches the Promised Land with a series of thoughtful acts. To grasp God in everyday events. A shout. The throwaway. Small favours. Leon passed Darlinghurst Police Station. Someone yelled fucking poofta from a car. They beat the shit out of cruisers. Unaccounted deaths. One day they will calculate gay hate crimes in Sydney. Boys thrown off rocks at beachside beats. Discoloured sign announced the Astoria Hotel. He pressed the concierge’s buzzer. Uneasy wait. Slow breath. Fear of being beaten to a pulp. Weak new light flashed. Sluggish footsteps. A shadow. The door opened. Nick Hagy strained to identify his dentist through the metal grille.

“Doctor Daniel,” he exclaimed at last exposing raw gums.

“Hello Nick. I’ve got your new dentures.”

“Bless you, Doctor. Come in.”

He unlocked the gate and ushered Leon into the corridor.

“But I don’t have any money. Mrs Kovochenko doesn’t collect the rent until Wednesday. So, I have not received my salary yet.”

He tightened the large knot on the front of his heavy dressing gown and adjusted a black beret warming his head.

“We’ll worry about money later,” said Leon Daniel. “Let’s fit your teeth and see if you can’t chew some yetta.”

“You are so kind, Doctor Daniel. Come to my room. I must admit I am tired of drinking soup. Bad squirts, you know. Fos.”

He laughed. Agape. They entered the bedsit. A grey hotbox. Nick heightened the heater still further. Leon emptied his pockets. He laid the teeth carefully on the table. Ancient lace. Relic of a dowry. INSERT ON MARRIAGE. One partner must go first. Nick dropped into his deep soft brown rocker. Leon rolled up his sleeves. He squeezed an arc of glue around the edge of the top denture then a single straight line down the centre to the palette mound.

“Tilt your head back. And open your mouth. Wide.”

Nick obliged. They always did. Trust. A precious oddment. Scorched field within. Stick a stink. Ancient globs. Down. The heartbeat. Stroke his gum. It tickles. Smooth surface. Do NOT scratch him. It could be fatal. Tidy up all the loose ends over the next few days. Then stop work for good. How will we survive my decline? How will we pay my medical expenses? Leon fitted the dentures into Nick’s face. Contact. Press. Life. A smiling baby. Chaim never again no. What could have been. Priam pleading with Achilles for Hector’s corpse. Putting lips to the backhand of his killer. He had no feelings for Tom Hallem. Proust like Shakespeare is zealous in investigating sexual jealousy. Joyce had no interest in it. Bloom accepts Molly’s adultery. He understands its causation. He accepts responsibility. He has done it himself. His quandary in Ulysses is whether to try reconnecting with Molly. Shanghai Dog knew that he would abandon Xiao Fang and Doctor Gu. Eventually, forget Zhu Di. Go back home to Sydney. Ways in/out/thru. Wayfarers return. North Head. A small skiff. An opening beckons. Port Jackson runway. Leon examined Nick’s new grin. The technician had done a good job. Good to go really. But I don’t want to. Not yet. Leon Daniel would rather sit and drink weak tea with Nick and get distracted hearing about Hungary before the War and how a few Jews got out in the 1930s than go back to the restaurant or go home.

MESS OR MASTERPIECE?

THOSE “EUMAEUS” BANNERS – TRUTH REVEALED!

STRANGE SIGHTINGS OF ELIJAH IN DUBLIN!

WHO OR WHAT IS THE MYSTERIOUS MISTER “O.P.”?

[INSERT TABLE]

TARZAN-BABY RAISED BY CENTAUR!

Stephen Dedalus evolves rapidly as he spirals towards orbit with Bloom. He starts off on a low base. His immaturity at the outset of the novel makes for unsatisfactory reading in Chapter One. The reader must push ahead. Joyce’s characterising-speed calls for some credulity. It is as brutal as the super-accelerated plot of Romeo and Juliet. Stephen’s unsuccessful riddle and plagiarised poem in Chapter 1 are superseded in Aeolus by his expositions on Shakespeare’s genealogy and A Pisgah Sight of Palestine – or the Parable of the Plums. Both these performances are well-received by mature audiences. The title of the parable refers to Stephen’s sharp put-down of John F. Taylor’s euphuistic speechifying about the Irish Promised Land. It is meta-textual in that it mimics the mythic method that is the formal and imagistic bedrock of Ulysses itself. It is another signpost of Stephen ‘becoming’ Joyce. It involves two middle-aged midwives travelling to the city from their home in one of Dublin’s poorest districts to climb the pillar of Admiral Nelson: a symbol of Ireland’s capitulation and servile relationship with England. But Joyce was actually ambivalent about British occupation. “Tell me why you think I ought to change the conditions that gave Ireland and me a shape and a destiny?” he once asked. They arrive at Sackville Street. It was the hub of Dublin’s tramway system. They admire his statue as it towers above them. There is implicit phallic voyeurism. The final BANNER of the episode comically articulates the underlying sexual tension of this Symbolist tableau. They pay the entrance fee. They climb the stairs. It exhausts them. Eventually, they gaze down on Dublin. This outlook should mimic Moses overlooking the Promised Land (‘Pisgah’). However, they are not enlightened. Neither is the place. Instead, they focus on the proliferation of churches – arch symbol of Ireland’s repression for Joyce. Finally, they sit blankly gorging themselves on plums. Ironically, Stephen Dedalus replicates this ignorance later in Ulysses by annihilating his intellect with alcohol. Their final act is to spit plum seeds through the grating, showering their fellow countrymen below. Projecting dead seeds corresponds to Stephen’s mother wasting her fertility on Ireland or Old Paps feeding fresh milk to English Haines and Glands Mulligan (see also Israel’s unpromising dirt also Soldier Settlement’s choked by Patterson’s Curse). The reductive minimalism of the parable acted as a template for Samuel Beckett’s drama. He  became Joyce’s spat seed.

ENTER OUR GREAT CONTEST!

FILL IN THE BLANKS & WIN A BRAND-NEW RUNABOUT!

Tom approached Elizabeth. “There’s you,” Elizabeth said smiling. She took his hand. Say nothing both. They crossed Gilligan’s Island. Thunder clouts swept upnowl faces. Watch out for lightning bolts. Joyce was terrified of them. He would hide under a table like a lap dog. Delicate lashes fluttering over bulbous lids. To cast her nighted colour off. No friend of Denmark. Soles depressed on thick unkempt lawn. Tentative vestige immediately erased. Ref Shelley. Noble Leon gone to dust. A granite-skinned derelict slouched against the park bench with grey trousers about his shins. He laughed mirthlessly. A plastic bottle of turpentine bounced on his exposed gut, still hard and brown from labour. His blackened hand reached out at the couple. “A bone,” he implored. They ignored him. Elizabeth pulled harder on Lucky’s rope. Gogo grabbed his limp cock. Kurba! Polizi mi ga! Rue du Coq d’Or. A chain of adamantine screams rang down Bourke Street from the Salvation Army shelter. God was a shout, said Stephen Dedalus. Sour reek of garbage truck. “What is the time?” implored Estragon. Hallem shrugged. Beckett inserted some jape about temporal incohesion at this point then shifted to abstract profundity. Once there was a plot. Time was allocated to each chapter. To each page, certain lines. In each line, a code. Now I can’t even be bothered looking at the message on my palm. They all shrugged. “About Ten,” yelled Hallem backwards. A window was flung open mid-storey. Kathy Drayton leaned over the kitchen sink to watch the scene below. A police car cruised past. Kinsela’s funeral parlor threw off a copper glow. Hoary yellow eyes. Suddenly, Gogo yelled (without guish): “[SELF-APPARENT].” Elizabeth stopped outside Serafim’s Pharmacy. Inside, the Duty Chemist was watching a portable television at the counter.

(13) HESED SHEL EMET

“Will you go back to the news stand and buy me some smokes,” asked Elizabeth. “I left my handbag at the gallery.” To quibble with the keep would seem unchivalrous. The keystone of Ulysses is Bloom’s acts of unrequi(r/t)ed kindness, especially towards Stephen Dedalus. His dead son is made living again via these performances.

LESTRYGONIANS

Elizabeth walked to Campbell Street. She entered the restaurant. She was hustled to her seat by the maitre d’hotel. INSERT DESCRIPTION OF ROOM & DINERS. Note that Proust continuously updates the social hierarchy of this type of place at Balbec to reflect the changing status of guests over time. Explore the same shifts in microcosmic form. Supplejack UP. Hallem DOWN. Fuller DOWN due to the absence of READ. Clustering of wealth. Each guest must correspond to a different food-type (eg. Fuller’s pupils were clouded like poached cod). The clock tolled ten. See comment on Proust’s cavalier approach to TIEM below. Tom Hallem observed the dining table through the clean restaurant screen as if it was a backlit aquarium constructed in a television set. Explain the composition of this image. Most of the scenery is arranged along the bottom edge like pebbles and toys. There is a dark gap at the centre of the picture. Staff undertake asymmetrical, repetitive paths through space like tropical fish. INSERT TABLE CONFIGURATION.

Tom Hallem entered the restaurant and approached the table. There were two vacant seats: one at the centre of the party; the other in the far corner. He shimmied towards his chair. Elizabeth tore a French stick. Crust sparks. She spread a lenient butterball over its comb and buried it under a thick coat of French Brie. A light bulb blew.

NELSON’S COCK

Slut Harolde took the opportunity to caress Tom’s knee. SHIFT TO LATER. [INSERT ALLEGORY] The waiter was told to replace the broken bulb. He obeyed. Tom did not demur. He knew that Nelson would complain if he did not comply. Then he might get beaten. Maybe even have to suck on Nelson’s beery old balls again. LINK TO BARON CHARLUS. Note Proust’s careless concern for temporal consistency. The waiter ascended the three rungs of the step-ladder unsteadily. They creaked. He reached the apex. A dishwasher wearing soggy brown Blundstone boots came into the restaurant to secure his ascent. The crowd gasped. Two big-boned matrons were busily working their way through a bowl of cherries near the entrance (TABLE 1). They splat bluddied pips into a mound on the checked tablecloth. Their faces rose each time the door opened. Nurse Kearns sucked an imported French snail out of its shell. Lady McCabe took a spoonful of aspic, exposing the cloven-hoof of a pig’s trotter. LINK TO SYMBOL. Ophelia’s hocks embedded in the frozen waters of the River Traun. See table-configuration diagram. It was enough to make Bruckner roll in his grave on top of some young virgin. Swann bouncing on a chamber-maid in his carriage in the Bois de Boulogne. Link to Shanghai Dog. Both sex predators. Connect to incidents in youth. Examine ethics. Old Gogg used to tell anyone who listened that Pâté was just a Wog word for Peck’s Paste. Tick examined the picket-fence couple at TABLE 6. They were consuming identical plates of burnt lamb chops like Haig and his chinless cavaliers chewing through Australian boys in mud. Nelson had completely lost interest in this scene by now. We should call another summit, Bloo M/D ejaculated like some Byronic crow uttering news grabs on Delphi. The whole thing is such a bore, responded Merlin like thin-lipped Lady Verdurin. He had started sweating. His belt tightened another notch. Time slowed. The broken bulb was still wire-hot. The waiter unscrewed it with a damp cloth. It induced a phlegmatic odor. He extracted some dead filament with his fingers and gouged the new bulb into its shit-metal batten bluntly. Proud and unseeing. It spat sudden light. He reared. Turn off the switch, said Tick disgusted. This whole sub-section is a strained metaphor for Australian politics in the 1980s, just like the scene @ Nelson’s Column in Ulysses. A new party arrived. They were studying the menu like it was some kind of Akasic record. It must be that late-night sitting of aesthetes, he pondered. The waiter got down from his perch. I’ll humor them with some Vaudeville and Wagner, he thought. That’ll keep them purring. He jammed TABLES 2, 3 & 4 together. TBH I should restructure the whole room. Amalgamate with the place next door. Make one big chowhouse. Nelson was leaning over two rank-and-file members, ogling their ample consensuss. FRISKY FRUMPS TRICK BOSS! Read the headline. Tick watched this tableau with the perceptive eye of a French timepiece collector. He realised that he would have to stop Nelson’s clock someday. That block would never set down willingly. Except on top of a blonde.

BACKFIRING BARBS LAND BARD IN BOTHER

“Fraser never possessed … moral authority,” yelled Slut Harolde at bad acoustics.

“His Country Party mates always made him fold,” added Bloo M/D baring worn teeth. Red wine circulated in his mouth agape. A grouper.

“Nixon, Anthony and Sinclair,” added The Collector wisely counting down on swollen stalks. Elizabeth licked sharp residue from a gleaming oyster shell. Tom placed the cigarette box in front of her and continued towards the corner. Passionebb. Wilde’s marble chair in a cirque of fantastic rocks. Lust rising/waning with lunar charts. A stiff breeze against your cheek. Sucked back to open sea. Pissbrine. He bumped a black ledge rattling coarse pottery as he sat. It shuddered and ceased. Levin. A moment falling. Too deep. The fold-up chair barely contained his broad body-span. He gripped a warped frame. Odysseus appeared taller when he sat. Tom seemed to spread like a spider. The surface of his seat had oxidised almost to rust. Fingerprints gritty like paprika. Ochre pigment. The stuff that Lang Hackett made his fortune out of. When iron meets water it tastes like blood. A ship’s bow run aground. Crevice in mud. The waiter lit a mosquito coil. Most melodious music emerged from a speaker.

“Seventy-five and seventy-seven were both votes against Gough. Not votes FOR the Squire of Nareen,” said Bloo M/D.

“Bill Hayden went close,” added Elizabeth.

“Then Hawke delivered the coup de grace to both of them,” said Merlin draining a bulb of pinot noir lustily. He tapped the table displaying the empty vessel.

“If my glass lies empty fill it. If the bottle is empty, replace it,” he instructed the waiter.

“Foreign Minister is a comfortable kind of exile,” concluded Slut Harolde.

“Yes indeed, Nelson. A very pleasant way to get blown off the map,” added The Collector sagaciously.

Represent politics in Australia through this exchange as uneven in its allegiances. Political loyalty not based on class. Usually utilitarian. Personality-driven like John Joyce re-Parnell. One of Proust’s single specified dates in LTP is the fall of McMahon in 1877, which sounded the death knell of the French aristocracy. Charles Swann bounces against the selvedge walls of French society: Combray IN; his wife OUT; Verdurin’s salon IN/OUT; coveting Jockey Club membership; always planning to finish that monograph on Vermeer (link to self); an example to the Protagonist of what not to become; a pimp procuring mid-level bureaucrats for his wife, Odette; a pariah dying of cancer. Like some construct of Deleuze and Guattari, he remains forever an outsider of the Within. Insert list of famous outcasts: Ovid Dante Voltaire Machiavelli Hugo Byron Shelley Wilde Orwell Joyce. Beckett also. Always Russians. Red then White then Wrong Red. Against despots they fled. Or to seek the well-spring of culture. Some made self-imposed breaks like Joyce. As punishment. As refugees. Never tell an Emperor his art is hanging out. Squish pudgy White Guelphs. Collateral damage. Put outside like a dog or cat. Shakespeare’s tragic heroes all faced the prospect of expulsion as they contemplated action: Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Coriolanus. Even Romeo. Itinerant by disposition. None of them plain folk.

“He can make some pocket-money stuffing dope inside diplomatic bags like Slick Al.”

Polymestor cannibalising Priam’s gold. Thracian double-cross. Griffith crops. Air America. Coconut airways. Billy Capri turned the page. Aeneas was tearing stalks from the earth. Oxblood fouled the soil. Polydorus impaled on stakes. Dumped in a ditch. Covered in lime dust. They found Frank Nugan dead in his car outside Lithgow from a single gunshot wound to the temple with Colby’s card stuffed in his front coat pocket. The waiter tried to deliver Tom’s entrée. He declined. I will not eat with them tonight.

“I’ll take it,” said Merlin consuming a raw oyster from the floating plate greedily.

“He’s pouched that,” laughed Harolde gleefully.

Fuller turned to Tom.

“Miss Hackett spoke highly of your work,” he said.

“Which piece?”

“Your Speed Paintings.”

INSERT IMAGE ON WEBSITE. ADD PATERIAN DESCRIPTOR (Giaconda). Her head upon which all ends come et al. Older/younger than the rocks/lines she contemplates. Dead many times. Ox sinews. White cartilage. Bone. Brownsmere. Secrets of the grave. Over there, Jack. North Cemetery. Go to page 883. Surprise, surprise. A discarded handkerchief with gobs of bloody spittle parched in sun. Pancake cheeks. Sweat, sweet-varnished flesh. Consumptive glaze. Bug eyes wired unshut by amphetamines trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants. Tinge the eyelids and hands with Titanium. Peroxide hair blown into an arrow by gusts. Smirking Pierrot. The gulf between image and viewer is always receding from the moment of first contact. A flash that fades. Sublime. The mind moves on, dragging the reluctant eye. The image lives only within any imprint it has moulded inside the changing lineaments of the brain. Achilles glanced at his shield nonchalantly. Sunglare hid. It allowed him to dissemble. A perpetual life like the Gods would elude him. Even 10,000 experiences were still too short. All his mother ever did was remind him of his brief mortal span. He ate-up Trojans as a result / out of despair / at his own predicament / a gluttony machine wrought upon by all modes of life. Courage seemed to spur his sick appetite. All were brave. Always honourable men. Fearful yet fearless in facing Achilles. Cognisant of death’s cert. Until by the worst-flawed Trojan he was aced. The arrow is a coward’s weapon. A paintbrush. To die with your back turned to the canvas. Helen was a swan’s child. Achilles was Lestrygonian. Also, a kind of Cyclops. He refused to cognise or collaborate freely. Odysseus registered the fact that Achilles had no commonality with mankind and no identification with home. That he was too much God, too little man. It must have reminded Odysseus to stay BASE HUMAN. Only when he regained Ithaca, did he finally act like Achilles. The slaughter of the suitors was Odysseus’ mimicry of a great warrior. It was a reductive version really as he did not confront great soldiers but only slobs and boys. It was a debasing act. It condemned him to exile. To be blown out of Ithaca for good. Out of the convex bowl of known places.

WHAT LIGHT IS THAT THROUGH WHAT?

“What do you know about that woman,” asked Tom of Merlin.

“Her father is a big wheel in Perth. Hawkie just paid two bricks for his boat. She controls a couple of Family Trusts. Elizabeth wants to become her Lavender Boss.”

“She’s no Edie-doll,” Slut Harolde lowed in retort.

“Not glam at all,” answered Merlin.

“But very well-minted, you say?”

“Even by Elizabeth’s standards. She’s been commissioned to put together a contemporary Australian art collection by her father. She took six works straight off the wall at Mori last week. Plus, all Matt’s unsold fragments. She’s negotiating with Elizabeth to acquire a major new series of paintings by Read.”

“A harbour series?” asked Tom.

“So I believe,” replied The Slut.

PROTEUS

Tom Hallem sat silent. He observed Matt Supplejack working the table blithely. Alike in age and station yet not accomplishment like Edgar and Edmund or Richard Three. Even his workboots were worn politely. In both senses. A few strategic drops of white oil paint decorated the steel tips. He leaned closer to Calypso. Smooth roe. A long loose Viking arm wound around the back of her chair. She bent to defer. Her faint mane was tied in a Paisley scarf exposing a swan-meat neck. She wore a tired profile. Taut cheeks. Sharp incisors. A bladder full and lofty. Too close he came and blinked. She hovered like a dragonfly unable to pull back or progress.

ONE-FOOTED LAD WINS TRIP OF LIFETIME

The first course was cleared. Elizabeth stood.

“We had a great show tonight,” she said. “A successful end to a successful year. We’ve also received some good news today. I will ask Harolde to make the announcement.”

“Thanks Elizabeth. It has been an outstanding year for EA Times. You have built the premier roster of young artists in Australia. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say. For the first time, an Australian artist has been selected to exhibit at GEAR – the prestigious Global Emerging Artists Show – in Paris. It coincides with the Paris Biennale in April. This artist has beaten competition from all the major private galleries throughout Australia. He is EA’s best and brightest … Matthew Supplejack.”

