May 31st 2011: chapter fifteen – ‘Circe’

‘The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer...’

The end is nigh, or near at least. Tonight’s reading at the Navan Ulysses Reading Group takes us to ‘Monto’, Dublin’s infamous red-light district. Follow Bloom who follows Stephen into and through Night-Town before defending him against the duplicitous whore-mistress and two angry policemen. As the two leave Monto together the final nostos of Joyce’s Ulysses has begun.

Join us at 6:30 in Navan Library for two hours of Joycean fun!

May 17th 2011: chapters thirteen and fourteen – ‘Nausicaa’ and ‘Oxen of the Sun’

In perhaps the most ambitious evening’s reading so far, Navan Ulysses Reading Group will tackle two substantial chapters of Ulysses on May 17^th. The group kicks off at 6:30pm sharp in Navan Library and all are welcome.

Nausicaa, the thirteenth chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses is set on Sandymount Strand and sets in parallel two arenas of action. Gerty McDowell, ‘in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see’, flirts with ‘the man in black’ close by on the beach. As things between the mutual voyeurs heat up, so also do the references to the other scene of action central to the chapter: the ceremony of Exposition and Benediction in the nearby Star of the Sea church. In a beautiful conflation of sex and spirit, the mid-summers day draws to the end of its daylight hours.

As we journey back into the city in the book’s fourteenth chapter – Oxen of the Sun – things take on a distinctly different hue.  Set in a drinking cubbyhole secreted in a Maternity Hospital, the linguistic style of the chapter itself seems to gestate and develop from beginning to end. An immensely challenging read, we will be dipping into and out of the more decipherable bits of this mammoth literary achievement which brings Bloom and Stephen ever closer to their [re-]union.

See you there – Tuesday at 6:30!

3rd May 2011: chapter twelve – ‘Cyclops’

“I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D. M. P. at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Joe Hynes. ...”

Navan Ulysses Reading Group continues tomorrow night [Tuesday] 3^rd of May with a reading of the uproarious Cyclops chapter. Bloom turns up at Barney Kiernan’s pub on Little Britain Street on an errand of mercy only to be accosted and falsely accused by his fellow Dubliners lead by ‘The Citizen’. The cyclops-Citizen [modelled on Michael Cusack, founder of the G.A.A.] is one of the most memorable characters in Joyce’s novel and his haranguing and eventual attack of Bloom is one of the most memorable pieces of writing in Joyce’s entire body of work.   

Join us for an evening of sheer fun and enjoyment tomorrow evening from 6:30 onwards in Navan Library.

All welcome, suggested donation €5.