Re:Joyce Episode 324 - Tarts & Garters

Can Mr. Bloom arrest his anguished thoughts?

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Comments

[Kenny Mann]

It's getting easier to understand what might have been going on with my Quebeqois Catholic and Irish Catholic great-great-grandparents in San Rafael CA -- before most of the French people drifted away from their now unremembered dominant role in the town. Washed in vacillations of creed and rinsed.

[Jerome Rainey]

Happy Bloomsday 2016 all!

I have a question for Frank and the listeners: how do we know that Blazes Boylan is going to shtup Molly at 2 pm? Frank mentions that exact time (or sometimes 3 pm) many times during the podcasts, as if it were a settled matter. I went back over the breakfast scene and couldn't find any mention of a time. Molly's behavior (hiding the letter under the pillow) is certainly suspicious, and Leopold is clearly anguished.

But why 2 o'clock? If I were to infer a time, I might have assumed he was coming at 11, while Leopold is at the funeral. Molly even asks him about it right after mentioning (admitting) that he's coming over to bring the programme.

I haven't read ahead, and I know Frank usually doesn't like spoilers: is this an exception?

[Steve Klinck]

I was wondering: First-time readers are not privy to the up-coming assignation, are they? So, the references to Molly's infidelity would be very obscure. Who is Blazes Boylan in the street and why do we care? This is especially true lately with Nosey's comments. What would a first-time reader make of the cryptic: "Then about six o'clock I can. Six. Six. Time will be gone then. She."? So, did Mr. Delaney deliberately decide to reveal what will only be revealed in Molly's last chapter thoughts? (or am I wrong and the assignation can be deduced from the letter in chapter 4?) Anyway, I am/was glad to have been tipped off, so that I understood the text so much better. It has been so pleasant to go through the book again.

[Peter Chrisp]

Molly's told him that Boylan is coming at four with the concert programme.

We only learn this bit by bit.

In Calypso we hear her say directly 'He's bringing the programme'

There was a later conversation before he leaves the house which he remembers in the Hades episode.

'He's coming in the afternoon. Her songs.'

In Lotus Eaters he thinks generally about what's going to happen 'Mrs Marion...Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless'.

But the specific time - four pm is only revealed in the Sirens episode: "At four, she said." A thought running through the chapter: "At four. . . . At four she. . . . At four he. All said four. . . . At four."

[Peter Chrisp]

'Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his? Wasting time explaining it to Flynn's mouth.'

On the subject of Tom Rochford's invention, Eamonn Finn tracked down the original 1909 patent for it (James Joyce Broadsheet June 2008), which you can download here:

https://goo.gl/yxkt1Y

'A programme indicator for variety theatres &c. shows the turn to be presented next and the turns that are over. A circular carrier of tin, wood, &c., Fig. 7, surrounded by flanges and strips of india-rubber, cork, &c., carries, pivoted at its axis f, a weighted disk, bearing a number or the like.'

Finn argues that Joyce must have been given a demonstration of the invention by Rochford, probably when he visited Dublin in 1909 to open the Volta cinema (coincidentally Rochford's patent was accepted the day the Volta opened).

Finn also tracked down a court case between Rochford and the Dublin Theatre Company, who experimented with the invention, but then replaced it with a system using electrical lights. Rochford claimed that they'd taken his idea. Rochford lost.

Although Frank tells us what the device did, the ordinary reader doesn't find out what that 'invention of his' means until p191 of the Gabler edition, when we see Rochford demonstrating it to Flynn, McCoy and Lenehan.

[Peter Chrisp]

Read more about Tom Rochford's invention here

http://www.jjon.org/joyce-s-environs/rochford

The patent is set up for downloading here

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?FT=D&date=19100428&DB=&locale=en_EP&CC=GB&NR=190930606A&KC=A&ND=1