Applause. Lights. Matt’s handsome face glowed. His name blazed forth in light. Tom Hallem was cleft. Paris as to Hector. He is wearing my cloak. Pockets full of my coins. His now to spend.

A PASSAGE THROUGH THE WORKS

Tom Hallem waited for the appropriate moment to exit. The most gloomy and repugnant jealousy harassed his vitals. He shuffled silently around the other diners. They swayed like bull rushes to let him pass. He broke towards the kitchen. Bloom in the print shop. The Lestrygonians seemed like wonderful hosts until their leader, who is described by Homer as “huge as a mountain crag,” lured Odysseus into an ambush and tried to consume his crew. A kitchenhand was dicing a long bunch of fresh shallots. He turned bloodshot eyes. Refugee of Black July. Send savings home to the Tigers. The British East India Company had coolies in Ceylon growing opium for export to China. Re-balanced the trade defecit. A massive chef was leaking fat droplets of sweat onto the gas plate. Hungarian émigré. He adjusted his thinning pate. A long, wet moustache sliced the corners of his mouth. Hephaestus likewise wiped his face with a dirty apron. Unblemished hecatombs passed from his blade. He was surprised by the Argive ship. It caused him to pause in segmenting a flank of beef. Rip! He extracted the limp eye fillet. Gas jets gleamed. He sliced tendon from muscle. Béarnaise sauce bubbled in a pan. I not partaking thereof. Bitumen gravy. Hallem passed through the kitchen. Achaeans fleeing not scatheless give them all a dart. INSERT ALLEGORY. Elizabeth Archer followed Tom Hallem into the courtyard. Hessian sacks of rotting carrots and Brussel sprouts were slumped in a disused laundry. Hallem sat down on a canvas bag of used tablecloths. When they arrive at Eccles Street, Bloom has lost his key. He jumps over a dwarf fence bracing for the fall. He is five feet nine and eleven stone four moving at 32 feet per second. Elizabeth touched him – not directly – through a ceasefire of tangled hair. Bloom gains entry to the kitchen via the scullery. His greasy black-mop tick-tocked around her fingers. High flame burst from oil circulating in an iron pan. The cook lay down the fillet to sear. Tom faced concrete. Turn up a scorched face. Press my mouth against Chaim’s soft flakes. He waited for Elizabeth to speak. Bloom removes his boots before padding upstairs to open the front door. Stephen watches a weak lamp increase in a semicircular fan. He has waited four minutes in total. This is the LAST TIME Elizabeth and Tom interact in the novel. Bloom appears hatless. She drew a milk crate to his hearth. Like Joyce, she wanted to explain the circumstances of their current predicament without sentiment. His strategy of deferral is to fill the narrative at Eccles Street with quotidian details like the purchase price of coal, chemical descriptions of heat and observations of clothes stiffening drily above. Like Stephen, Tom’s ruminations were personal at times. Elizabeth and Bloom stuck to trade facts.

“I know you’re disappointed. But I got the studio in Paris for you.”

“It’s second prize.”

“You couldn’t compete with Matt.”

“We’ve both had solo shows. We’ve been in the same group exhibitions. We’ve won the same prizes.”

“That was two years ago, Tom.”

“I’m better than him,” he mouthed through a strangled throat.

“Matt has developed rapidly in the last eighteen months. He’s prolific. His family is well-connected. You just don’t have the same clout.”

Mulligan can cook. He can drive a car. His poems get published. He’s studying medicine. He even saved a drowning man from surf. Dublin’s life-water. Note Bloom’s reflections on its power. Stephen is a dilettante in comparison. This was a clear retrospective self-evaluation by Joyce. He had not produced anything of genuine value as yet. Just a few slight lyrics, a paper for the Literary and Historical Society titled ‘Drama and Life’ and a rejected play titled A Brilliant Career. Also, some book reviews including his article on Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken for the Fortnightly Review, which bestowed on him some local fame, twelve guineas payment and a letter of appreciation from the author himself. He had also self-published an essay called “The Day of the Rabblement.” He spent the proceeds of his writing on a trip to London with his father in May 1900. This indicates that Joyce still thought charitably of his father. In London, he met William Archer, translator of Ibsen, who bought him lunch at the Royal Services Club. He became a crucial early supporter and perceptive critic.

“You should have warned me this was coming, Elizabeth.”

Yes. I could have done that, she thought. But I chose to say nothing. I let my need to strike back at you predominate. Why? You let me down, Tom. Your work has gone slack. Those Speed Paintings are an old art school theme from the late seventies. You’ve never … evolved since then. That recent seascape which Fuller liked so much is just a fluke. I think we agreed to call it “Ithaca from Space.” You have never been able to re-create its fast symmetry. By contrast, Matt Supplejack is stretching towards the finish post. He could become an artist with a global profile. He just needs the right wife. Be tactical but. Soothe Tom. Who knows what the future brings? Proust showed it is never wise to write off a young artist. See Bloch and Octave. A wash-out at golf. The Narrator says that Octave “could have easily been referring to his intellectual nullity.” Later, he writes a series of famous works that astonish M. Even Athena herself made errors of judgement. Asclepius, Bellerophon and Paris to name but three. Absences of insight. Wrong turns taken. The Osmond Marriage. Bewitched by Madame Merlin’s potions. Call it ingenuous. SEE HAMLET. Lear’s abdication. INSERT MORE BAD DECISIONS. Note that Ulysses is a manual about avoiding some. Also, lucky breaks. Stephen loses contact with Mulligan during the day. Bloom rescues him. He doesn’t get the Clap. Maggy can’t pawn his books. Bloom has the good fortune to be seated with Martin Cunningham. He avoids Boylan. Also, Martha Clifford. He isn’t caught masturbating in front of Gerty MacDowell. He helps a blind lad. He avoids the Lestrygonians and finds Davy Byrne’s pub. Alec Bannon manages to avoid her father overhearing his gossip about Milly. Simon Dedalus eventually finds solace late in the day in front of a sympathetic audience. Bloom secures coffee and buns to sober up Stephen. He gets into his home without a key. Stephen goes home. He gets into bed safely. Molly decides to stay.

“Come back into the restaurant, darling.”

Elizabeth Archer pulled at Tom Hallem. He rose.

ALL THE NEWS AS IT HAPPENS

NARRATOR: A gift of winds arrives (Aeolus = Southerly). Tom returns to the restaurant. Insert allusions to suitors. LINK TO HAMLET. Elizabeth = Gertrude in this scene. Hamlet’s prevarication. Buckling to Harolde’s will (AKA King Claudius). Bloom balances “Kill! Kill!” against “Yes” in this episode. Tom’s struggle is not ethical. Odysseus is roughly dismissed by Aeolus when he returns to Lipara. He still interprets Elizabeth’s support in noble terms. ANA ARRIVES. She observes Matt and Marion HACKETT in warm dialogue. Their bodies are close. Matt holds her gaze. Who knows what’s happening under the checked tablecloth? He makes no show of guilt when Ana walks into the restaurant. INSERT DIALOGUE. ANA EXITS (distressed). INSERT ALTERNATIVE HEADLINE. WHAT DID SHE KNOW? BY A. TROLLOPE. Tom Hallem follows immediately. As a result, he is denied sustenance. Slut Harolde and Merlin confer (“You should cancel his stipend,” said Merlin. “It’s too late,” replied Harolde. “We need to get him out of the way … for Lizzie’s sake,” he concluded). Tom and Ana are blown into Darlinghurst like Throwaways [“Elijah is Coming”]. He represents fake Stephen. Also, there have been a sequence of false father figures in this chapter. Leon is the REAL BLOOM. Insert the following scene: Tom sees a light in Billy’s apartment on the second floor of Royal Court (R&J parody). A shadow moves across elongated kitchen windows. He believes it is his brother. In fact, it is O poisoning cockroaches (insert allusion to F’s voyeurism of Madame A). He rings the front door bell. There is no answer. A face appears at a filthy flyscreen. It is Stan the caretaker. He tells him to clear off (like Aeolus). Tom walks up Foley Lane behind the facades of busy Oxford Street. He looks left. He glimpses a shadowy figure entering the Astoria Hotel. He is not aware it is Leon Daniel (see page 51). He crosses Bourke Street towards Darlinghurst Courthouse. Link back to motion in GODOT (back/forward – outside – trapped – stasis). Suddenly, he has a negative epiphany. Tom Hallem realises he has NO HOME (“where can I go? Back to Mother?”). This instant has been termed a Prophany by Hagen von Eitzen. B. Clay Shannon suggests that, as epiphany “seems to refer to a good sound (epiphone),” therefore, “the opposite [would] be a bad sound.” He proposes, “apiphany? Antipiphany? Malpiphany*?” as coinages (see english.stackexchange.com/questions/187658/what-is-the-opposite-of-an-epiphany). The use of internet links is like sampling.

(21) NOT LIKE LAERTES NOR HAMLET EITHER

Tom Hallem left the restaurant. A Ghost urged him on. Wither wilt thou lead me. A retinue of homeless people fuelled a bonfire in the back lane. The filings of a lounge chair burned frightfully; tarring its complicated wire skeleton. Dido gouged her guts as she entered the pyre. They asked Tom for alms. Odysseus tossed them some tarnished coppers as he spiralled down the deck. The crew mumbled grudgingly that he was hoarding all the tribute. They sucked on sucked-out bones. Gogo bit into a coin which was hard as raw pear. It bent quickly then cruel. He tossed it over his shoulder with disgust. Ana’s figure receded down the bleak slope. Maw. Telepylos. Chased by Lestrygonians. She turned into Crown Street. Tom pursued her. Wind through the slope. Arch into a bend. Gather speed. A pack of giants rumbled behind him. Oafs throwing rocks. The horizon was black. All the ships in Sydney Harbour had been destroyed. Only Odysseus’s own ship escaped the tempest. Bloom was hungry and depressed during this episode. Eating; digestion; excretion; disgusting habits; city as maw; Irish civilisation eating its own; Boylan as a cannibal – this is the list of alimentary themes in Lestrygonians. Also, adultery (copulation of two flies; music from Don Giovanni inter alia). Escape is the climactic motif.

(22) FX: STORM. ANIMALS. CREATION. A CRISP APPLE GETS BIT. EXPULSION. MUD.

POZZO: Thunder slogged that night. Rain streamed down my face like purified piss. God waded into the Garden and moulded us into one entity. We were named. I was now ADAM. A signified. Surrounded by a wall with no way in, no way out (not even Jesus yet) nothing but sheer barrier. No part of me was allowed to remain uncatalogued; undisclosed. My chest was ripped open in dreams. Link to Tom’s heart procedures during the next decade. When I woke up next morning, Eve was slumbering against the slot where one of my ribs had nestled. Taboos were founded. Next thing you know, I was naked. It was 1986. We were ejected (relocated to MELB). Eden is a place to which we can never return (Sydney). We drove up and down Hoddle Street on scoring missions. Like the Hydra, I was not allowed to die. A sequence of operations culminated in a full transplant. Each time I was decapitated, two fresh heads sprang out of my bloody gush like birth. Cain then Abel then Ham and his descendants mustered and bred. I’m a Babel made up entirely of eyes and nouns. I don’t know how to pledge obeisance. Or to whom. Insert allusion to Sadosanct (see Chapter 6). [PAUSE] I had no choice at all but to go on. On Pig! {HE WHIPS LUCKY AKA WILLY THE PIMP. EXEUNT}. “Molloy” ends with the narrator claiming that he was coerced into writing this report. He questions whether he enjoys more freedom in his current state than previous conditions. He registers ignorance as to the answer. His final statement is ominous, not one of hope: “I shall learn.” He returns to narrative normalcy. He goes back inside the house and starts writing. It is a typical time for such an activity: midnight. Time’s passage is registered by rain. Six words later, midnight has passed. The final sentence is, “It was not raining.” At the end of Malone Dies, the narrator cites Lemuel, a substitute for Abraham, and a clear model for The Unbowelable in C6, by recourse to repetition, the thud of the same words, “with it,” over and over again in ironic counterpoint to the absence of any act, normally this device would be used to emphasise the recurrent smashing of a weapon on a crumbling skull, before language collapses into repeat words like light, never, anything, and there before the last illiterate coinage, ‘nore.’ As we have already noted, The Unnameable, which closes Trilogy, stands as the ultimate rejoinder and successor to Ulysses. There is no need to restate the one hundred and one words of the last two sentences. Only that words must go on being said like Master Edmund proclaimed in C5, E2. The final act of what passes for the imagination is to visualise being placed at the threshold of ‘my story’. The gate opens and the narrator must go out, moving through miscellaneous arenas to exit. ‘Surprise’ is expressed at this prospect but that is disingenuous. He knows only too well that it will be the same old (x2). The last sentence expresses ignorance, incredulity, inaudibility, compulsion to dromology, false protestations of incapacity then ultimate acquiescence to physical and by extension spiritual motion. Nothing has happened so there can’t be an aftermath or denouement like when Shakespeare selects his new world order at the end of each tragedy.

“LORD, YOU SQUAT AND THE SKY YOUR CUNTLIPS BURY ME” – G.M. Hopkins

Shanghai Dog was on his way back home with good intentions when he was diverted by a text message. This is consistent with both Homer and Joyce, although the Odyssey always transfers negative causation to Odysseus’ crew. Stephen Dedalus could blame alcohol. There is no direct correlation between Ginger and any character in either of these classic works that bookend western scholarship. She is somewhat like Circe. Sometimes she reminds me of unlucky Andromache or disabused Clytemnestra. Even Dido or Briseis. There are gods in the Classics who perform this ritual. Disappointing the audience’s vain hopes is a hackneyed device pretty much dominant in this genre. There was an element of damage in Ginger that recalled Calypso, Dido, Helen at Troy or even Emma Bovary. I don’t think this type of female character really existed between the Classical period and the twentieth century, except in romps like Moll Flanders. INSERT OTHER EXAMPLES FROM THE CENSOR’S LIBRARY. Woolf never got near one. Lawrence was too idealising. The Americans had a crack. Hemingway made it happen in Fiesta. H. Miller a bit also. But they were both more interested in writing about men. Fitzgerald specialised in this type of ribald patrician woman. He nailed the characterisation in TGG. Ginger was a foul-mouthed Black Country MILF always high on blow and bubbles. She is one of those inconsequential characters that enters and departs Ulysses quickly. Maybe to perform a small plot service for the author. Occasionally for specious reasons. Sometimes as part of a kind of Naturalist slideshow to demonstrate the random connections of life. In Proust, she would reappear hundreds of pages in the future with changes to her physiology and status imbued with temporal significance. Her Home Counties husband had relocated his heraldic accessories plant to Suzhou last year. He took the kids and put them in the Australian school. Cut off her credit cards. Tried to keep her out of the way with logistical barriers. This corresponds to what Elizabeth Archer did to Tom Hallem after the end of this text. There are echoes of Shanghai Dog’s own circumstances also. She is a parable of what could have happened to O if she stayed in China. I was leaning on the main bar watching Judy. She went about her tasks methodically. Hemingway’s works are filled with male characters in thrall to this type of dominatrix. The formula is: female maybe love (redux?) > male: all along > Her: I want to ruin you > Him: go right ahead > various computations > ambivalent close in physical proximity. Despite the clever word-play and references to Peel in the title, I instinctively interpret Farewell to Arms as another joke about emasculation. This seems reasonable given Hemingway’s use of literal and figurative castration in Fiesta. Link to Bobby Horne stepping on a claymore in C3. In Shakespeare, Othello is the closest approximation to this type of broken-down infatuation (R&J is ALL MUTUAL ASSURANCE). Dickens had a crack at it in GE. Shanghai Dog couldn’t get the taste of what Mary Evans calls Ju Di’s ‘gossamer web’ out of his mouth. INSERT “Just Like Honey” starting on the sound system at Glamour Bar. The rays from his blue and her dark orbs met. There was the lightest change, the faintest tremor, on Shanghai Dog’s cheek and top lip. Her face by contrast was Sphinx-like. She had never been one for external utterance, even in the throes of orgasm. She just gasped a few times and scratched his hair as his mouth serviced her. Flaubert provides a typically distorted lens for this kind of fixation in Sentimental Ed. Suddenly, Shredded Ginger lent into my face and grabbed my cheek with a big Birmingham mitt, breathing saccharine drops of Long Island Ice Tea.

SETTING A MAN STRAIGHT

Shredded Ginger

[Pressing an index finger into his chest] She doesn’t want you anymore, Billy. Stop looking at her like that. Face it, you blew your load. You got to move on. Stick with your new Chinese doctor lady. At least she’ll keep you in the manner accustomed. I only wish I had that option. But Chinese blokes have no panache. [Leaning against his ear. Her teeth pinch his lobe gently] Come here. Let’s see if we can make her jealous. [Shredded Ginger kisses Shanghai Dog on the mouth. It is warm and tart. She withdraws] You’re so … sweet, Billy. I’d marry you if you weren’t such a slut. [Slumping against the bar suddenly] I’ll never let Paul keep the kids. I’ll take them and go home to Britain. Move in with me mum. Get a job. I used to have a career before I came to China, you know.

SHANGHAI DOG

I know you did, Linda. I’m thinking of going back home myself.

Shredded Ginger

[Laughing] Good on you, son. Good on you. Go back to your fucking kids. Fix things up with your wife. She’s a good egg. Help me up. I need to pee.

[SD helps Shredded Ginger off a stool. She places a palm on his cheek. He pulls her into his arms so she remains upright. Judy passes them with a tray of cocktails]

Shredded Ginger

Where’s my bag?

SHANGHAI DOG

On the ground.

Shredded Ginger

[He bears her weight as she tries to drop to the floor] I want to get down in the muck.

SHANGHAI DOG

Don’t do that, Linda.

(Shanghai Dog lifts Shredded Ginger. He holds her under his shoulder as they walk to the unisex cubicles. He pulls open a door and presses her inside. The door remains ajar. Staff pass. Billy’s eyes adjust to darkness. Judy walks towards him empty-handed. He smiles insipidly and says HI. She ignores him. Shredded Ginger beckons.)

LANDFALLS

Hallem captured Ana by Taggarts Lane.

“What do you want,” she asked.

“Slow down,” he replied. “How was the band?”

“Where were you?”

“I never promised.”

“I still thought you’d come.”

“I had business.”

“Just like Matt.”

“I’m sorry. I fucked up. Come on. Let’s go to Frenchs. I’ll buy you a drink. Feedtime is playing.”

“I’m too tired,” said Ana.

“I can fix that,” he replied tapping his coat pocket. Elizabeth’s coke + Leer’s smack. Soap and potatoes. Charms. Chaim. Chasm. Dentures. Adhesive. Ana’s smile. Marooned upon.

“Say yes Ana.”

“OK,” she replied.

They walked towards Oxford Street.

“Matt was just playing the game back there.”

“Sure. He was sucking up to that rich girl. He’s always on the make.”

“He just won a big prize. He’s going to Paris.”

“Fuck that. He’s already full of himself. He’ll be impossible now.”

“At least you’ll get a free trip to Europe.”

“I won’t go.”

“Because of what happened back there?” he asked.

“No. I’m used to that. It’s part of the scene. I’ve just had enough. I’ll use it as an opportunity to leave him.”

God got a chisel. Made Matt. A beautiful man. I chose him for that reason. Silk mane like a lap dog. Pale bronze by bronze. Lean and long. Big lungs. Always warm like fresh tea. Tom was a boy by comparison. But now I could. Yes. I want to really. I must. Because he made me so angry when he didn’t come. Got to lose weight like Molly. They looked across the road. RED signal. Wait.

FLASHBACKS

Ana Lafei stood outside the Sydney Musicians Club in a black cocktail dress. Black ringlets coiled at the edge of her heart-shaped face. Charred mascara marred her cheeks like the scribble on some Arnulf Rainer drawing. She made one last inspection of Chalmers Street looking north through a paperbark screen towards Central Station and went back inside the venue. The band started suddenly. Slag off this dirt that bore me, she heard the Singer croon into the microphone as she progressed down a sharply-lit corridor. The reviewer from ON THE STREET (Sydney’s only free rock paper!) transcribed the lyrics into a small spiral notebook. Mountains of glory … you are DIRTY, penned Scribbler (his emphasis). In writing about pop music, the rock journalist has a limited palette of options: (1) to describe the prevailing atmosphere, (2) register personal impact, (3) observe audience response, (4) place new work in the context of old work, (5) reference third-party songs as precedents, and/or (6) record the words of unreleased stuff. ADOPT THIS STYLE NOW. It’s a job like what Gurnemanz told Parsifal at the grail-castle: “you see, my son, here space (sound) changes to time (copy)” (Wagner, WWV111, 1882). DOY-TEE trailed into hiatus as Ana pushed open the bone-coloured fire doors. The whole damp muck of today’s gale got jammed down that shaft in this gravid moment like a blind fix of adrenaline. Thud. The bass player plucked a bottom E string once and let it resound. One tan cowboy boot was planted on a foldback. He threw back his head and gaped. A whale’s maw. She entered. The hall was not full. He thrust his pelvis and raised the instrument’s elongated neck. Achilles with Polyxena. Ana slipped in front of the last row of observers. He straightened and stared. Make a stroke with a bow. The stage lighting went red. His gaze engaged Ana, stripped of all artifice. She knew the Cohen cover. Four songs by BP. A clutch of new stuff. Last night, we witnessed a well-modulated set from a seasoned performer. “Now you want to see me dance / But I’m too fucked-up to dance for you,” was his jibe to devoted fans at the start of the last song. Ana tried to pick out words. Scribbler took up his favoured position beside the mixer’s desk. He commenced the set with “Wholesale Cigarettes” followed by a new song called “Hey Caesar.” Scribbler held his notebook against the stifled light of the console and wrote: HE SAID, ‘I WANT LOVE / SO I WILL GET OUT MY GUN.’ He has left the edgy pop-punk of the early Eighties far behind (to this reviewer’s great disappointment!). His new band authentically recreates the Ubu-esque mayhem of the epic Vault EP of 1983. Use quote marks inconsistently. “Well I can twirl it in my mouth / Make my hands go clockwise,” the Singer bawled. The crowd wobbled forwards. I can turn it in the sky / Shape the clouds to my design. Fishpump crashed to the floor as AMYL kicked-in. Hail Caesar! Ratatattat-ta-tat-tat, chattered Barry Adamson echoing Rowland Howard’s classic guitar sound on “Fears of Gun.” The Singer marked out his territory on stage, prowling left-right like some caged dingo before an enthusiastic yet somewhat disappointing audience. Link image to Odysseus. This brooding gig only occasionally rose to the confrontational mood on his last tour of Australia. A slim book was thrown onstage. He stooped to collect it. Psalms and Scatology (Dirty Ditties), the title read. He placed it on an amplifier gently (note: metaphor for Telemachus). It was great to hear “The Hill” again for the first time since the legendary Governor’s Pleasure show of 1980. He brought a derivative New Wave anthem right up-to-date for the mid-Eighties. Ten trees and a cow. Twenty years absent. How many chickens can we count? A tractor and a windmill up there. Big flies buzzing. Red wheelbarrow upon which so much depends. This song evokes the Gothic torpor and hate of Australian country towns. Next, the band lurched into a new offering. “I killed King Cockroach!” exclaimed the Singer. Cut off his head when he was down on his knees. Upsurging voice: You know, I killed him! AND HE WAS KING! I killed him I killed him I killed him I killed him. More links between murder and female debasement followed. Well you’re living in a garbage heap / But you’re sweet when I come and it’s safe for you. This song gave Medon, Melbourne’s latest wunderkind, the first chance to showcase his unique St Kilda-in-the-Delta sound for a Sydney audience. The bass undulated like a sea-sick boat. Behind the drums, multi-instrumentalist, Dave Paine, drove the melody with a typically inventive drum pattern. RAT DISSECTION COMMENCED. Mott clicked his shutter furiously from the dance floor. I got an infection, wrote Scribbler. Ana was distracted by Stinkbug. He was looking for Jackie. Lost my will, continued Singer. She pointed towards the band room door. A plain pine sheet. Guts of cardboard ribbons. A barrier in name only. Cheap brown plastic knob. “They opened me up [PAUSE] I’m raw and bleeding,” he complained in mock-shock. This song contains clear parallels with the Biblical story of Isaac, deduced Scribbler. Ana observed new artwork on the back of his leather jacket. Lubricated Goat, it read. Capri comes from the Italian word, Capra, meaning goat. Yung mulebludd (see C4). Tom’s cousin. They killed you-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ended Singer. Spams tested the lock. It resisted. He was sealed in the hall like the other suitors. Link to Book XXII of the Odyssey. The Singer sped into the B-side of his latest single. CONNECT TO ANA. Baby’s rushing to the place where her heart bore bubbles / And she’s crawling to the place where her lover swore / There is true love in this world / But not for her / Here blood filled her eyes / And she bled tears of scarlet / Thin tears of scarlet (x3) / Down lilywhite cheeks. Morg(ue)ana picked at some dry eyeliner. Today in summary: early shift; collected Tom; tried to get him to score on my behalf; visited Matt (yuk); soundcheck; laksa; performance. Next: dinner in Darlinghurst. Mott emptied his Nikon F3, shoved the used cartridge into the side-pocket of his denim jacket, threaded a fresh 36-negative roll of Agfachrome onto the spool swiftly and shut the back of the camera. Link to Philoetius (arming his master’s quiver). Odysseus made tall by Athena. V1: He wears the lizard frills. Tralalalala! Rachel going NING seven times (see C6). His voice rose to tuneless breaking-point. Clint Walker twirled a side-lever. He picked at dried batter from his day-job at Pancakes and whispered to Coupe, who grinned. His mouth presents a warm tone, thought Ana. BARON FUN ended. The band all lit cigarettes. Coupe collected a few lines in his head for a Sun Herald review that he could regurgitate as a puff-piece in Dolly. LINK TO LEER/TOM/FIX: “Then Odysseus took a handful of curls / And jerked back her soft white head / And he told his own son / To put an end to her life / So, Odysseus’ boy took the carving knife / And he sliced it right across her clean wide neck / And blood gushed forth like brine off a deck.” Scribbler skulled a Bourbon and Coke. The gig had gone almost one hour. He was bored. Ana shuffled between some men to get closer to the stage. This is the end, announced the Singer. A jerky lick followed. SOME VERSES. A BRIDGE: note hover/vultures/junkies et al. (see C6 + Appendix A). INSERT CHORUS. You ought to see me move / In my blue suede shoes. The Singer rushed the next phrase. Scribbler smiled knowingly. Hoping other people would notice. Repeat. It was Johnny Cash who told Carl Perkins to write that song. Airmen in Germany tagged their regulation boots thus. Girl treading on her boyfriend’s toes at a barn dance. Don’t step on my suedes, he spat. Perkins started with an A chord. Wrote it down on a brown paper sack. Couldn’t spell SWADE but. You ought to see me move (x3). Pause. Repeat. SHORT SILENCE. For all time, he said quietly. END. The band left the stage. Applause surged and ebbed. Sporadic whoops. Ana scratched old track marks. The crowd hung-on. There was still some chance of an encore until the fluorescent lights were triggered by management. After a few minutes, the showman ambled back onstage. Cigarette and microphone shared his right hand. He sat at a small electric piano and started playing slow chords. Alone. Who’ll build a box for Black Paul, he asked? The ballad of an unclaimed, unwanted corpse. The characters in this song grow increasingly frustrated as they are each forced by the narrator to explain why Paul’s body has been rejected. Basically, he was a bad man they eventually confess. Link to Don Cane. “This new story-song ballad is one of his greatest works until the last verse, wrote Scribbler imbibing Milkmaid’s lectures, when the victim himself adds a closing monologue that descends into bathos not worthy of this great artist. As Pope said, ‘A needless Alexandrine ends the song, that, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.’” SHIFT FROM JOURNALESE TO PERSONAL SUBJECT MATTER. I opened our father’s final will and testament. I had been nominated executor. There was no one else left, I guess. Richie got his savings. It was enough to buy a small house in Bulacan. He had already sold the big house to pay for his place at the hospice. I gave her the accommodation bond as well. He embraced the Lord at the end, she said, like Beckett’s POZZO. I surveyed his room. The view of a car park was impeded by twisted aluminium bars. There were no ornaments on the mantelpiece. No pictures on the wall. He didn’t horde souvenirs. He always ran. Destroying each trail as he left. I sat down on his bed with a picnic basket of pictures. Really just “BEFORE NOT AFTER” shots. My mother destroyed every picture of him when she married Bob. Penelope Hallem kept a single 4 x 3-inch print. I am holding it in my hands now. My father has been caught smiling, unaware of the camera. His broad skull is accentuated by a fresh crew cut. His lips are full of laughter. I turn it over to see if there is any inscription. On the back, it reads: “Donny, April 1962.” I had already been conceived by this date. Tom was almost born. Our father was about to bail out of Sydney. His face registers no sign of torment. I place the print back in an unmarked envelope, separated from the rest of my keepsakes and, by proxy, my soul. It will soon get lost again amongst the dog-eared warranties, expired insurance policies and old tax returns that are piled at the bottom of my filing cabinet. It will disappear for years only to re-emerge at inconvenient moments like lost dignity. Suddenly, his face will sneer across the camera lens gaily. I never knew him careless like that. This misprision shocks me into re-examining our time together. It only takes this single image to reprise my loathing. And it only takes its withdrawal to put him away. I burned all Tom’s rubbish in the fireplace one pent winter night as I sloshed my way through a bottle of Ouzo listening to old vinyl. Everything I could get my hands on expired that night. Next morning, I brushed the soot and unburnt flakes out of the grate, wrapt them in broadsheet newspaper and deposited the package in a council bin. “That’s that,” I thought to myself. Yes, it was a pyre but not in the way I anticipated. See Chapter One. Like Samson, its severance denudes me somewhat. Recently, I found a print of Francine and Tom smoking cigarettes in Schoeneberg. It was taken just before I came home to Australia. We all knew by then that Ana was gone. She was bound tightly like Thetis but not for the same purpose. Smack and coke work against each other like shape-shifting bonds. Flame, water, lioness, serpent. Futile death throes. Achilles was a rape-child. As a parent, I can empathise with her desire to chance any remedy. She burned off Achilles’ mortality in the fireplace each night and anointed his charred, blistered corpse with ambrosia every dawn (comparisons above). Next, she tried dipping him in Styx. Ana was unfortunate with liquid like Elaine and Ophelia. Fill your pockets with sixteen stones and jump into the Ouse like Virginia Woolf. Joyce’s wading girl in Portrait. Skirt hitched. Making eye contact with Stephen. Just once was enough. Insert water and bird imagery. PROFANE (not holy) JOY. Dear Monseigneur, wrote SD, I can no longer become a seminarian due to a recent epiphany, signed Neophyte. A muse empowering Stephen to Art. Hard to work out if Joyce was being ironic. NotatthetimeIguess. In retrospect, he learned from PAYM. He cauterises all heroic symbols in Ulysses. Emulate.

A TECHNICAL CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

The band withdraw from the banquet hall quickly. END. Four at the threshold against many warriors. Odysseus took centre stage. The first one to fall was Eurymachus then Amphinomus and Demoptolemus. Melanthius was left hanging in agony like a beast. Telemachus killed Euryades, Elatus and Peisander. He was wounded by Amphimedon on the wrist. His father hit Eurydamas. Telemachus took his revenge on Amphimedon. The cowherd and swineherd joined the fray. Odysseus gored Agelaus, son of Damastor, with his long spear. Telemachus stabbed Leocritus in the flank. He tumbled off stage. Leodes grovelled before King Odysseus for a few lines. He was dispatched with Agelaus’ sword clean through the throat his head rolling in dust. Tmac got Leocritus. Only Phemius the lyrist and Medon the page were spared. Ana lifted a copy of the set-list gaffered to the central foldback. INSERT: Avalanche Swampland Pleasure Avalanche Saint Huck Mutiny in Heaven Wings off Flies Jennifer’s Veil From Her to Eternity | | A Box for Black Paul. She shoved it in her pocket where it would stay until she lay dead in The Lake. REPLACE N. CAVE WITH SIMULATIONS: 8 SONGS + ENCORE = Wholesale Cigarettes (L. Cohen) Hail Caesar! The Hill I Killed King Cockroach Rat Dissection Baron Fun Odysseus Blue Suede Shoes | | In Black Box. Ana vaulted over Fishpump to exit. He was giggling. Marshall stack was playing some sluggish SWANS dirge. Fuck God / All men / And fuck you too, Gira lowed. I don’t need you. And I’m not afraid of the sight of you down on your haunches. Looking uncomfortable. The form of this work comprises the following segments: Gods in Council = narrator’s deliberations in C1 prior to commencement of plot (link to Proust). C2–9 = TELEMACHIAD. MELBOURNE CUP DAY 1984 (Tuesday, 6 November). This corresponds to episodes in which Stephen Dedalus appears in Ulysses. C10 = Homeric order reinstated post-Ulysses. This is a portal to F(W)ake. Chapter Ten is a theoretical judgment on Joyce becoming intellectually lost after 1922. It offers an alternative path for the Novel. C11 = ironic wish fulfilment. Aftermath of TMAC. Insert aids to reader comprehension as per the following table (against chronology). Inset Gantt Chart C5. Also, C5 E19 insert list of NSW Governors including period of service. Maps of S/U-Bahn systems. Train timetable, NSW Countrylink. Also, Cityrail services, Monday–Friday (C10). List Don Cane’s record of service in Vietnam. Insert Character Sketch. DON CANE MUST BE LIKE ODYSSEUS – a true soldier with an unbelievable military career. Also, cunning (SEE BLACK OPS). IS DON TELLING THE TRUTH? He has done TOO MUCH for one man like some Classical warrior. NOTE: do not insert into main narrative (deflects from sons). AATTV. 1RAR. MACV. Vietnamisation. Bailed out in Seventy-Five via HK. SAS Regiment 2. TET68 (Saigon). PLEIKU: MIA. 1970 – last known information in Australian Army records. DANIEL BOONE SQUAD. Disruption of the HCM Trail in Cambodia. Spread Bitrex over Charlie’s rice. Gag a maggot. Can’t fly IN by helicopter but can be EXTRACTED. July 1969 – Operation Footboy. Psychops across the DMZ. Sacred Sword of the Patriots League. Le Loi, King Le Thai To. Magic sword taken by a turtle. Creation of Herb Weisshart (Deputy Head, MACV-SOG PSYOP). CIA ran the whole show in Laos. Armed Hmong tribesmen, headed by Vang Pao. INSERT INTO LIST OF FAKES/DECEPTIONS. LINK BACK TO ODYSSEUS (“that would have been his kind of stunt”). OP35 recon teams carried doctored AK-47 ammunition into Laos and Cambodia which they planted on dead NVA or scattered during contact (NVA always collected and re-used ammo). Specialists would disassemble AK-47 magazines, booby-trap them then reload the magazine so it was impossible to tell it had been tampered with. Bullets would explode on firing, killing or maiming the user. Or the AK47 would explode in their hands sending shrapnel everywhere. MACV regulation was broadcast over radio prohibiting use of enemy weapons.SOG planted a rumour that the Chinese were sending Hanoi sabotaged weapons. We fabricated a top-secret report and left it on a bar in Saigon where it was immediately stolen. INSERT INTO LIST OF FAKES/DECEPTIONS. LINK TO ODYSSEUS. Also, OP35 teams left booby-trapped radios and batteries on the HCM Trail. Also, offensive posters with small mines attached about the size of shoe polish can. When the NVA grunt ripped down the poster, it would explode and blow off his foot. Insert full list of catechisms used throughout the novel. Insert also list of newspaper headings, entire novel. Explain epigraphs: Tennyson introduces obsession with best friend’s death; McComb refers to blurred lines between fiction, biography and autobiography; Lyotard provides theoretical justification; Velvets links to loss of ethics. Each epigraph is a link in a chain. Cut to sequence of French theoreticians, C6. What comes after Modernist High Style (Joyce)? Beckett, nouveau roman, Gysin/Burroughs, relative journalism, Wolfe, popular music, Dylan, oulipo, deconstruction, postmodernism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, Chuck Palahniuk, internet drill-bits, slogans, band acronyms, rapping, hip hop, return to straightforward stories, technical fiction (link back to Epigraph 3).

DEMODOCUS’ SONG

Tom Hallem stared at the sky over Darlinghurst. A jaundiced Bondi moon was rising fat and fast on top of Taylor Square. The snaking Maroo Track became the route for South Head Road. This is a metaphor for Darlinghurst’s history. Insert key (i)tiems. Old Bodegas and grog shop licenses. Tilly Devine’s thirty brothels. Saint Martin’s Bar. Fishnet singlets. Men who called each other by actresses’ names. Parsing. Ivy’s Birdcage. Cap’s drag show. International Vanities. First Mardi Gras 1978. The Filth confiscated the leading float and diverted the parade down a dead-end off Darlinghurst Road where they bashed the pooftas in front of the 4 SEASONS FOOD BAR. Red wall paint. Took the rest of them back to Forbes Street. You could hear them crying in the cells. This did the opposite of what was intended. It brought on Wran’s decriminalisation law. Leon Daniel hailed a taxi at the top of Bourke Street. Stephen Joyce pulled to the kerb. Loop Gilligan’s Island past the Wall down Victoria Street then home. Homosexual acts are now legal in the State of New South Wales since the passage of the Crimes (Amendment) Act 1984. Private Members Bill by the Honourable George Petersen. He was a Wollongong Red out of commandos in the AIF. Called out the fix on Ananda Marga. ASIO special. Lapel cameras. Seary gone undercover on Queen Street, Newtown. Gay nightclubs down nondescript lanes or underneath speakeasies. Exchange Hotel. FLO’s Palace. Patches. Glass dance floor. Pandora’s Pies. Hotnsticky. Ruskin Pater Wilde Joyce. Rap of Chuck D on PRIDE. History Lesson Part II. Chicago blues plodding out the arse end of Xintiandi. Brown Sugar nightclub. Kokoh Conley. Take My Breath Baby. Constricted wind pipe. Shanghai Dog leant into the cubicle. Ginger had dropped onto her knees to vomit. TOP GUN. Vulcan’s trousers. Ana’s eyes were drawn to the soft emulsion exposed by rolling storm clouds over Woolloomooloo Bay. They watched its final eclipse together (insert symbiosis) like spindly twigs (insert nature poem). Lightning crackled over the city then severed. Oxford Hotel purling towards midnight. News stand flogging fags and mags. Tomorrow’s broadsheet. INSERT HEADLINE. A woman opens the gossip page. Art goddess Elizabeth Archer played Santa to Sydney’s culturascenti at the EAx Xmas show last night. Santa’s little helpers included impresario Richard Merlin and AGNSW supremo Edward Slut-Harolde (Bottom Right). Visiting British art critic Peter Fuller opened the show with a poke in the eye for the local art scene. Sales were brisk with proceeds to the Fred Hollows Foundation. Fishpump stood at a baine marie that blocked the entrance to the Tin Hong Chinese restaurant. A shop-girl ladled Mongolian Lamb onto a large bed of rice in a tin take-away bowl. The bright Laminex cubicles in King Burgers’ were half-full of punks slaughtering greasy buns. Weasel Bob waited for A BURGER WITH THE LOT. Crossing the summit of Palmer Street, Tom and Ana passed a row of dim shopfronts. Electrical Repairs. Spanish Delicatessen. Isenberg Tailors. A sign announcing Frenchs Tavern dropped out of the corrugated iron street awning. Hallem quickened his gait. Athena disguised as a serving girl was handing out condoms. She had a sandwich board chest-plate which said PREVENT AIDS. A security guard was barring gates of gold. The front doors were flanked by plaster dogs. Ana whispered. Mist production. They passed the gate unseen. A row of pear wine and pomegranate trees defined the bar. Band pictures lined the walls. Throw your arms around the legs of wise Arete. X. Solo shot of Steve Lucas. Mark from KELPIES. Me and Brian write the songs in our squat at fifty-one, Stanley Street. XL Capris. Nancy Serapax low behind drum kit. Kris Kross looking like Sid’s ocker mate. Home is where the floor starts. He was a domesticated gentleman really. Polly from the Reels held a fruit bat under his soiled lab coat. Bob was bearing handfuls of wine glasses to the kitchen and returning with baskets of hot chips. GOOSE in chinless profile with Suzy and Philip Clifford. Glass tankards hanging off cup hooks above the bar. Tom and Ana went straight downstairs. A sign behind the stage said:

(28) “LIVE MUSIC EVERY NIGHT”

Hallem hid on a stool in unclassified space behind the sound desk. Hazel and the Nut were squatting on a padlocked bar bench. Stilettos dragged garter straps. Slices of thigh. Their faces flickered at bright fountains of light from the stage. Gold statues. Torches. Alcinous beckoned. A woman approached Tom sideways.

“Could you spare a cigarette,” she asked holding up two fingers.

“Sorry, I don’t smoke.”

Her gaze dragged towards a patch of carpet swollen with beer. She scraped at a scrap of gaffer tape with sandals. Fine strawberry hair waved her face. She pivoted but stayed in close proximity to Hallem. An animation was being silently projected onto the tarred basement wall. Resonant of Leer’s safe room. CRUST, the movie title said. CUT TO OPENING SHOT. A suburban kitchen like Campsie. Spotted cement bench. Standing on the sticky perforated base of a steel-framed chair screw-points tickling my foot soles almost painfully. My grandmother held an aluminium pot before my mouth. I grasped it to drink cool tap water. Cold metal clanked on my teeth. Purls dampened the front of my loose cotton singlet (see Elizabeth, C2). Frayed cotton selvedge. Naked beneath. Sleek circumcised cock tumbling from my guts like a single quote mark. INSERT SAMPLE: ‘ Joyce called them perverted commas. Wouldn’t let them inside the gates of Ulysses. See Chapter One. Bruce Currie’s terrace in the Darlinghurst squats. I have been sick in that basin, realised Tom (se C1). Dry mouth. Get a lap of holy water. See Chapter Three. Insert crosscuts. Push-stop bodies clink CUT Two figures seated across a Laminex table CUT chicken-coop wire L CUT stalks of straw extruding from his gunmetal chest-plate INSERT NOTE Lancelot = Chesty Bond’s jawbone > bold bung Hamlet > prolepsis of Ana’s Speedball > death of Ophelia > an outsourced method of death > ethically ambiguous > Shakespeare’s tactic was never to make things clearCUT propeller-blades twirled rhythmically on the apex of Philippe’s iron face-mask. INSERT reference to Evinrude outboard motor (see C7). His companion’s eyes had been cut out of a gridiron skin J CUT a grumpy ant scours the scoured coastal cavity of a Choc Wheaten biscuit (link to racist nickname – C3) > Odysseus’ cave above surf > enter Calypso. Still it’s good tucker, the protagonist said. INSERT CREDITS. Story by John E. Hughes. Mixed by Barry Wolfson. Ana fuckt him to score, noted Tom Hallem. Music by Even Orchestra. Includes Polly Watkins. CROSSCUT. At that moment … INSERT FX: gaunt knuckles rap twice on O’s door.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Tom,” he replied.

“I’m Frances.”

“Do you like the bands?”

“Not really. I just come here to meet people.”

“Who do you know?”

“Mainly people from Perth.”

“Is that you’re hometown?”

She nodded. Teiresias’ prophecy. A people most prosperous. Lang Hancock’s red dust under John Glenn’s space. Most isolated city on earth. At the end, Odysseus had to sail there. Go to Thesprothia, commanded the Oracle. Don’t not pass GO. Find a crowd who have never seen a river. There is no Liffey draining out of the Kippure headbog. Build a desal plant. Tap brine. Post-Mnesterophonia voyage. Diem was a suitor. Marcos also. Extract America’s man in orbit. Four hundred kilometres upright. Gazing down from Olympus (see C1). Construct an astrolight off the Hills Hoist in the backyard at Applecross. Motes waving torches. Pine Gap. Smooth crust of apocalypse. Silent domes. Cyclops eyes. Hang onto a hung fleece grimly. Cold War vassal. Odysseus married Kallikein in one version of his tale post-Odyssey. Fought the Brygoi. Went back to Ithaca. Got himself slaughtered by Telegonus. I started out with the AATTV. Transferred to Phoenix. Spent some time with John Paul Vann. Australia always works well alongside a master. Crackt looking glass of servant. ANZACaliban. Vietnam was a sucker punch on the Yanks. Menzies laughed all the way to Konfrontasi.

“How long you been in Sydney?”

“Six months.”

“What do you do here?”

“Not much. I studied film in Perth.”

No lights now just seepage. SMACK OF JELLYFISH ended like an error. Jackie’s bass staggered on alone for a few notes. Illegible vocal. Patrick kicked at a mike stand and stepped off the front of the stage. Francine wandered off to cadge a cigarette. Tom watched her cross the floor like Emmanuelle Riva walking away in HMA. Her body lapped against a black singlet and a burgundy skirt. (INSERT, Suddenly,) Ana returned to him.

“Got my fix?”

“Yep. But I got to make it up.”

“On your way then,” she instructed.

Tom Hallem baulked. Francine returned to the edge of the compound. Ana pressed his arm. Sirens. feedtime’s pre-set mix began. Black snake crawling ’cross my bedroom floor blahblah. Criss-crossing Arete. A gamble. Nobody’s fault but mine. Poseidon’s produce. Suck seed. Wise to propitiate her. Athene instructs Odysseus to seek her protection. Bible in my arms. Tom and Ana stood in duet by proxy. Need someone on your bond. Unknown singer. Thought to be Blind Willie Johnson’s wife. Wait at midnight when death comes. Black lake. Reflection of a still pool. “Wait right here,” he said tapping his pocket. “I’ll be back in a flash.” Tom proceeded to the privy. A surprise gift (xenia). He had no experience mixing speedballs. Willy’s skill. He was working blind. He had no laboratory training. But he had observed the process. Joyce scored poorly at Belvedere in science and mathematics. He tried to enrol in medicine in Paris. This is an ironic accompaniment to the empirical structure and terminology of Ithaca, although there was nothing heuristic about his method in Ulysses. INSRET NTOE EN EIRONYSTEIN. Scientists rejected the law of causality and theories of Aristotle, employing big fat time/space dysphemisms instead. Try to remember the formula. Six drops of essence of terror. Five drops of sinister sauce. Add MOLY. A black root. Blossom white as milk. Elizabeth’s pelt. Chrysanthemum flower opening in a glass teapot in Suzhou on a sunny winter day. Frog dropped in steam. Hallem put a boot to the door. Enter. Dark graffiti. Muffled music. Pete Wells’ slide. Babdoyfurlov. Ian Rilen leaning back. Stinkbug’s smirk fragmented in a smashed basin mirror. Hallem slammed the world out. The bottom of a bass line shook the rusted ironworks. He dropped the plastic toilet seat with a thung. Flush. Liquid cemetery. Slip of shiny magazine paper. Dealer origami. Peel back. Clusters gathered along its spine. TV Week fragment. He collected a rust-etched blade. Quick cut. No time now for finesse. Roughness makes it work longer.Five-dollar straw. Gulp swallow snort taste gulp. He pressed his palm against the wall. Wetwarm. He gazed. Syringe spray on tiles. A film of blood. Kurosawa’s Sanjuro. The first example of slapstick splatter (see C6 – Tarantino et al.). Time to make Ana’s fix. He took a deep breath. Draw back the bow. Cap on. Once it was secreted in his rags, he went back to the banquet hall. The door burst. Unsteady interior. Audio desk fluttering with blips. Francine sucking on a cadged cigarette leaning against the wall. She looked at Tom Hallem intently. He pressed the syringe into Ana’s palm.

“Loaded,” he declared. [SIRENS]

“I’m not ready yet. Let’s go upstairs.”

“I’m going to stay down here for a while,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” she said.

Ana left Tom but did not climb the stairs. She went to the shadows. Francine returned to his side immediately. Ana watched them through a curtain like Molly Bloom.

“You know my sister,” said Francine. “She pointed you out at the show tonight.”

“You were there?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“It was crowded.”

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Marion.”

“So, you’re her sister,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied. “I get it.”

F# started. A few punters descended from the bar. Ric and Al robbed of eyes. Closing into sweat. Trance-like. During the feast at Alcinous’ palace, Demodocus sings about the disagreement between Odysseus and Achilles at Troy. Ten dollars baby won’t buy you a friend. Everyone enjoys his songs except Odysseus. He starts to squirm uncontrollably. In the Iliad, Agamemnon took Briseis off Achilles. I had a good woman now she’s gone. As a result, Achilles decided to bail. Get a Pontiac. In Book 9, Agamemnon sent Odysseus to convince him to return to battle. He gave Odysseus a script full of bribes and threats. Some critics consider that Odysseus’ failure to sway Achilles constitutes a blemish on his usual powers of persuasiveness. In fact, Odysseus chose to recite Agamemnon’s words verbatim. He didn’t try to embellish them. He knew the cause was futile. Odysseus weeps. Look after yourself cause there’s nobody else in your world now, sang Ric. Later, Achilles says to Odysseus in Hades that he would rather be a poor man’s slave than a dead hero. Only Alcinous noticed the hero’s tears. Were they emblems of regret? Maybe. Odysseus always put his own survival first. He would not have survived the war if Achilles had withdrawn completely. Alcinous took the band outside. Dancers stuttered. INSERT CHESTING CONTEST. A sporting tournament between bucks. Big Tex versus Toe Cutter for the prize. HAHA started. Demodocus’ second song concerns the love of Ares and Aphrodite. Grief-stricken Hephaestus binds them in chains. When you wish upon a star, your dreams are still your dreams. Snare round the bed utter. OLYMPICS SHOCK! God of War defeated by Lame Blacksmith! He halted on the porch. Haha woman you make me laugh. Haha you make me cry. He called down Olympus. Adulterer’s penalty. Aphrodite withdrew to Cyprus. Hephaestus was left all alone. You make me wonder why we said goodbye. Mother of Aeneas. In FASTBUCKS, Demodocus finally sang of the sacking of Troy. Again, Odysseus weeps uncontrollably. Get me on the first bus out of here. A short boat ride to Ithaca. Been a long time since I been going. Eighteen years toll. Tom Hallem twenty years dead. Gone away. Got to make a fast buck. Shanghai Dog hustling in China. Got a Pontiac. Gasoline. Marry GU. Repeat Line One. Grab the cash split the scene et cetera. In April 2013, the Central Bank of Ireland issued a silver €10 commemorative coin in honour of Joyce. It misquoted Ulysses. Music corroded Tom’s ears. Leer applied a crowbar behind the padlock on the warehouse door. The hinge popped easily. Screws intact. He pressed. Alarms not loaded. He illuminated the maw with a torch beam. A large RED painting hung in the foyer. He took a yellow Stanley knife from his overalls. Tashtego worked a hole into the case with his spade. He cut inside the frame. The canvas flopped open on the floor like a heretic’s tongue. He slid the blade along the lower lip. Linseed oil patches made his palms shine. He rolled the loose sheet into a long tube which he secured with a ribbon. Each time it came up full of spermaceti. He only wanted big stuff. Empty coins in a tub. Leer advanced fifty feet into the whale’s head. He started to break down a large work made up of small canvas boards. As the rectangular pile on the floor increased in height and weight, he realised it was impractical for larceny. He left it partially destroyed like a torn jigsaw puzzle and went back to disembowelling canvases. Suddenly, a competing beam scattered light across the cavity. Leer withdrew to the vacant elevator. He slipped open the safety catch and dropped onto the base of the concrete compartment. Everything now hanging by a thread. Tashtego slid down the whale’s case. Leer waited. Pressure of tight limbs. Footsteps closer. Walkie-talkie messages exchanged. The security guard called for reinforcements. He withdrew to the entrance of the gallery. Leer sat on dust and waste pondering his predicament. A hook gave way. Tashtego remains lodged in the whale’s head at the end of the novel. It’s basically a void, he says, once the sperm is extracted. Like man. Lester stirred at the bottom of the elevator shaft at BETA HOUSE.

“Let’s go upstairs,” said Tom.

They clomped up the worn wooden staircase of Frenchs. Cubicles jutted from the wall. Tom guided Francine to a single table in the window. Good view of Oxford Street. He bought drinks. There wasn’t a lot of time for analysis. She ran through the facts rapidly. (1) There was a mad boyfriend in Perth. (2) Also, an ex-boyfriend floating through Sydney. (3) She had made a bogus suicide bid. (4) Broken family. (5) Violent, rich father. A property developer like Faust in Pt. 2. Francine looked into her wine glass then whispered, “I’m bored.” She looked Tom Hallem straight in the eye.

“Want to go back to my place?” she asked.

“Where do you live?”

“Down Crown Street.”

“How far?”

“Past Cleveland Street.”

It was a long walk. Maybe 20 minutes. He felt the weight of past and present. Ana was nowhere to be found. Francine offered sanctuary like Calypso. Nobody could find him all the way down there in Redfern.

“Sure. Let’s go,” he said.

“What about your girlfriend?”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s not my girlfriend. We’re just mates.”

Francine skulled her drink and stood. They passed out of Frenchs. Wither wilt thou lead me. Tom ducked in case Ana entered. Francine was freed by the street. Southerly gusts forced them sideways as they left the shelter of some shop awnings. If you’re meant to be together, you’ll find a way, O said. The young couple touched like a ferry docking at a pier. Lakes resting on adjacencies. Set up a glass. Elizabeth left the restaurant and turned directly into the storm, pulling a charcoal hood over her unkempt mane. The sliding, wet pavement forced her to track downhill deftly. She stopped at a telephone booth on the corner. Call home. No answer. Ring tone split to flatline. Repeat. Tom Hallem passed Elizabeth with Marion’s sister. Dead beep. She watched their backs proceed along Crown Street tacking south. A taxi passed. Elizabeth waved frantically. Car cabin warmth. Hold of a ship. She stole a glance in the rear-vision mirror. They dwindled to obscurity. Gone. The driver accelerated to beat the lights. Cars glided over the Oxford Street ridge line on free-fall down Crown Street. Rush of headlights. Uneasy pall. Amber grid of Boulevarde Hotel balconies pissing thick orange light over Woolloomooloo. The saloon bar of the Strand Hotel disgorged a group of transvestites. One thrust out her tongue at Elizabeth. Who smiled back warmly. They both laughed. Tight arses swung tight mini-skirts in the humid breeze. A junky leant into the dirty window of a hire car office. The taxi entered the William Street Underpass. Dry fluorescent brilliance. Fuxing Tunnel. Steep descent to Rushcutters Bay.

“You’ll hear people say all kinds of things about me,” said Francine as they crossed Albion Street. “Block your ears. Don’t listen to them.”

She kissed Tom Hallem suddenly. Leopold Bloom recalls past tristes as he crosses Dublin. Odysseus had extensive romantic adventures. Classical authors counted amongst his paramours and offspring: Telemachus with Penelope; Telegonus, Ardeas and Latinus with Circe; Nausithous and Nausinous with Calypso; Polypoetes with Callidice; Euryalus with Euippe; and Leontophonus with the daughter of Thoas of Aetolia. Ovid characterised him as Greek mythology’s greatest lover. He combined the most seductive aptitudes for women: great story-telling talent, a sense of humour, persuasiveness and will. Homer represents Laertes, Odysseus and Telemachus as belonging to a single male line. For Western Greeks, this restricted heredity legitimised what was otherwise an illegitimate dynasty. A seamless transfer of authority through each generation removes the risk of succession squabbles (see Lear, Hamlet et cetera). This enabled Homer to concentrate one hundred percent on the revenge trope against the suitors. Francine hung off Tom’s neck like a soggy blanket. A stone jewel thumped against Elizabeth’s chest in proximity to her heart. She passed the Travelodge. Tenpin alley gave way to sunken, sable parkland. Elizabeth could just make out static poles at the Cruising Yacht Club topped with markers. Stan’s triple master stood erect. INSERT ON BRITISH MARITIME POWER. Take a trip out Sydney Heads with Roger. They never found Brian Alexander. His shark-stripped skeleton is still chained to an old Kooka stove on the bed of the harbour mouth. Not sloppy like Nugan’s murder. INSERT ON GIBRALTAR. The taxi alone made bright the bones of a ridge of heavy fig trees. The rain had passed leaving every object shiny. She asked the taxi to stop outside the clubhouse. Stiff diesel brine dozing. Close as Odysseus to home. A quiet alcove. Call home again. Beware traps. She wouldn’t go INSIDE if Leon was absent. Finally, her husband answered.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “I called half a dozen times.”

“I was fitting Uncle Nick’s dentures.”

“Well, we missed you at dinner.”

“Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’m on my way home. I’m only 2 minutes away. How are you feeling?”

“Buggered.”

“You should go to bed.”

“Not until you’re home.”

Leon replaced the receiver. He went to the balcony to examine Cadigal’s re-cased mural. South and northside torch-flecks spanned black geometry. Interlocking planets. Skyscrapers stretch all the way from Town Hall to Circular Quay these days. Vales and peaks distorted its vault. Tommy Townsend re-spelled Sidney when he took his family title. Sydney comes from two Old English elements, sid, meaning extensive, and ieg, a riverside meadow. It literally means people who dwell in an extensive domain beside water. Sydney, thus, is incidentally named accurately in English. The owners called it Eora, which means HERE. Or FROM THIS PLACE. A clear statement of possession. A charcoal spine lifted smoothly off the long bare slab of Bradfield Highway. Opera House sails covering its undercarriage. Chaim dead on a marble deck. I lifted the gown from his tortured body. Poor Rudy. Unlucky Hamnet. Astyanax murdered in front of Priam. My child with Richie. Elizabeth left the taxi. Don Cane entered the hire car. It was time for the last leg of his trip home. Elizabeth negotiated the garden paving stones to her threshold. NOTE PENELOPE ENTERING HER ROOM IN OBEDIENCE TO ODYSSEUS’ DIRECTIVE. Sudden sensor lamp. Leon Daniel stood at the top step. Elizabeth stopped on a low step. They held each other toughly. She rested her cheek against his chest and listened to his heartbeat.

“What’s wrong,” he asked.

“Nothing. It’s just been a long day. And Tom’s pissed off with me.”

“You’ve helped him as much as you could.”

“Only because we want to get him out of the way.”

“He doesn’t know that. It’s still technically … ‘assistance,’” said Leon chuckling. “He should be more grateful.”

“I still feel like a monster.”

“Let’s get you inside,” he said. They entered their home. He closed the door for the last time in this work. There was no need for a coda. Their future has been sign-posted throughout this work. [HEADING 30 – SCYLLA & CHARYBDIS] Youths were massing outside Frenchs Tavern. Some decided to climb the Bridge (SCYLLA). Others to go down the Saint James rail tunnels (CHARYBDIS). Prometheus versus Dante then. DEATH OF ANA FORTHCOMING. Tom/Francine go to her room, each trying to thread a needle. Porphyry describes the place where the Phæacians leave Odysseus as marked by two gates. One is set North to gain breeze for human comfort. The southern portal is for the Gods. This is the way of Immortals. Binary positions. Don starts the car. Fallen Byron stirs (ELPENOR). Elizabeth and Leon negotiate life and death (pregnancy/AIDS). Link back to C4. A monochrome television mounted above the bar replayed primetime American news feeds. Ana climbed the staircase. She sat at a pew and looked towards the screen blandly. “In recent years there have been charges that the CIA has been involved in illegal activities,” said the anchor. “Some of the most bizarre to date involve a group in Australia known as the WELLES BANK.” Profile shot from some Hogarth print. Elizabeth’s mentor. Pale nimbus. “Tonight, Gary Shepard reports.” Ana sipped at warm flat cider. “When the Welles Bank collapsed in 1982, it appeared to be just another bank failure,” he commenced. Bad rash of losses. Looming fall of Marcos. A dying man. No strength to fight. Priam’s execution is left to Virgil. The son of Achilles, Neoptolemus, kills his son, Polites, then drags the old man onto Zeus’ altar. Priam’s last words lodge a complaint about lack of due process. Marcos inherited a robust economy sponsored by US bases; a kind of 1950s version of Taiwan. State-run monopolies, mismanaged exchange rates, impudent monetary policy, rampant corruption and cronyism were the causes of the Philippines decline. A harmless spear bounced off Neoptolemus’ shield. J’aime Sin. CASH OUT. Take all the booty to Taipei. Build Aladdin’s cave. Bob smashed a net full of chips against the side of a deep fryer in the kitchen. Tom asked Subway for a coin and rang Bob Hensley. Message on an answering machine. “I’m just ringing to tell you my father is back,” he said. “I don’t know where he is. But he’s back.” Poseidon loved his deformed child. Homer’s characterisation of Polyphemus is narrowed to its basest form. But when they investigated, Australian authorities discovered a tangled web of intrigue with all the elements of a best-selling spy novel. I have no interest in manufacturing suspense. Just get the facts into play in whatever passes for organic order. Give the reader some credit for piecing together the script and its timeline. A mysterious death on a lonely stretch of road … a body dug from its grave … illegal currency transactions … big-time drug operations … and [he paused for effect] the CIA. Spy novels gained popularity over the course of the twentieth century. Mystery bags, they called them. Cold War specialty. Genre originally nurtured by Conrad. He saw third columnists as a threat to the British Empire. Later writers turned this entire notion on its head. Even Sherlock Holmes became a part-time spy. Ex-spies write the best espionage stories: Dahl, Greene, Le Carre. These men are writing about their ideal selves. Rise of James Bond. They all created antinomian characters who embodied heroic traits. Odysseus was also a spy. There are no spies per se in Ulysses. Bloom is always observing people but to no political end. There is always the context of Irish insurgency. THE FIGURE asks Bloom for a password during his paranoid visions in Circe. He misinterprets Gaelic as a secret tongue. Don Cane turned the radio dial until he found the Vietnamese news. Bloom brands him a “Gaelic league spy” sent by THE CITIZEN. This completely misunderstands the function of this nationalist group. The Welles Bank had its genesis in the Vietnam War. Hanh and her husband, Tham, listened to the 2EA news in the bare kitchen at the back of their shop. Troops had attacked a Thai Border Patrol in Surin province. Two soldiers were killed fighting for control of Hill 424. About 100 men from the 73rd Regiment had pushed one mile into Thai territory. A military source in Hanoi said the Vietnamese crossed the border in pursuit of red guerrillas. Khmer Rouge operatives had been secreted inside refugee camps. Hanh stood and told her husband she was going upstairs to bed. America is going to the polls later today. She checked on her babies. Tom had slipped away again, thought Ana. It was like some never-to-be English romance. A staple of the writing of poor cultures. Joyce’s had an obsession with unrequited love in Dubliners. Mark of his underdeveloped stage in life. See Mr. Duffy in “A Painful Case.” Also, Maria in “Clay.” ARABY. Fruitless, petty quests. Eveline cannot save herself from poverty and abuse. She is trapped like Virgilia or one of Pater’s other cement heroines. A life of sacrifices closes in madness. Sometimes Tom felt it. Sometimes she. Batteries jammed head-to-toe in a rigid compartment. Mog Edwards and Myfanwy Price. Dreams are also liars. Gates of ivory. Tereza and Tomas in ULoB update Molly and Bloom. Kundera shows the messiness of real relationships. Gates of horn. Never clean. See also Guinevere’s fate. East Egg. Lady Brett. Jake no longer east nor west eggs had. Four of the original stockholders in Welles Group were Americans. They listed their addresses as: Air America, Army Post Office, San Francisco and the USA. Post a letter to Martha. Don’t tell her where I am. Helen, I loved. Penelope kind of. Young Joyce and his cousin. Like Updike’s J&P. Stevens the butler came to Anne’s table to clear out the waste. Marry a doctor or a dentist. Settle down. Life isn’t about grandeur. Only in poems can ardour be fixed and therefore sustained. There are plenty of diversions in life. Plenty of time for comebacks. See footnote on Johnny Cash biopic (C6). Adultery is a staple of South American fiction. Count 622 affairs over 50 years then seek Fermina’s hand in marriage. Magic Realism panders to Latin stereotypes. Latinos are ‘kooky’ like that. It’s like all colonial prejudice. Voodoo dolls and hot coal dancers. Carnival corpses. Gleaming black temptresses riddled with VD. It was over twenty years since Tom Hallem died like Arthur Hallam when “In Memoriam” came out. Tennyson could never expunge his soft rage, but it came with no guilt. I am not so lucky. I replay a small catalogue of gestures. Tom’s arm around my shoulders. My head against his chest. Slapping his knee when he laughed. I never had that kind of sensation with my own father. He used and discarded people all his life until there were no props left. Stick him in a grave. Try to forget he still exists. I wrote a whole lot of rubbish in Chapter One about good deeds keeping a man alive in our memories long after he’s dead. The same applies to badness. My father was a bad man. Ana fondled her fix. Tom’s jewel. Sentimental trinkets. Elizabeth held up the heavy brooch around her neck. It glowed through accumulated harbour needles. A cumbersome lump of jewellery stooped Doctor Gu. Shanghai Dog twirled his wedding band around his finger. The two grooved rails on its surface appeared to turn counter-centric. Its creator knew something of marriage. Magic rings, they called them. Fine skills of Birmingham craftsmen in the nineteenth century. Seeing it fills me with foreboding. MORE INSERTS ON GIFTS. Air America was the CIA’s private airline in Indo-China, hauling men and supplies on clandestine missions … even flying drugs out of the so-called Golden Triangle. Aquino got popped on the tarmac at MIA. Body face down spreading blood. He travelled on a Malay passport with the pseudonym Marcial Bonifacio. Comic alias. Marcial means martial law in Spanish while Bonifacio stands for Fort Bonifacio, national HQ of the Philippines Army. Aquino kept one eye firmly planted on the people. Joe Cahill died in the same house in Tempe in which he was born. Odysseus never really made it back to his own bed in Ithaca not really. Slope checked the wedge in his jeans. Stan Welles went through the butts in his cheque book methodically. Non kept look-out. Young Barry had not yet regained consciousness. They filled the station wagon. This latest loan to Elizabeth had come with no collateral, thought Stan Welles. The CIA made millions from drugs to finance secret missions. PLA harvesting Yunnan poppies. Swap drugs for heavy currency for weapons. It gave him leverage over Elizabeth. But to what end? The rise of external debt in the Philippines took place in a relatively short period of time. Frank Nugan got greedy. We are all mi she le, Judy said. China is a harmonious society. Philippine banks were dissolved in the 1980s, reducing average people to poverty. The best part of the deal is we’ve got The Hippies financing our jobs, chuckled Tom Cornwall. Fighting communism in Nicaragua. Libyan arms shipments. Timor insurgents. Sangley Point. Contras. “Elizabeth told us why you left,” said Merlin to Tom Hallem when he got back to the table. “You really are an ungrateful little shit.” Where is Leon, asked Tom in reply. Is Elijah still coming? “He’s probably gone straight home,” said Slut Harolde. “I presume you know he’s extremely ill.” Leave Tom alone, interjected Matt Supplejack. Ana observed the set blankly. Stan Welles sent Jerry Prokosch to Chang Mai, the commercial centre of the Asian drug trade. Painting is just another commodity. Impressionists put art in middle class lounge rooms. Fill in an online form for the chance to star in my latest installation. Shanghai Dog held Linda upright. A painting is the ultimate momentary device. He led her towards the elevator. Speaking under immunity from prosecution, Mister Prokosch told CBS, “we became the paymasters for the CIA globally.” He passed one hundred kuai to the doorman to hail a taxi. The money was deposited in Hong Kong. Floating the dollar took guts. Awe owl tread jurors been fuckurnitwits sink Chiff, says Ocker. Peacock is winning the election campaign by default. Member for Promise-whatever-the-fuck. Welles Bank was no ordinary bank. Tories like gods-in-exile. Hardly any of its top people were bankers. Now ear cum thebe luddy Winsores, says Ock, pooncing across to Sydney in their bluddy great barge. Stuff it down Circelerkey. There were secretly numbered accounts. Hole retinue orb ludgers, I says … Her Oil I-ness, Fill Me Geek, Chinstrap, Lady Horsehead, His Royal Anus RN Showpony and that Little Lord Last Gasp. Mayhem pave air owen weigh, I says. Many were former high-ranking military officers with ties to US Intelligence including a top-secret naval group codenamed Task Force 57. Don Cane left the car park. Among its top agents was a man now under indictment for selling arms to Philippines President, Ferdinand Marcos. Neddy fell drunk out of the Iron Duke at closing time. Non turned the ignition of his Ford ute. Analyse the use of motor vehicles in this work. When they found the body of the Australian Chairman shot dead in the front seat of his rental car a few months before the bank went down, they discovered the business card of this man in his coat pocket. Cut to grainy picture. “Robert COE – a former Director of the CIA.” The Crest Hotel is also known as Roley’s pub. “It was BOB COE what put Kerr on payroll, says Ocker pointing at the screen. “That happened right after Murphy dogged us with the ASIO raid,” added Tom Cornwall from his lounge room in Neutral Bay. “Bowen was a decent enough bloke,” says Ock shaking his skull. “It was the Left what rolled him.” Cornwall nodded agreement. “Cairns was totally useless once he got stuck up Morosi’s box.” The CIA nominated art to play a leading role in the culture wars. Note MOMA nexus. Put Pollock on the payroll. See FULLER. D-Day, 1949. Four-page spread in Life. It was codenamed “AE” by the White House. See photograph of Eisenhower admiring Kline’s “Painting Number 2” in the Oval Office (Appendix S-4). Eisenhower met with aliens for the first time in 1953. They established the Trilateral Commission. Rockefeller was appointed Head of MJ-12. MOMA became his private institution. Greenberg and Barr wrote the AE manifestos. MJ-12 used AE sales to raise funds. Make a patriotic investment in Pollock, de Kooning or Rothko. AE grew off the corpse of European Modernism like a maggot. Its capital was used to build Area 51. Propaganda tours crushed local output in France, Germany and the Low Countries. Both sides built walls. Two-way mirrors in a bathroom. Advertising in the West produced the same obedience to the State as Socialist Realism. Pantone 15-0343. My installation will take place in a trunk. Silian Rail. What’s that, a gram? Trumped. Van Patten’s eggshell with Romalian. And what about the principals? Raymond John Candy was the financial mastermind and go-between. He remains active in the investment industry in Australia under the alias Stanley Welles, although his financial services license was revoked as a result of bankruptcy. His partner – a retired Australian officer – served in Vietnam with American Pacification Teams. It was Brigadier Thomas Cornwall who recruited an ill-fated team of mercenaries to train in counter-revolutionary tactics on the remote Philippine island of Mangenguey. Jerry Prokosch disappeared after the bank collapsed and was presumed dead until CBS located him in a secret location in the Geek Islands. Investigators are now attempting to trace $50 million from client accounts. We wash the fees through third-party accounts. Usually HK. Get fake warranties. Hire some local state engineering firm to sign-off on structural integrity. Pump up the traffic forecasts. Build a financial model. Get upstream legal structuring for a GP/LP structure in the Caymans. Marcos skimmed $30 billion from the State. Millions were discovered in real estate in the US. There was $450 million stashed in a Swiss bank. Australian authorities are also trying to find out what involvement Welles Bank had in the 1975 downfall of the socialist government. Matt Supplejack escorted MARION HACKETT to her car down Denham Street. They reached a dead-end. LINK TO CAR IN C2. The CIA denies all involvement in these activities. “Gary Shephard, CBS News, Los Angeles.” Marion pressed him against a door panel. Figurative art is amoral. Petty surfaces. He went unsteadily on his knees. Ophelia was Hamlet’s fucktoy. Mystic emblems. Cucchi’s Birdmen. Kiefer’s halls. Mimmo Paladino’s ghosts. Whirlpool faces of Dale Frank. Lancelot standing on a bridge. Elaine’s barge slid beneath. Holly approached Ana at a pew. Matt entered the passenger’s seat. Fishpump bobbed behind her.

“Want to come down the tunnels?”

“I was going to climb the bridge,” replied Ana.

“Come with us. They’re filming down The Lake.”

“It’s for Gag’s new clip,” added Fishpump encouragingly.

“We even got flares,” Puker added. Stalks were poking out of his pockets. Holly exited French’s. Marion’s car left its slot. A ravine of Icy Rocks in the Caucasus. Xi Ni Da Qian. Prometheus on a stick. Link PBS, PU to Aeschylus. A gadfly chased Francine to Sydney. What next? She will follow Tom to Europe > gain weight from drinking > go to Berlin > Fuck Billy > get pregnant > have an abortion > follow Tom Hallem to Sydney > escape > never re-enter our narrative. Ana stretched her chest. Look up. Cistern closing above. Standing in the past.

“When are you leaving?” asked Ana.

“Now,” replied Fishpump. “The band is down there already.”

(31) DEATH OF THE AUTHOR

Ana Lafei rose from the bench and left Frenchs. Two groups had assembled on the street. One coordinated by Toe Cutter included Kathy Mel Steve Couri Weasel Bob Petra Justin Dougie the Animal with various tower maidens in attendance (Danae, Saint Barbara, Rabuda, Rapunzel). They represent a cornerstone trope of quest romances (see Aarne-Thompson, 310). High up in space they would rise like Major Tom. Prometheus re-bound. Hairdrops. Symbol of a sun deity. Always blonde. The Lake = CHARYBDIS = DEEP DOWN. The other group was centred around Novalis. Incidit in scyllam cupiens vitare charybdim. “Look my lord. It comes!” Fishpump joined Holly and The Nut Starpunk/Stinkbug Toe Cutter Big Tex Badb Puker and Kristina to walk 500m to the station entrance. Slope & NON turned slowly west onto Parramatta Road. Goup/Godown? Toclimborcrawl? Ana felt the dart in her pocket. Safearth. A clay bag. Snug. Insert literary references. Happy Gloom! Dark Paradise! Polyphemus’ trap. Spenser’s Mammon. Aladdin. Cave paintings of Wandjina. Giro Giro. Cloud and rain spirits. Bulbeyed. Mouthless.

“The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,” said Badb. Bloomsday was almost done. I checked my wristwatch. Circe ended at midnight. Ithaca is set from 1–2 am. Penelope is kind of timeless. It could have taken place in a few moments of dreaming. Equally, it could have been the product of prolonged insomnia. Gibraltar progresses methodically towards dawn.

“All this prevarication,” groaned Holly. “It’s like a medieval round. I mean, are we going … or not? It’s not some rhetorical device. What happened to your other shoe?”

“I lost it,” replied Fishpump glumly.

NARRATOR B: They bled down Oxford Street crossing Crown Street above Royal Court making a chart like some Escher print. Flushing carstream (see C2). A taxi assumed free-flight as it smashed the sudden decline towards William Street. O sat on the edge of her bed looking out the tall windows at the dark mass of Hyde Park under city night trinkets. Her kitchen light cast a weak glow. A sharply calibrated rap came twice. She proceeded to the door. Heads wavered behind frosted leadlight. She turned the lock and a loose brass handle simultaneously. A screw-head protruding from the spindle scratched her finger. Something to get used to. She exposed the jaundiced hallway / the nailed carpet / the dark bare boards. Two women were standing before her threshold. We heard you bustling about, said Polly. A flourish all smile all lipstick + cat eye spectacles that shone. Sharp and bright mouth like Man Ray’s “Observatory Time.” Thought we’d just drop by and welcome you, Lucy said brandishing a bottle of Cordon Negro. O beckoned them inna. Lucy passed like some INSERT ANALOGUES [e.g. Waterhouse pond sprite]. How to write of women without false imagism, I pondered. Delete all references to Western art. How did classical sculptors depict goddesses like Juno and Athene? Still neurotic about face. See the calculation of Paris. He had no choice but to choose one. Otherwise, he would have been fired on the spot. Instigate a delay then. If it was men entering O’s apartment, we might write about their height. Maybe their smell. A musky odour that doesn’t repel. You could still taste him on your forearm long after sex. Tang of cum like BBQ crisps + ammonia. They progressed past PETE’S BEAT. Doorway upstairs to THE OX. G.A. ZINK & SONS, master tailors. An art deco silver-on-sable plate. 56. Lucy offered Xenia. O gathered tea-cups. The three women sat on her bed and watched Darlinghurst. Link to Classical referents. Ana gazed at The Tool Shed doorway. A man emerged fussing over his shirt. Big Tex Tunks collected a throwaway off the pavement. HARD COCKS, it read. He recited the next line. BONA CONSTRICTOR. Easy to apply behind the scrotum. SIGNALS leather bar. Go up a creaky old lift. Amyl-tent in the back room. Deluxe Erection Maker. A motorbike was bolted to the concrete dancefloor for swingers. Creature Cocoa in crotchless leathers stretched the BDSM rack in the main bar. A fitting to attach a leash. “No white pants, no girlie attitude, no handbags, no fairies and especially NO drag queens,” stated the rule board. PATCHS Old 33 Club Saffron Four Gates of Hell. Theresa Green, Sydney’s Drag Queen of Punk, performing with Cindy Pastel and Simon Reptile. The strip still seemed in its heyday but already disclosed signs of decline. Visitation had peaked at the cruise lounges in 1983. Financial performance was DOWN. Action inside the bathroom cubicles at Patchs had been lacklustre in recent months, despite the onset of spring. Edmund Hamley loitered there with a vial of AMYL in his mitt while music pumped dully through thick fire doors. An example of The Cradle sat unexposed. Insert scene at unisex cubicles in Glamour Bar with Shredded Ginger and Shanghai Dog. The Bobby Goldsmith Foundation had just been founded, raising awareness of the risks of HIV. The original hoteliers had started migrating to Inner West pubs like the Newtown Hotel and Imperial Hotel, Erskineville in response to demands for protection money from gangsters like Abe Saffron. Fast forward to today and any visitor with knowledge of local history would be shocked to see that Oxford Street has now been reduced to a row of grubby franchise outlets and knock-off shops. Marcel Proust is an expert in articulating such shifts in the prestige of place over time. The rise of Montmartre, for instance. The decline of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Joyce forfeits this tactic by focusing on a single day. Don Cane has already demonstrated this tenet in Chapter Three by his reaction to Kings Cross, which had lost the bohemian charm which he recalled from the early 1960s and become a lame drag of intermittent strip joints, street walkers, minor drug dealers, vagrants and crime. There was nothing to match the scenes at the Olympia Music Hall on Boulevard Capucines (contrast as parody with Exchange Hotel). The Collector mocks Tom Hallem when he confronts him near the toilet in the backyard of the restaurant. “I saw you at Patches last week dancing with some breeders.” He felt at Tom’s crotch angrily. “Sick of steak?” he asked. Tom involuntarily noted the image of Elizabeth and Marion withdrawing together at the opening. He examined their body language with a painter’s eye. They will desecrate Leon’s memory in death just like Vinteuil’s daughter and her lover, he thought. Later, we find quite the opposite tendency. The lover transcribed his music assiduously so that it could be interpreted by an untrained audience. “Prefer raw oysters, these days?” his patron concluded tartly. In Chapter Four, Tom shows tenderness to his cousin like St Loup towards the Protagonist at Balbec. This creates a stronger contrast with his subsequent, sudden shift to go with the Pimp. Tom should also draw heightened affection from Bob Hensley and his wife in C3 (Nuncle Richie, Laertes, Philemon + Baucis inter alia). It doesn’t matter what I miss in TMAC. Just add it to VAULT. We are starting to see a shift in the focus of TECHNICAL FICTION from Joyce to Proust. Just create a contrivance to allow the insertion of fully completed sections of fiction as per Swann in Love. Add transcript of report by Four Corners, 1983. Sydney: Golden City of Gays. It’s becoming known as the San Francisco of the southern hemisphere with sixty-one homosexual groups and social clubs nearly everyone you see in this part of Oxford Street is gay there’s music for gay listeners on gay radio who listens in secret from the closet nobody knows three gay newspapers a calendar with 63 fixtures per year 9 gay hotels 8 gay discos 5 book shops gay sex shops catering to the outer limits 14 gay restaurants 25% of gay relationships <3 years washable canvas harness I’ve had 2,000 encounters in tea rooms across Darlinghurst Ball Spreader with adjustable leather strap look at the studded scrotum collar Midnight Shift Ms Polly Waffle dancing tonight male monkeys mount each other its natural to them can’t change the sex-urge Stephanie’s Waterproof Rear Love Ring no description needed maximum sentence twice as long as rape Mrs Fleming’s breakfasts there are still 145 prosecutions per year in New South Wales twenty men go to gaol each year for periods of two to five years Exchange Hotel pumping Nutbush Limits the doors swing out Catholic influence one of the main obstacles a young man sitting on a public lavatory with the door ajar jeans along the floor cock in hand coming out sites dancing to BAND OF GOLD Link back to Shredded Ginger in C10 Life’s A Beach tranny in a pinafore and fishnet singlet named Ginger dancing on Dot and Fanny’s Tonight Show shirtless shaved red suspenders Sever Inflation RIP costume glitter T DANCE Easy to tighten or loosen in the dark compression Burdekin Hotel like a wedge of cheesecake WARNING keeping your penis hard for extended periods can put you at risk of injury remove after 20 minutes MAX can cause damage to the capillaries and bruise the penis Ana’s white skin glowed heightened by a pulsing neon tube which announced OPEN 24H (infinitum) illuminating her black eyes which had been endowed with a gemlike lustre by Athene’s ambrosia as it fell like tincture on her lips gold trunks sodden with sweat Francine returned Tom’s gaze steadfastly then re-turned so that he could only perceive a single eyelash fluttering in the tender air like a moth. No words were uttered. Zeus thundered above. Francine’s alabaster claws gripped his palm. They climbed aboard Time’s broad-winged chariot to disembark at her secluded palace. Ana stopped at a seat under a streetlight in Hyde Park. She extracted a sesame seed bar from her jacket. SEEDFRUIT. She needed food first. Heroin made her vomit. She extracted Tom’s dart. HOLD IT UP TO THE LIGHT! Rats flustered in the spare undergrowth. Mammon’s cave was “hewne out of rocky clift from whose rough vault the ragged breaches hong embost with massy gold.” Dark and dirty abode of savages dedicated to gold. Escape like Guyon. Reject the machine. The only means is Death. “There anguish does not sting; nor pleasure pall.” She fixed and leaned back for the rush. Holly roused her. The Lake is 7 metres wide, 1 kilometre long & 5 metres deep at its inmost point. Messages to loved ones had been painted on the wall by soldiers in World War Two. Macarthur’s hideaway. A place where bad folks go when they die. Pentagrams stained the stained concrete. Pyramid graffiti. Third eye. Light the lamp. Red crying eyes of a lion. Dry vines falling like mesh from the ceiling. A Lady’s tresses. Rhizomes from beneath/within. Under the earth we move like moles or foxes. Thick tree roots like black snakes chicaned on the floor. “I love you, dearest Robin. 1942,” read the inscription. Psyche in Hades. Get Persephone’s cream. Nourish the skin of Aphrodite. RED paint. Film extras daubed with pig blood twisted in fake atmos. Public Air Raid Shelter. WARNING. Hail Satan. Bang a gong. A ghetto blaster exhaled GOD MADE THE BLACK STAR. On earth as it is in Hades. Trespass not. State Rail AUTHORITY. Pay rightful dues. There is no fresh air anywhere. Sydney tomorrow will be a humid 26 degrees. Now it’s time for the Midnight Hour with Lee Simon. Go deeper down the shaft. The speed kick came first. Ana hastened. Waiting for the smack – hurry up – to smooth out the rush. Wow a BIG blast. She tripped on a tree root and fell. Cool lake on dress. Damp gut. Blood in teeth. Roll over. Look up. No light for a moment. Blind like Tom in bed. IDIOT EPILEPSY. SHIFT to piles of references to deface emotion. If Stephen Dedalus had died in Nighttown, it would have looked something like this. Scan the body in the alley for life. A cave is not night. For night, you need sky. Closedindirt. Into the caverns of the unconscious go the dead. The body is a cave full of atoms. Mundane shell. STAFFA. Glamarara. Xanadu. List concordance references in the Complete Works of Shelley: (1) The books of all wisdom are hidden in the cave of the “Witch of Atlas.” Take a tape measure. “Lady of _______.” Pa Kua. Magic females. Hide in her interlunar cleft. Tui symbolises absorption. When the Witch moves over the Lake all the temerity of human conduct is purged. (2) Cythna in RoI slipped birth whilst imprisoned in a cave. (3) Prometheus and Asia retired to their respective burrows. (4) “Epipsychidion.” (5) Alastor died where the stream slid down the throat of a cave. Narcissus. Reflection of a signifier oiled in a still POOL. Revir. Jung mainly meant lakes when he spoke about water. (6) Shelley himself drowned off Naples. Death encephelating art. Yeats wrote at length about Shelley’s spelunking. He saw these symbols as embers of invisible power. Obscure and dark. Occult. Where thought like a rapid perpetual stream flowed. Fireflies in the mind. Forbidden gems. Fountains were often proximate in Shelley. Like Blake’s dualism. Zoroaster’s cave torn with springs. Nymphs feeding knowledge to men. Intellectual spray. Gates of generation. Homer’s gates. A lacuna. (7) Mont Blanc. Ana reached inside a rancid concrete antrum. Pits set against stagnant water. Pestilent meres. (8) Laon’s prison was past a putrid pool in a cave. In Bromion’s cave, dirty lovers were shackled back to back like Plato’s hermaphrodites. Wandering halves like Tom and Ana. Jung notes that the cave stands for the impregnability of the unconsciousness. Plato’s cave represented the whole world. Orc was chained in one. Caves signify containment. Initiation ceremonies most frequently take place there. They are secret places. The entrance is always hidden by a labyrinth. Often you need to overcome guards. It’s like re-entering the womb. Mother Earth. Shallow burials in caves. Passage through them changes our state. Plato’s bondage allegory. Ana was trapped betwixt TWO WORLDS. A semi-transparent wall. Backlit. Where shadows fall. Gink bellies on a window pane you could never touch. Chained people, necks and feet. Xiao Fang made a cradle with the red rope, twisted her body inside and twirled upside-down rapidly with Billy’s cock in her mouth. People inside a cave cannot raise their brows. What they think is an illusion is REAL. Ana has left this world. A bright light shot-out. Aim at a fixed point. The world is just fac-simile anyway. See PART 5 of the FURIES. Caves cancel sunset. Darkness evermore impending. Farewell happy groves. Angels visit the caves of every beast. Shelley’s magic cavities were always matched by towers. Go out of Golgonooza. Exit Eden. (9) Prince Athanase pursued mystical studies high up in space. (10) Cythna’s lover. Old hermit watching over Laon. Up/down. In/out. Light/darkness. Surdity against Utterance. Stasis on Dromology. Dialectical strophes. Cold causes life in the world. Heat causes life among the gods. Ana felt for breath vainly. Alveoli. Diastole. Emilia V. Honeycomb of mines. Bees return to the same hive insistently. Honey is a symbol of generation. The ancients represented our souls as bees. Sound folded in cells of crystal silence. Liquors clear and saccharine in delicate flutes. A blown chrysalis. The ruins of the ABC radio gong that simulated the sound of Big Ben was still suspended in the Lake since wartime. Brennan’s sweet shiver down yer earhole. Slessor’s template. Dew down | mist up. Increase heat to the point of vaporisation. Scientific poesy. Novalis was a mineralogist running the family salt-mine. The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life; violence covers the mouth of the wicked. Smack masks the speedrush and speed veils the stop. Kairos. Reverie of a blue flower. Sehnsuct. Red vomit. Ana felt far for symbols. Cross at her neck. Wrists of wood and cowbone beads. Only ten minutes had passed since she entered the tunnel. She rolled on her back gazing at far distant streetlight gridded by a narrow grate. Heart pumping/stalling. Swallow no can. Lavinia. Tongue got cut out. Speedball braking her throat. She was leering when they arrived. Seeds stuck between her teeth. Dry at the corner of her unlipped mouth. Death of EVE. Toe Cutter covered her nostrils and lips. Sea closing above. The throat contracts under the influence of Junk. A dice-throw in a marble vault never tolled so. It ricocheted against every obstacle in the chamber, pirouetting on its axis and rolling to an uneasy stillness. Like the Greeks in the Iliad after the death of Patroclus, Ana felt the horror of supernatural darkness added to other foes. There was no place uncircumscribed by it. Even in the bowels of a ship, from the depth of a shipwreck, “somewhere in the heap, an eye,” what Beckett would call “a wild equine eye,” rolled through the brine and came to rest. A single car passed over the grate. It rattled hard then eventually everything went still again. Sydney slept. Don Cane shifted into fourth gear. THEY ABANDONED ANA. (32) PUNKS LEAVE SICK GIRL FOR DEAD! Her corpse wasn’t found for days. “What would YOU do if you were in MY shoes?” asked Tom Hallem when they found her corpse. “Send myself off on a suicide mission,” replied Elizabeth Archer. “Is that what you call my stipend in Paris?” His dealer made no comment. Billy Capri stirred from bed. He groped towards his desk and hacked at a lamp switch. Granite sparks seen. Too wired to sleep. He wound an A4 sheet into a manual typewriter. Sydney has always been an ALT city, he typed slowly; trying to suppress the sound of each key in case it woke his parents. Sydney was the most radical town in Empire, he added. V2. Ana faultered yet persisted toiling with an ungainly IV-stand like some cheap candelabra a patient proceeding through hospital grounds hot asphalt a location where I was brought unconscious that registers NO LANDMARKS but rather TOTAL NEWNESS OF PLACE not remembering why-here how-here what-am like Proust’s protagonist at the start of LTP the last thing Ana recalled was meeting Tom in the morning straight after work on Liverpool Road a memory-flood SUBLIME in its fullness that rushed around her body as if her brain had been reset and her eyeballs replaced by crystal fishballs projecting a total picture of THAT MOMENT IN TIEM surrounding her like a sphere finally she fell STAND / FALL Tom on a canula Billy on a drip Ana stumbling Billy stumbling he wheeled the silver IV-pole on four shitmetal castors her going forwards and down him going up Tom’s horizon a bed frame bags fluttered like fall leaves she went down but not by arc rather airpout vacuum pouches of blood + lymph Willy sawing with the needlehead until blood + smack wore finely intermongrelling like Shelley’s impenetrating DEW Ananowinert Billy rose from grazed knees grass stains on bleached hospital gown cold rainair tightened his nipples [see C5, E19] craters sinking into his tonsured chest like two reptile eyes shut hard anthend / Nipsunk like a dry mud pond cracking into a mandala of grey beads plastic almost / IV tubes unravelling out of my chest into two drip bags swaying in the hot Sydney spring breeze frittering from Bondi over the Waverley lump IT IS NOVEMBER 1978 my breasts precede as usual slightly hung like lanterns my limfe’n’bludd mix permeandering sacks opaque kaleidoscope claret patterns churning the surface of a still pool like petrol silver metal candelabra on wheels STUCK ON DANTE’S LOOP draining out of the sutures in my tits running paddocks of fluid behind Bressington Park too tall top heavy Ana’s head heavy like a medicine ball each step birthing yellogree yellerblew bluegreel swirls in winter bog slim soft stalks inserted all the way into my torso my tits algae Warmem driveway pressing shade smoothedowne asphalt a plaster statue of the patron saint of soldiers set on a plinth in the centre of a sandstone retaining wall our Grey War heroes once part of you and you parting of it deep balconies Willy ground the sharphead deeper into Tom’s unhelpful flesh twirling it sharply to get the FIT so heroin could proceed into his bloodstream like some grand cortege of youth and beauty via veins sunk deeper ever-deeper an eel barely visible lashing the under-surface of a still pool. Billy rubbed at his left nipple. It was the less successful side. It still ached to touch dully yet sickeningly after 40 years. [Calypso] Oxford Street frocks were drifting towards Dawn O’Donnell’s clubs down Hyde Park. Tom and Frances linked hands awkwardly. A rush of docks air from Woolloomooloo Bay punched their backs along the frayed strip of shops along Crown Street. Offcuts of the machine. Sydney’s history encompasses: visitors like Conrad and Lawrence; expats like Dickens’ sons; arrivals from the Bush like Lawson and Paterson; and Chris Brennan’s Symbolist poetry where Mallarme met Sydney through a lens of amber absinthe. Belated pollen fell thickly from a rich canopy pooling on sandstone terraces. Christina Stead wrote paeans to our fringe dwellers, estates and waterside slums. The Freedom Ride started and ended in Sydney. A plaster statue of an armless ANZAC rose on a plinth under the fortress gates of Crown Street Public School. Sydney’s exports shook Britain during the empire’s death throes after World War Two. A WOODEN HE/O(A)RSE. It was the cradle of social agitators like Greer, Hughes, James, the Push and Oz magazine. It nurtured John Anderson’s offsprungrhythm. Barry Humphries created Dame Edna in Melbourne but she became a hit in Sydney. A new AIDS clinic was being constructed at the Albion Street intersection. Handiwork of Doctor Julian Gold. Sydney also produced concrete-cutter politicians like Wentworth, Parkes, Jack Lang and Paul Keating as well as Green Bans and Joe Cahill’s Opera House, sponsored by a bloke who knew more about psalms than symphonies. Crown Street Women’s Hospital sat behind scaffolding all boarded up. It had been rendered blank for redevelopment. Say Deshil Holles Eamus three times. Presbyterian blockhouse. Mina Purefoy’s swollen belly. Leon Daniel’s blotchy gut blooming plum sarcomas. He scratched seeds with putrid nails. Dublin was Joyce’s postcard rack, history lesson and phone book. It was a dark city filthy in decline. They passed Shannon Reserve sodden and thick with mudlines from the Saturday flea market. The slum back bedrooms of Richards Lane were bleating poor, jaundiced beams. The consonance of Yellowblock (gilt), sunlight (lofty, sharp), clear skies (quiring) and ever-changing, never-changing glycerine water (omni-mirror) made Sydney a city that lived for the limelight. Visual art here has always tried to display the PURE SURFACE of THINGS. Grace Cossington-Smith’s famous painting of the new harbour bridge is all shine not structure. Lloyd Rees depicted our thin-lipped alcoves with ink and steel. Brett Whiteley’s ultramarine maw exposed the breadth-with-no-depth of our latent symbols. The Clock Hotel had finally patched closing time. The hands on its Tudor tower clocks were always wrong. Drift past variegated boarding-house terraces. A shell burnt black on the inside. Gadigal ground. Five thousand years back, the God Baiame carved his story into Eora stone that was already sun-drained. The same rock now adorns our public buildings (see C9, Q22). Sydney Rock Engravings. His wife was the goddess of fertility, Birrahgnooloo. They had a son named Daramulan. This family of deities covers a full range of mythical symbols (see L-S). He was Zeus. She was an emu Leda. He resides on the moon (Olympus). Daramulan was a Protean shape shifter. Got an arm cut off. It represents humanity in some legends. Likewise, an evil hand is often severed in myths. A shot shattered his ankle like Achilles. Oedipal figure. Resides in tree trunks. His voice is trapped in a bullroarer. A last tune groaned out of the pub. “Hotel California” is a song of mythic symbolism. Tom and Frances crossed Cleveland Street against the lights opposite Abdul’s Take Away. The high brick wall of the police barracks held stables. Scent of road apples. A broken frangipani tree wept blossoms across the cracked footpath. Francine led Tom onto Boronia Street. She had the ground floor corner room. It was a rat run for taxis. Billy Capri tried to succumb to sleep. A book perched on his chest. His bed lamp alive. Ginsberg’s “America” splintering unrestful, threshold reveries in a kind of ouroboros suck. F(W)ake takes place in this kind of oneiric realm, which was later idealised by Gaston Bachelard. Insert sub-poem. (1) Sydney I’ve given you everything now I’m spent. This was how Ginsberg started. (2) Sydney, the scabs of a 20-buck BJ in my pocket, November 7, 1984. He gave us an exact date and amount. He was almost penniless. The purchasing power in 1956 was almost equivalent to twenty dollars today. You could buy a decent meal for one dollar. I can’t stand my own mind, said Ginsberg in line three. After that confession, he accelerates out of history and time fusing politics, psychiatric illness, cosmic concepts and mystical elements with everyday ephemera, ironic takes on propaganda and advertising tiles. About 80 per cent of the remaining statements-as-lines in AMERICA attain greatness. That’s 56 out of 73 lines. (3) Appropriate line three. Shift. (4) Sydney when will you stop fighting this Punic War? (5) Go fuck yourself with your laconic racism. (6) You’re hell and I’m normal, Sydney. Hotter than Ancient Greece on your chest. (7) When will you finally be done with Indigenous genocide? (8) We need to take off the scales. (9) Your history of pestilence, killing, gold fever, corruption and war is like a TV on fast forward, Sydney. (10) When will you stop deferring? (11) You’ve really got to look into that Queen. (12) Australia is not the greatest country on Earth no such place exists you’ve always known that it’s just a slogan. (13) When did you become a nation of haters? (14) You never believed in God stop pretending. (15) Your silly mood is silly like American silly but small. (16) The Trump want eat us live. He makin’ us all-new injuns. His honey men got guns work sixteen hours no insurance. (17) Fuck American exceptionalism. (18) China is a war factory too. (19) Australians you also love war stop pretending. (20) Cultural cringe is OK. (21) They’re all cunts up-over-there believe me I’ve read about it in magazines the bartender told me as well just be patient. (22) Australia, your women are wavering. (23) God is pouring out of Seven-Elevens. (24) It will hit me hard when you fail. (25) Sydney, old men with ray guns should fight wars not children. (26) Litotes is Australian for rap. (27) Sydney, it is better to fail BIG by miscalculation abyss or new abyss to guess disappear tongues where does it all go instinct major telegrams. (28) Insert list of persecuted liberal figures (Ginsberg cites Tom Mooney, Scatto, Vanzetti and the Scottsboro boys), Sydney (29) FREE THE ANANDA MARGA THREE was sprayed on the police barracks wall. (30) The cops made no effort to erase it, Sydney (31) Sydney, when will the Rum Corps finally leave town. (32) Make them take Kerr, the New Guard, Niemeyer, White Australia, and [INSERT OTHERS] if there’s space (33) Sydney, we can fill up all the empty refugee boats with soft fascists and float them to Asia (34) Ana is dead, Sydney, you killed her. This is the type of statement that Ginsberg never makes that’s what makes his poem great he only shifts to the personal to express his own angst (see ll. 22–23, 30, 34, 47–53) (34b) These are the worst times (exclude lines 6, 14, 24, 71–73 and definitely not line 36 which is the start of the whole Sixties shebang) these are all great (35) I am equivocal about line 45 (36) The closer I get to the end of this work, the more life loses value, Sydney (37) Most of the time I wish I was dead (38) Every time we move away from naturalism towards technique I feel better about things, Sydney (39) Sydney, all art aspires to the thickness of text (40) Fuck Apollo (41) Your big book has to be postmodern, Sydney, because you are a postmodern place (42) INSERT AS REQUIRED (END) I want to stop now Sydney I got nothing more to say. I’m taking my queer shoulder off the wheel. Finally, Billy entered definitive sleep. Shanghai Dog woke alone in bed next morning. Frances unlocked the front door. They entered a wide hall. Her bedroom was left. Her kitchen was right. Note that Billy now sleeps whereas Tom remains conscious for the rest of the work. Compare and contrast The Lake with Frances’ compound. Link also to Ithaca.

“Where’s the toilet,” asked Hallem.

“Out the back,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

A long corridor wended to a courtyard gridded with clothes wire. Windows overlooked the quadrangle on all sides. A low outhouse was shunted into the far corner; an echo of old pan-and-cart days. Tom Hallem shut the picket door behind him and huddled over a rusty bowl. A single weak bulb, fixed low, scorched the back of his neck. He closed his eyes. Tracers shot behind sore lids. He struggled to cut off the last urine. Spoiled kidneys. Hunched, he made good and slipped back into the courtyard arms all akimbo. Francine stopped him with her mouth. She pressed him into the brittle paintwork, which crumbled cold render onto his shoulders. He held her tiny skull. Light hair. His eyes remained wide open. Black clothes slung over the clothesline. Sharded sharp spotlight. He reached low. Cool smooth stone of her thighs. A boy’s body really.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Francine’s bedroom was high and pale. A bare aluminium lamp directed light onto a pressed metal ceiling. They do vaults well in China, thought Shanghai Dog lying on his back with his hands behind his head looking at the canopy of his room. Two French doors dominated the front wall, screened by bamboo blinds. A single clothes rack bulged with bright garments. Neatly folded clothing had been laid in rows on the floor. Their footsteps made steepling stacks of books shiver. Tom Hallem sat on the edge of the bed while Francine undressed. It was a firm structure of sprung mesh set on old-growth legs. He perused some tattered spines. Multiple volumes of Anais Nin. Her diaries reduced even the most shocking blasphemy to bathos. Nine-day orgy on the Riviera with her father while he hobbled around the bed posts with lumbago. Papa was my most virile partner, she said. Tom shuddered at Leer. Her brother was well-placed in stalls like sweating Pasiphae. His sister’s supplicant. Also, Eggular Miller. A bet each-way with Gaulier’s money. His wife was trapped between two of the most turgid spits of the epoch. Bored process of loins. Celebrity fuckfests. Secret diaries. I must read that tale of the painter and his parrot again, thought Tom. With a biographer like Deirdre Bair who needs. A taxi passed intersecting blinds. Frances came to him calmly like Calypso. O = Penelope. Circe = Zhu Di. Calypso = Xiao Fang. The Odyssey begins with Odysseus marooned on her easy key. Speak in Billy’s voice. All that listening. Something must have penetrated. A tissue of interpenetrated cells with terminal ducts. Prosenchymatic criticism has 8,000 touch points like a woman’s cunt. SEE GLOSSARY. Insert into C10 in reference to Molly’s monologue. Tom’s eyes reached the spine of Simone de Beauvoir’s SS. Ruined by the death of Zaza. Her Arthur Hallam. She was more attuned to the zeitgeist than Sartre. Less hidebound by received ideology. Frances pressed her naked body into a cove made by his body and arms. His existentialism versus her feminism. She backed the right horse. Her cheek brushed his ear. Mostly made it up herself as she rode along. Her tongue jolted Tom. She went to the floor. Their partnership followed a droll sequence. He was a weatherman on the Maginot Line. The Germans captured him when they pushed across the Rhine in 1940. Frances struggled with the Mexican buckle on his belt. There was no word of him for months after the Fall of Paris. He lifted his body so Franc(in)e could shuffle his trousers onto a patch of crackt burlap. S. De B. undertook bicycle trips to the country as a front for Resistance activity, plotting troop movements, planting explosive devices, clicking a camera concealed in a straw picnic basket. All this stuff imbued her literary strategy. Sartre returned from prison after the war and formulated his own theory based on the experience of industrial slavery while she wrote The Second Sex. He said everyone was dancing existentially when they got back from America. She pulled apart his shirt. Boundless animal spirits of negated dialectics. The last button lapsed disclosing his gut. Samuel Beckett clomped his way along the desire lines twixt Materialism and Idealism. He was a Mystic really. Allegiance to reductive laughs. Arbitrary epiphany. Bog reason. His palm kissed her skull gently. It produces funny art, thought Hallem. Detached and didactic like some mid-period Godard movie. Truth spasms at 24 frames-per-second. Godard gave great slogan. Soon there will be no more utterance, spat Hamm. Then we will get some relief from the affliction of narrative, exclaimed Estragon deftly. She bent. Gather words into a mound. Pop a head on top just like Winnie. Make something capable of being dumped online. A hacker of words. Prosenchymatic drill-downs. A link-bubble never fixed in time. Always updated. Contributors come from without to my lair. Kill the author during bouts of self-criticism. Tom Hallem fixed his gaze on miscellaneous novels. Ubiquitous selection of Margarite Duras. Racey tailles of Colonial life in Indo-China. The kind of stuff that a man would have purchased to arouse Molly Bloom. All the Nabokov basics. An unidentified volume with Mishima’s name embossed in large yellow type. A thick wad of SADE volumes. Losey. Pinter’s screenscripts. Ex film-school assignments. Francoise Sagan’s sad little affairs set in a defeated society. Bored, lonely young women and men sunk in munificence. A symbol for Australia really, mused my character. Black of black death. Blue of unease. False tumescence. Hide in turns and lies. Flat track bullies. O owns no Australian novels. No art adorns her walls. Billy picked up a copy of Death Sentence. Tom was like J, he thought. Poor Digginem. Tom Hallem now beastly dead. He would be 55 years old if he had lived to this day. But he had to die for killing Ana. That’s just literary convention. Tom lifted Frances Hackett as he rose. Her body was raw without blemishes. A reed. This helped him focus on obligations. He hardened almost fully. Just as he was about to lay her down on the bed, she escaped like Albertine clipping floorboards with bare soles to get to the dresser.

“Amyl?” she asked. Insert results of Find on Page in C10 for this word.

She pulled a brown vial from her purse. Tom demurred. She gave herself an almighty SLUG. It flung her body onto the mattress. Cat landing on a pavement. She bounced upright boldly. A chemical emblem for the state I am trying to achieve.

“I’m struggling as well,” she said. “It’s not your fault. It’s so late. Get some wine. It’s in the kitchen fridge.”

I scuttle between doorways nude flicking my eyes both sides also UP. Above there is only the sound of a d-distant phonogram churning out hula music. Calypso beat. Sudden rhythm. Twangs. Occasional boot clomps. Aloha Oe. Elvis. The stage revolved. Our hero had no recollection of his movements 24 hours before. That was about the time he had commenced the journey to the toilet-block at Beta House. His noble form struck out blindly losing course by increments until he stumbled through the unsecured opening of an elevator shaft and fell through gritted air so fast his head pummelled the concrete slab before he even had time to adjust forced faster still against unyielding end by momentum his lean body slappt the floor, bouncing, blood rushing exit lapsing to coma DONE. Meillon: Byron lay on his smashed belly in the soiled concrete recess. Hoff’s sacrifice. His head slumped. Unconscious. Blood steeped his hair. He had suffered the following injuries: fissure fracture of skull, fracture of cervical spine, multiple rib fractures, fracture of upper limbs (right side), fracture of lower limb (right), fracture of clavicle, laceration of liver. Spleen and kidney damage suggest the height of the fall was over 20 feet. A long time had passed since. Am I / still / here, he asked observationally. Just. This black place makes me blind. Shadowman. Hades. Blind as old Hamm. Pepe locked in a fridge. A scream but no air. See Furphy, Chapter Six. Replace Barefoot Bob with a lubra. Country of lost children. Forced removals. Tom Hallem, sightless in Northcote, cannula in his wrist, called out to his erstwily dealer. A pleading of last resort. Forgotten Elpenor. Heaving open the door, sharp LIGHT and a CLOUD of chilled air hit Tom Hallem’s gut. Inside, it was mainly vacant space. Miso soup paste, vegemite, mustard, vegetable scraps, a cardboard wine cask. I got some cheap supermarket glasses from the sink. Detergent clouded their thick rims. An impossibly strong stream of Hock stabbed from the foil bladder. Francine was taking another blast when I re-entered the room. She washed the wine around her mouth like a cat with milk. It scours my gums. We kiss. I’m thinking too much. We look at each other from a distance of about two feet – about the same distance I stand from a canvas – just close enough to smell Boncrete primer before I start – like the beginning of Godard’s Contempt – that great movie – a hand stretching towards my chest – artsexfilmsexSEX! CUT the role of the painter within technology CUT Tarzan versus IBM SHIFT alternative title for Alphaville HIT ENTER. I take a blast – I want in – she says YES – I lack strategy – “Just put your cock in,” she says. “Are you on the Pill,” I ask. “Don’t worry. I can’t get pregnant,” she replies. No time now for digression. Tom stored his qualms. Francine reclined into the sprung bed. It sucked her body. He pressed his legs down with force to gain traction. Orange-laced Solange. Like Candy on the game. Slip her thong to one side. Gain entry. A KEY. She pressed a finger inside the plastic ditch which held his ruined nipple. He removed it gently and placed her palm on his rump. Strange echoes of the past all echoes. He felt like he was adopted for so many years then the breasts started. They cut them out leaving his chest maimed. Tom tried to forget. Give in to sheer rhythm. Foucault’s persons of perverse pleasures. The Blooms’ fitted this category being one son short of a full Malthus. Amyl slowing. Subway grew impatient. Tom Hallem pulled free and rolled on his back. “Use my arse,” she said. He tried. “You still can’t make it?” she asked shedding him with a plop. “No,” he replied. “Don’t fret,” she said. “I can’t either.”

“Do you want me to—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I mean I don’t. Never.”

No need to serve then. Some relief. Perforated light peeled the darkness. Carswish burned slowly, building to a flash then past. Francine yanked our bodies back together. All the power of Calypso’s despondency. Hallem tasted impermanence. No one could tell what would happen next. How long it would last. Where it would end. It ended in Madrid in January 1985. Then Toledo. Paris. Finally, Berlin in summer. It only stopped when she said. Shanghai Dog stood in darkness. The first time he made love to O, he didn’t want to leave her bedroom. If only he could regain that TENOR. Ulysses is the manual for long term couples seeking a path to reconciliation. It discloses the process of shutting down other options. The airplane was buffeted by turbulence. A truck rumbled past Beta House. A police siren suddenly blasting. Gaze out the window. See note on clouds in Chapter Eleven. Pulsing undercarriage. Illuminated jet engine.

“Get me a cigarette,” said Subway pointing at the floor.

Tom leaned over and opened the packet.

“It’s empty.”

“Go get some.”

“Where?”

“Abduls.”

He weighed choices. Different uses of time. Different outputs. Odysseus was forced to decide between the comforts of Calypso’s island and home. Same thing at Aeaea. Note Dido/Aeneas. Link to Manila/Sydney. Choc’s funeral. An excuse to go back. Sniff around. Albert Wheaton was a good soldier. He survived the Conflict. But in what form no one could know. A shade of his former self, they reckon. His family knew the outputs, not the inputs. Elpenor left Troy with Odysseus. On Aeaea, he got drunk and climbed onto the roof of Circe’s palace to sleep. He was awakened by the sound of his crewmates making preparations to leave for Hades. Trying to get down quickly, he missed a step on the ladder and fell straight to the ground, breaking his neck. Link to Lester. His crewmates did not notice his absence until they had put to sea. There was no way back by then.

“Sure,” Tom said. “But I’ve got to go after that.”

“You can stay here.”

“I want to get home.”

“Why do you want to go all the way back to your mother’s place at this time of night?”

“We can talk about it when I get back.”

He dressed. INSERT CLOTHES. INDICATE STYLE. Trousers not jeans. A bright shirt, no pattern. Secondhand tan shoes dyed umber with black boot polish.

“Promise you’ll come back,” she demanded.

“Of course, I will,” he replied.

“Leave your shoes.”

“What?”

“Leave your shoes here.”

Tom Hallem stepped out of his shoes without comment. Collateral. Soft bare soles. The hostess handed me a flannel slipper. It must have settled in the aisle when I dozed. The woman in the window seat leaned into my armrest. Her head flopped against my bicep. Bloom and Molly go foot-to-head. Her breasts are opposite his shins. His cock, her belly (note symbolism). Her knees, his ribcage. Her feet, his mouth. Odysseus left his sandals on the mat and stepped into warm balm. Eurycleia passed her palm over his boar scar. He gripped her throat suddenly. Shanghai Dog held hard. Time rushing out a hole.

“I’m broke. Have you got some change?”

“In my bag,” Francine said pointing at her desk. So … there I was walking barefoot down Baptist Street towards the Assos Parlour, Tuesday night turning into Wednesday, fingering some stranger’s coins, hoping no skinheads were stalking Cleveland Street. Pale floodlights shot over the high security wall of the Police Training Centre. Trail of horse dung. Gates. Sentry box. Insert ref. to Old Tweedy. A worker carrying a white Adidas sports bag walked east across my path. He was racing to make the change of shift at the Tip Top bakery for the dawn bread run. Each story in Dubliners uses Epiphany as a pivot. In Book XI, Odysseus is making a sacrifice to meet the shade of Tiresias when he is surprised to see Elpenor. He asks how he came to Hades. Elpenor tells his tale. He begs Odysseus to return to Aeaea for his remnants. He only wants an anonymous burial using the oar he pulled to mark his grave, so he can be remembered as a sailor rather than a drunk who died a strange and dishonorable death. This is a clear example of Kleos. The dead man just wants something straightforward and pure like Eric Killion. After finishing his tasks in the underworld, Odysseus returns to Aeaea to cremate the body. Turkish bloke sold me smokes. One-eighty. Stale mutton revolving on a spit. Dry flakes in a silver tray. The waitresses were preparing the tables for tomorrow’s lunchtime rush before going home. “Western or Chinese breakfast,” asked the air steward. Many beasts were slaughtered to propitiate Poseidon. The waitress scraped leftovers into a large green garbage bag. Tom Hallem quivered. Blown back to Francine he was. Taptaptap on her French doors. She let him in and returned to bed quickly.

“Here,” said Tom Hallem handing over the pack.

“Do you want one?” Subway asked.

“No.”

“Come back here,” she said smiling.

“I don’t want to get undressed.”

“Get me an ashtray,” she said.

Hallem placed it on the mattress.

“The last train has gone. You’ll be sitting on the platform for hours.”

Tom Hallem made no reply. James Joyce has Stephen Dedalus wandering off alone at the end of Ulysses. This is very different to the Odyssey, which has the father figure leaving Ithaca while the son remains in the palace with his mother. Tennyson used this as a motif for the consolidation stage of British colonial administration.

“I know all about you,” said Francine.

“What do you mean?”

“My sister gave me the dirt.”

“So what.”

“It just means I know what to expect.”

“What do you want in return?”

“I just want to hang out.”

“Why?”

“I can help you.”

“How?”

“I’ve got connections,” she said hurriedly.

“Then why do you live in this dump,” he asked gesturing at her room.

“I don’t get on with my father,” said Subway rising from bed. “But I’m close to Marion.” Like Lavinia, she collected Tom’s shoes. Another castaway. She sat down on the floor, opened her legs and bent so that Hallem could see the arc of her tiny spine stretch into her neck knuckle. She put on his plain socks. A gesture of empathy. Link back to C1. He lifted one foot then the other. She passed his shoes to him. Tom yanked them over his heels. They both stood. She fitted her head into his chest. They held. Heart beating hard like a lizard. O displayed shame and perplexity. A low cry was squeezed out of her guts as she described the humiliation of begging Billy for touch. Francine led Tom to the door. Common area. Her feet spread outwards. Must have done ballet. A shift worker descended the staircase in work boots. He picked a postcard off the floor, examined the address, handed it to Subway silently and left. Hallem strained to see the picture.

“It’s from my boyfriend,” she said.

“Where is he?” asked Tom.

“Back in Perth. We met in CHISEL. It’s a private clinic.”

“Why were you there?”

“I tried to commit suicide last year.”

Tom merely asked: “how?” Francine laughed impishly. “Overdose of meds,” she said. “I’d drunk a lot of Scotch.” INSERT MONOLOGUE. How Connie met Mellors. She was in a state of mute desperation. He lay a blanket on the floor of the gamekeeper’s shed. Pheasant pens. Chicks in our palms. Festering teardrops. Lay her down on her back. “They pumped my stomach,” she added. “We drove across the Nullarbor together. He didn’t like it so he went home. Now he’s coming back again.” Memo from Menelaus. Signed, Paul de Kock. Odyssean voyagers. From home go home leave home no home go out come back threading Gibraltar. A home-made postcard from Sydney arrived at Poste Restante. Bubble wrap stapled onto a photograph of the Boulevard Hotel, William Street. “Dear Bully,” Tom wrote, “it’s a fucking ordeal here. Only one month to go. I’m biding my time helping RED. Saw Android tonight. I could really relate to that movie. See you in Berlin. TOM.” Compilation text from a diary. Like cassette tapes. Insert chapter subjects:

1. LONDON > BERLIN. Bus. Helmstedt corridor.

2. GREETING TOM (Hauptbahnhof).

3. FIRST VISIT TO E.BERLIN.

4. FRANCINE (my birthday. Trinity Bar. Pass out on toilet. Tom like angel).

5. SOLMSTRASSE.

6. ABORTION (Birth of Rachel, August 1985).

7. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TOM HALLEM STAYS.

“When can I see you again?” asked Subway.

“I’m pretty busy,” Tom replied.

“New show?”

“Commissions.”

“I could keep you company while you paint.”

“Normally that would be OK. But not now.”

Tom leant down on the bed and bobbed gently kissing Frances’ cheek. I promise to call you, I said and left. Perhaps I should have remained. I realised as soon as I hit the street that I didn’t know how to finish. Worse, this decision was never going to be mine to make. Francine would always be the active agent. Elizabeth prepared for bed. They would lie head-to-foot like Bloomolly but in separate rooms. “Could you stay with me tonight?” she asks. Leon Daniel makes a short excuse. They retire. Elizabeth hears him cough unrelentingly through the common wall. Penelope Hallem can still smell sour male sweat on her forearms after getting home. Maggotted like blood and bone fertiliser. She rises to wash again. Elizabeth proceeds to the en suite. THEIR THOUGHTS. RECOLLLECTIONS. I walked across the Coles car park and cut across Cleveland Street at the Marlborough Street lights. No traffic. Rising uphill past a white factory. I remember my daughter at an access visit pushing her head through the plastic safety hatch of a swing as I hit the camera shutter. Huge dimples under broad sun shade. Metempsychosis of genes. Tang of burnt biscuits. Slope levelling at Ward Reserve. Overshadowed by housing blocks. She was always closely observed by Elizabeth’s nanny. I walked down Devonshire Street towards Central Station. The first time I had sex with Xiao Fang was a spa on the first floor of the Shanghai Hotel. I picked her out of the fish bowl. She wore a number on her pink bikini. I heard footsteps behind me. It was not Subway. S. DOG sent a text message to his wife. To paraphrase: cursory greeting, I am pining, desirous of prompt return home, insert ambiguous emoji sequence (U+1F998 animal, U+1F91x-E sign, U+1F55x clock), initial of his first name END. My father came back to Sydney in 1984 but we never connected. I flew out safely next day. Fuck knows where he went on Bloomsday. Perhaps he was part of the crowd in C5. Maybe you should look for him in Finnegans Wake. He is probably there inside some portmanteau image like the Man in the Brown Macintosh. His name is not inscribed on my birth certificate. A BLANK SPACE. In my earliest memories, he is already a middle-aged man. I don’t know about Tom. I doubt they met. We never discussed it. I barely knew Leon. Bob is just big pictures of a healthy man on a feature wall and photographs of a dying man in albums. My mother only displayed images from stage three and four of Shakespeare’s seven ages. I went looking for my father when I was fourteen. He was a junky in Melbourne. He left bare evidence of his life with his brother. I resemble him in appearance. Take the SCALES of DAEDALUS off your eyes. Male characters in this work never interact successfully. Odysseus was the same. Also, Leopold Bloom. Billy spends constructive time with O, not men. SHIFT Don Cane is the type of MAN who dominates the page. Tom Hallem would have been drawn to him. He rejects Les Hallem as a father figure. He prefers criminals like Willy and Leer. This is emblematic of poor decision-making. He was craven or furtive with females. Insert summary: Elizabeth, floundering in front of; mother, a cold fish; Ana, we were never aligned; Frances, a quandary. Shanghai Dog emerged onto the Bund holding Shredded Ginger upright with the aid of a doorman. The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector. He was Priam’s best son. Paris = Billy. REVERT TO C8. Les Hallem picked-up rusty tongs. Bits of shrapnel. Arrow stuck in bone. Symbols. Longshot struck his heel. Poison tips. Lost all his money on trotters. Last throw of a loaded dice. Harold Holt striding into outflowing surf in over-sized flippers. Faked his own death. Derrida called suicide (“S”) a gift. Les gaping sausagesauce’n’mash. Bubbles of diminishing return. Reaching upwards with wrinkled fingers like Ana. Full water-tank in his gut. Foetus rotating in brine. Downwod. Deaed. Final elan. Sire memoromenemies. Homo now x won omoh. YY. Sinep’n’tnuc. 74 Sndyah. L’Anannal. Never odd nor even. Lovevol. An ageing celebrity trying to impress Nausicaa with goofy-foot moves in Poseidon’s stuff. Vanity thy name is. Blind Titans’ raging at hampered bodies. You could see it in their fixated faces after too many shots of Bundaberg Rum. Staring at their kids play rugby league. Any excuse to get punchy. Les never batted an eyelid when I opened my calf on an iceberg of broken beer bottle. The blood came quickly. He grippt it hard in his palm. He told me to focus on the pain; not ignore it. It would make it easier to process. “You’re going to get a bluddy good scar,” he said. Bob Capri wrapped it tight in a striped tea towel. My brother rejoined his teammates. Les picked me up in his arms and drove me to Canterbury Hospital.

(31b) NOT IN A GRAVE TO LAY ONE IN, ANOTHER OUT TO HAVE

“How long has it been,” asked Didi examining the semblance of some figurines ashore from his boat.

“Almost twenty years,” replied Billy.

“That’s nothing,” scoffed Vladimir. “Estragon and I have been facing this bluff for centuries.”

“How did you calculate that equation?” asked Gogo.

“I went back from 1953 to the date of our birth then I added 21 years for growth. We set off on the road as fin de siecle dandies.”

“Don’t remind me! That hat!”

“We shared a vision!”

“Stop it! You know how I feel about that WORD.”

“Alright. We sprang out of Joyce’s ear in Zurich during the trench war. He was hiding out up high on his Irishness. We started out as two old ladies eating plums on Nelson’s cock. It was his son what sent us to gulags. He was the Stalin of Modernism.”

“You mean the bloke who just added the prefix “UN-” to whatever Joyce wrote and published it as FACT.”

“Yes.”

“You mean, UN-NO.”

“Unincorrect.”

“Nothing much happens in Joyce.”

“Just the river,” said Gogo wistfully.

“Or Beckett.”

“Wait! He invented Pozzo, the bone-yielder.”

“Yes, he did. It’s all coming back! That bloke who went blind like Joyce.”

“So, Joyce was Pozzo?”

“Maybe,” he said. “They both kept slaves. For recitation purposes mainly. The slave acceded. Of his own volition. Now that was the REAL joke.”

PROSE LET EYES IN

Lester staggered drunk down Soudan Lane. His crooked trousers were held up by a skewed Boy Scout belt trailing off sawtooth hips. A grey schoolboy shirt flapped freely against his thigh. Night A. He stumbled against the back door of Beta House. He had a key cable connected to a coat button. Chucked out of Ralph’s squat, he still had the floor here for refuge. He reeled in the string. Glistening thread. Too fast turning. Brickwork is cold. Repeat. He moved the key towards the lock again. It bounced off the shield this time. Link back to Hephaestus. He worked it across the surface of the strike plate. Scratches. Feints. Grip. Hold hard. Not a smooth entry to port. Meat of a lock inserted. Turn. The door opened. A chink. Get inside safely. He closed the warehouse door and groped for a railing. Grip. Catch breath. Look up. Circe’s palace is humid. Find fresh air aloft. Climb. Use the wall as a prop. Level 3, Eutychus. Darkest night of rains. Scars. Achilles never got YOU. Now all the fucking superstars are gone except Ody. It’s almost the end of the Classical period. Cannibal-dealers didn’t hook me up. They got Dave but. This was the name of my hero so long, sometimes it’s impossible to refrain from it. Lester wrenched back the steel fire-door. Ewan and Madge were asleep drunk as Dublin lords. Tom and Rhino also dead to the world in their cabin. Aeaea-aeaea-oh. Dregs of a silver bullet on the table. Burp out the cigarette-butt in your palm then drink. Drag a mattress onto the roof and lie down. Sound of ships preparing to leave shore. Elpenor made it all the way to Aeaea only to perish like Arthur Dignam falling through the open elevator shaft of an abandoned warehouse. Link to Leer @ EAx presst flat in the lift pit (see also C5, E1). The guard presses the call button. Wires roll. The cabin descends. Consciousness shred to police sirens. BURTON: Byron’s bronzed torso ambled over the wide depository in viscous white underwear. The lightbulb which should have illuminated his path to the toilet was broke. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and strayed. Delicate glass sliced his sole. Children playing in rye on the brink of a white chalk face. A sudden draft shot beneath. He dropped fast. No catcher. Crows and choughs winged the midway air. INSERT OTHER “FALLS”. LINK TO MORALITY IN ART. Also, Marion’s installation. Make them moral + physical. There is no Raskolnikov in Ulysses. “How fearful / And dizzy ‘tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!” Moral equivocation of Joyce. Who would cast the first stone? Bloom and Stephen are elevated characters by the end of the novel. Even Mulligan remains in play because Joyce isn’t interested in amassing moral judgment. No revenge. Not even against Dublin. Stephen’s father is the worst figure yet he receives a relatively mild portrait. Ulysses redacted. Joyce did not want to make ethical art. He was no Zola. Blind Gloucester led by Poor Tom to the cliff edge. Joyce’s caustic wit countenanced no sentiment, prefacing the hard-nosed approach to F.Wake. Dignam’s casket flies out of the hearse rounding Dunphy’s corner. Priest spooning holy spit on his head. Coffins are just a waste of good firewood. Lucky Dignam: solid planks. Bom! The coffin bumped onto the unsealed road. Byron had landed on the right side of his skull. A long time passed. Unairunarise. Am I still vital, he asked of his body when he finally woke like dead Finnegan. Enough sentience now to panic. Bunny Corcoran was pushed into a ravine in the depths of winter and left there to perish. Black place makes me blind. Shadowman. Hades. Go down. Commune with the dead. Achilles would rather be living. Elpenor just wants a proper burial. Least that can be done. Give poor Dignam a proper send off. A few coins each. Tom Hallem was laid in a suburban funeral home for the memorial service before his casket was transported to Glasnevin Cemetery. We stood over his casket. L. BOOM in attendance. Round tomb of Daniel O’Connell on top of a broad stone mausoleum. Enter Ambulance and Police. They searched the warehouse arresting six people for miscellaneous crimes including drug possession. The tenants of Beta House were evicted. Elizabeth Archer is being prosecuted by Marrickville Council for breaching land use regulations at her artists’ studio complex in Newtown, reported PS. There is also some likelihood that NSW Police will pursue the landlord over the near-fatal fall of an illegal inhabitant of the warehouse last month. Leon Daniel was declared bankrupt after agreeing to a private settlement in a civil case for infecting a patient with HIV. He died in a hospice shortly afterwards. The body of Paddy Dignam rolled stiffly in the dust, falling out a bloody great hessian sack far too big his grey nuts showing. Mouth closed with wax. Dignam’s potted meat was Joyce’s joke. Bloom read in Voyages in China that white men smell like corpses. Sharks will spit out human flesh. Cannibal marination of lemon and rice. Missionaries quite salty. His son Paddy came back from the butcher’s shop with a pound and a half of pork steaks. Reader’s underestimate Joyce’s love of sedition. His bung sense of humour. Often, it’s too hard to get at the gags what with all that technical mumbojumbo. Subversive images are hidden inside style as per Swinburne’s poetics. Odysseus bumps into Elpenor on his visit to Achilles. Aeneas also. The Hades episode was fixed on the funeral. Link to Tom. Also, drugs. INSERT FINAL TALLY OF CASUALTIES: Ana DEAD, Lester CRIPPLED (mentally/physically), Leon DEAD, Tom Hallem DEAD (15 years hence), Uncle Paul DEAD, Fuller DEAD (car crash), READ DEAD, Don Cane DEAD (2008), all theoreticians in C6 (except Kristeva). Virilio died in 2018, after C6 was drafted. Characters on-the-run include Billy Capri, Odysseus, Stephen Dedalus, Shanghai Dog, Leer, Slope and Non, Shredded Ginger, the Blots (see appendices), Stinkbug and the three helots in C2 (did they escape pursuit?). Equivocal characters: Helen, Barry, Penelope, Les, Tom Hallem, Tom’s daughter, Missus Albert Wheaton, Solange. Positive endings at the end of the text: Leopold & Molly Bloom, Don Cane, Tom Cornwall, Willy the Pimp, Hanh, READ, Ocker, Francine and Marion Hackett, Judy, Persian Jones, Stan Welles & sons, Matt Supplejack, Missus Brennan, Mister Monaro, Stephen and James Joyce, Greg Wheaton, Principal Ian Westacott, all minor participants in C4 & C7 and all incidental characters in C5. On the other side of the ledger, Xiao Fang is to be disappointed. Procreative characters include Elizabeth Archer, Billy, O, Shanghai Dog, Judy and Richie. In summary, TMAC can be declared a happy novel by virtue of the above ratios. A majority of its characters have a prospect of health and happiness at close. This statement still remains accurate even if minor and incidental characters are excluded. CLOSE CYCLE BEGINNING IN C1. RESOLVE LOOP. PLAN HOW EACH CHARACTER ENDS. Penelope Hallem arrived home to find her husband in bed. He smelled of stale beer as usual. She smelled like motel soap. He seemed tranquil enough. He had probably taken a couple of sleeping pills. She went into the bathroom and squatted in the shower cubicle to flush out a diaphragm. Helen Capri turned on a bed lamp. She knew Bob would not wake. He had a pillow disappearing his head. Hanh finally arrived in Malaysia. She had left Vietnam on a twenty-five-foot boat. Derive a new home like Aeneas. Reunification comes at a price. Troy and Ithaca both demonstrate that truth. Joyce never conceived of Ireland in this manner. British hegemony was still in place at the time of writing Ulysses. Joyce did live to see De Valera keep Eire out of the Second World War. Molly’s monologue starts a process of acceleration in Ulysses which produces a genuine climax, satisfying the reader’s desire for denouement. Joyce wipes off the vacillations, misunderstandings, posturing and inhibitions which mar interaction amongst men in Ulysses. He presents a basic gender split with woman-as-straightshooter. This represents another departure from Victorian shibboleths of female consciousness. Joyce goes right back to the start of Molly’s life and exploits the inlaid power of chronological rendering. The reader is no longer side-tracked by experiments with style and form. Joyce fills in all the blanks. He is speeding to closure. It is sheer plot flow. Past-time-in-motion discloses personal history unknown to this point. The dilatory record of daily events in Dublin that comprises the bulk of the novel is succeeded by a rush towards meaning. There is a thrilling vitality in Molly’s reverie which is absent from other characters in the novel, who are all ringed-about with routine, regrets, scruples, misconceptions, lies, politics, ideology and self-image. The limitations of characters are always clear in Ulysses. That is one of Joyce’s strong points as a writer. Some characters focus on subsistence. Others on intellectual diversions and trivialities. Bloom is a pedant. He has pretensions. He creates a rich fantasy world that is barely suppressed from conversation. He is solid at making money out of an unsolid profession. He is sharp. But he is not that smart. He craves stimulation. He tries to channel this compulsion into philandering. He is two-faced when it comes to sex. He possesses limited ART. Stephen Dedalus is out of control. He is friendless. He cannot process the death of his mother. He is tormented by religious guilt. He is not able to produce meaningful art. He has no capacity for characterisation yet. He has not reached the point of maturity where he can suppress his own presence. He is ALL TALK. By contrast, Molly Bloom possesses a sweeping insight into life and people that cuts through the bullshit. She cancels all the above blockages and moralising. It becomes clear by the end that the energy of Ulysses has been largely created by Joyce’s method. He has nothing much to offer the reader by way of plot. Only a simple rebuttal of Nietzsche. A critique of Irish art and politics. Quotidian depictions of the status quo in a secondary colony in the British Empire. Describe a city that always looks forward to dawn. Sydney receded out of still-born Tuesday waiting for Wednesday expectantly. Its atmosphere of ambition was quite different in tone to the crestfallen squalor of fin de siecle Dublin. Tom Hallem sat on the elevated platform at Central Station. A wet zephyr caused him to rise and pace the platform periodically. Don Cane was also awake. All his thoughts were locked on Penelope. He had not loved her. Yet here he was. Compelled. Helen was the best. Then Richie. Both better than Penny always craved never connecting never could. He had been absent for twenty years now. He could have been there all the time like Shanghai Dog. How is S. Dog better as a man and father? Analyse. Shanghai Dog transcended his father’s journey and therefore gained the right to live. He undertook family chores. He went back to his marriage. Maybe doubt held them together [SD + O]. But it bonded them nonetheless like Bloom + Molly. The trope of Odysseus/Penelope by comparison can be termed a ‘false dawn’ (Ellmann 642). Cut to Billy Capri flying to Manila to arrange his father’s funeral. This is the last time he will be cited in this novel. My father had an extraordinary affection for me, wrote John Joyce’s eldest son after his death. He thought and talked of me up to his last breath. Joyce was lucky. The last human in Tom Hallem’s mind was his drug dealer. I never penetrated my father’s spirit. Everything ranked behind his impulses. On a regularised basis, I would by virtue of non-citation rank behind his boat, car, beer, red wine, favourite dog and at least two wives. An analysis of Odysseus as a father would have yielded similar search results. Tom Hallem was always fond of our father. Hundreds of pages and scores of characters in all my books come from this source. All these words try to give presence to the son yet at the last the father comes back to the front of the stage. This book is my elegy to the gap he left. An inventory of what Joyce got from his father includes a portrait, a waistcoat, a good tenor voice, and a licentious disposition. He was the sole heir. John Joyce became the only influence that James Joyce ever really acknowledged when he made the parenthetic comment in a letter to T.S. Eliot: “(out of which, however, the greater part of any talent I may have springs).” He went on to say that his father also gave him, “something else I cannot define.” I recognise this impalpable quality. It generates faulty self-hate. It is not his death that crushed me so much but self-accusation, concluded Joyce. He never got back to Dublin to bury his father. Telemachus never got to bury Odysseus either. His father just left Ithaca and never came back. There was no closure. In Shanghai, I got a call from my mother advising that my father’s ex-business partner had made contact with the family to inform them of his death. I proceeded to the Philippines. The last surviving son. I got a cheap business class ticket, booked a room online at the Winford Casino and dawdled on a long stopover in Hong Kong half-hoping a typhoon would sweep away the connecting flight to Aquino Airport. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years. I missed the funeral by a few hours. I stayed at the hotel replaying the whole episode of his return to Sydney (C2–10) with increasing indifference. Sometimes, life seems like a lost video cassette where you feel like you can remember its contents. You even imagine holding the brittle black box in your palm. But all you really retain is the memory of that cheap apparatus. My father was buried in North Cemetery. I hired a driver to act as my guide (see Dante/Virgil). It was only a ten-minute drive north along the R-8. There was a bold new banner slung over the gates. It covered a row of warped stainless-steel sheets that were being systematically lifted by the graveyard’s residents. Billy picked up a brochure at the administration centre. The clerk circled his father’s location on a map. He started to negotiate slender, unsurfaced trails with the driver. Link this image to Don in Vietnam with ARVN. This burial ground had been used by the Japanese for war atrocities. It still felt possessed by old poison like an abandoned mine. Extended families were living on top of raw concrete slabs under simple canvas flaps. Sometimes, the grave-stacks rose six levels high. Some tombs remained unclosed. You could see the mouldy butt of cheap pine coffins. But most of the niches were sealed and painted assorted shades of sky blue and marked with white tablets branded RIP. Angled crosses on many of the memorials marked the memory of Christ’s procession to Golgotha. Apartment tombs, the driver called them. Most of the living inhabitants of North Cemetery came from provincial centres. There was piece-work as gravediggers and caretakers, he told me. Electrical wires were strung everywhere buzzing and mewing. Local gangs controlled different sections extorting entrance fees. My driver paid protection money on my behalf. He said I should not expose my wallet under any circumstances. I reimbursed him back at the taxi. You could only buy five years’ time in the grave-stacks then the remains were dumped in a rice sack and thrown onto a pile in a breeze-block compound at the back of the grounds. Eventually they got taken out of the city late at night. Nobody knew where. Urchins saturated with mud and sweat were playing basketball against mausoleum walls. We passed a makeshift school room. There were rumours about grave-robbing. Some rich families hired security guards to patrol their tombs. A frail woman hollowed out by cancer lay on her back on a granite block covered in a paltry shroud. She held a life-size ceramic doll under her arm. You can link all of the above images and symbols to scenes earlier in this work. Billy arrived at his father’s grave. “In loving memory,” read the opening line of the memorial plaque. No crucifix. No doves yanking on a rosary. Just plain language. His Christian names. The most famous men in Australia at the time of his birth. A statement of hope, I guess, for a life to come. His family-name in bold capitals. It wasn’t mine. Not Tom’s either. Dates of life, beginning and close. Billy’s eyes hit RETURN. The second last row read: “Also, Robert. Aged 2 days.” “Together once more,” concluded the text. So, he had another son, thought Billy. Unbeknown to us. Another half-brother. He lived at an unspecified date in time for forty-eight hours. A fresh posy decorated the bald slab. Alongside was an open polystyrene food container brimming with sticky rice. It remained untouched by the locals. Billy knelt in damp Manila Grass to read a small inscription card attached to the spray. North Cemetery was bubbling and thudding under a blunt sun. My Bobby, it said. Billy guessed it was the mother’s hand. He had no idea how long this child had been dead. Probably a recent event. Another reckless act by his father. Billy realised then that he really hated this man. He would never want to be laid in this grave himself. He would never want his own name inscribed on this tablet. That man was not his rightful father. It was hard to believe Donald John Cane was finally GONE. Like Pater’s Dionysus, Billy felt that maybe he would return one day like some freak tempest SHIFT loop back to the start of Chapter One: commence reading. The carriage doors jerked open. Tom Hallem entered the train. It had not been such a bad day after all. He had met a new girl. Got a free trip to Europe. He was going to earn some cash. He had even squared things away with Elizabeth. He could always fix things with Ana later. The silver doors closed. He went downstairs to the lower deck. The carriage was empty. This is a clear symbol of Hades. He dozed for a few minutes. He dreamed of nothing. This is all prolepsis of death. He woke each time a recording announced the next stop. Finally, Tom Hallem alighted at Burwood Station. He threaded the back streets past the police station and proceeded up Shaftesbury Road. Don Cane finally succumbed to sleep in the hire car facing downhill, poised above his ex-wife’s residence. He had started the previous day in Manila. Now he was back in Sydney. He had an excellent line of sight to his target. Dawn kindled on his right cheek. It performed the same ritual on the left side of his son’s face across the ditch down Wyatt Avenue. His shadow impressed a shiny cream wall – a shimmerer that in motion past – momentarily effacing its glassy dew. Distance-travelled sapped his father’s great bulk. Don shuffled stiffly in the tiny cubicle and par-woke. He stretched against the pedals and hauled himself upright pressing his palms on the felt ceiling. Joyce ends Ulysses with reconciliation and the last word is YES. This is quite different to Homer, who closes with Odysseus commencing the process of facing the suitor’s families. Then he will be required to undertake an exhaustive journey to placate Poseidon. Thus, Homer’s narrative ends on a prospect of EXIT, renewed exile and more tales. I have held onto the idea of reworking the father–son dyad for almost twenty years. It’s been my own odyssey. Its strength-as-concept has stood the test of time. I’ve never grown bored of it. Sometimes, its execution exceeded my stylistic capabilities. Like Beckett, I made a conscious choice never to compete with Joyce on technique. He exhausted that avenue. Rather, I have persevered with a postmodern approach seeing it as the only route around Joyce. Now my work is almost fully formed. Finally, Don Cane slumbers decisively. He is gone from the text. His son proceeds past the Anglican Boys’ Home. He opens the stiff front gate and strides up the concrete path to the steps. He avoids each crack as if it was a mine. He arrives at the wooden landing. He did not have a key. But his mother had left the door ajar. He pulled open the fly screen. It cracked like an old refrigerator. He went inside. The day was done. Dawn bright on rock. The last lamp dwindled. Tom Hallem had re-entered HOME [INSERT FULL-STOP > HIT SAVE > CLOSE]

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STRENGTHS Stay in China Comfort Status as the father	WEAKNESSES Loveless Sperm bank Lose contact with kids (Sydney)
OPPORTUNITIES Business (guanxi) No need to work anymore Political connections	THREATS Disposable Government (fubai)

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