Top 7 Minor Characters in James Joyce's "Ulysses"

Having finally finished school for the semester, I would like to also finish out my "lists on a theme of one of my classes" by highlighting some of the smaller characters in James Joyce's intricate masterpiece of Dublin life, Ulysses.  Joyce's world is so fully-imagined that he often had full conceptions of characters of characters who are quite tangential to the main plot of the work.  Here is a look at some of my favorites.

7. Richie Goulding

Richie Goulding is the man who eats lunch at the Ormund Hotel with the protagonist Leopold Bloom.

6. Reggie Wylie

Reggie Wylie is the former boyfriend of Gertie MacDowell, who exposes herself on the beach to the protagonist Leopold Bloom.

5. Mrs. Mastiansky

Mrs. Mastiansky is the spouse of Mr. Mastiansky, whose sexual practices are discussed in a monologue of Molly Bloom, who is the wife of the protagonist Leopold Bloom.

4. Corey MacGee

Corey MacGee is estranged uncle of Andrew MacGee, who once courted Lily Gerber, who is the former owner of the chickadee named Davey Blondo, which has an imagined dialogue with the protagonist Leopold Bloom

3. Jim Cordoba

Jim Cordoba is the personal sous chef for Chef Barney Blago, who utters a curse upon God under the roof of Joanna Corleone, who once invalidated the checks of Jennifer Barf, who, before her sexual reassignment surgery, once had a gay relationship with Stephen Dedalus, who is the spiritual son of the protagonist Leopold Bloom.

2. Kevin Bacon

Kevin Bacon starred in Flatliners with Oliver Platt, who is the grandson of Kevin Platt, who came under scrutiny by the board of Dublin correctional facility director Jason Chilam, who threw his Bat Mitzvah at the house of Benny Goodman, who caught a bad cold due to a window left open by Gary Gygax, who created the favorite game of the protagonist Leopold Bloom.

1. Peter Mende-Siedlecki

Peter Mende-Siedlecki writes a list blog with Rob Trump, who, unknown to him, is the bastard nephew of Donald Trump, who once delivered the baby of Goody Proctor, who ate the entire apple inside a worm named Lowly Worm, who reversed the spin of the world with a super-cape made for him by Garth Brooks, who once dueted with Al Jolson, who is, in fact, a pseudonym of the protagonist Leopold Bloom.

Top 21 Things That Are Punk

Google Analytics has been a friggin' boon of list ideas, guys. Recently, someone searched "how to be punk" and landed on our site. Well, we at PaRMLoT are all about customer service. You wanted this list, so you got it!

That's right, it's time for a GOOGLE ANALYSTICS REQUEST LIST. (Also known as a GARL, I guess? Ew.)

21. Mom humor

Oh man. “Crappola”, “garbage” and “Target” pronounced with French affectations… moms are the best. I mean, so punk rock. Moms are so punk rock.

20. Holding hands

Human contact in general, really…

19. Canadian thanksgiving

What the heck, hosers! Thanksgiving in October? No formal connection to turkeys? A celebration of explorer Martin Frobisher not dying after failing to find the Northwest Passage? Ugh, PUNK.

18. Exposed brick and hardwood floors

You guys, my apartment is so punk rock.

17. Baco Bits

THEY ARE BACON BUT THEY ARE ALSO NOT BACON WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT.

16. The O.C. Season 2

You need to trust me here. Trust is also super-punk.

15. Polydactyl cats

Like my cat for instance. Yeti is so friggin’ punk, man. He’s always like, “You want me to stay off the table? EFF THAT, HUMANS.”

14. Vests

Listen up, sleeves. Y’all been made obsolete.

13. Tacit racism

Kinda punk, right?

12. Referendums

Direct democracy is so anti-establishment, even though it gives ultimate power to the majority. Hmm. THINK ON IT.

11. Putting dogs in sweaters

Look at that dog. He’s wearing people clothes. He’s practically people. Dogs aren’t people—but this one sure is trying. PAF, dude. Punk as fuck.

10. Country music

Dear everyone who hates on country without understanding what “country” is,

You are anti-punk. Country is my brother. We dine together at Canadian Thanksgiving. You can die now.

Hate, Punk

9. Grad school

Haha, nerds—looks like I’m applying to PUNK school this week.

8. Johnny Ramone, the one that became a Republican

Life imitates PUNK.

7. Transsexuals

The laws of nature have been given their due PUNK. (Surprisingly, the show Punk’d is so unpunk, it’s hilarious. We calculated it with science. It was hard.)

6. The Detroit Lions

0-12, baby. They don’t give a fuck and that is PUNK.

5. The sea

…has sharks in it. PUNK, OBV.

4. The unstoppable menace of time passing

Self-(PUNK)-explanatory.

3. Catchphrases

More like “Where’s the PUNK?!” (Answer: In advertising.)

2. Beethoven

9^th Symphony = PUNK BIBLE.

1. The “Circe” chapter of Ulysses

Oh, hello work of literature that has thus-far been a novel. This chapter is going to be in play-format. BIRTH OF PUNK.

Top 6 People Whose Work I Greatly Respect but Do Not Love

I can be a pretty big dick about stuff I don't like, I'll be honest.  And I can be pretty quick to call hackery on something that is critically adored but I think is crap--Quentin Tarantino, for existence, or Sam Kinison, or the TV show Weeds would never be on here; I think critics are all just plain wrong about their quality.  It takes a rather interesting type for me to feel this way about, but on occasion, I do:

6. Charles Dickens

Formally, he's a great writer.  He's strong with word choice, and he has about as good of a conception of character as any writer I know.  He just doesn't tell stories that I'm interested in.  At all.  "A Christmas Carol" is probably the best example of what I simultaneously admire and don't like about his work: it's a smart, moral tale, but one that doesn't in any way hit me as interesting, neither in character, nor message, nor (and especially on this one) structure.  I find it boring.  Well-told, but mundane.

5. Lenny Bruce

Lenny Bruce is someone whom I'd firmly place in the category of "satirist," and perhaps the last person to really be truly satirical about how we use language.  I distantly respect his work as "smart," but I don't think I've ever laughed at his stuff, even though I've laughed pretty hard at contemporaries of his like Bob Newhart.  It's not that his comedy feels "old" to me, it's just that it doesn't really hit me.  Perhaps the taboos he's breaking, which would have been funny then, just aren't funny becuase they no longer exist (because he broke them?).  In any case, whenever I listen to Bruce, I don't feel like it's because he's that funny, but just because he's "important."  Which, no doubt, he is.

4. Steve Martin

Steve Martin is probably named as an influence by more comedians that I like than any other comedian.  I just don't think he's that funny.  I get that he's doing really "out-there," self-consciously performative, often non-sequitur stuff before anyone else does, but it just doesn't really make me laugh.  I also think that he's a mediocre writer, and that Shopgirl was truly atrocious.  But mostly: his stand-up.  Interesting, and I get that comedians I like liked it, but it just doesn't do anything for me.

3. Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin is a group that clearly made a certain type of arena rock music with more skill and proficiency than anyone else has ever done.  I don't think they're untalented, neither do I think that they're hacks without any sense of melody or structure.  They're just...not a band that I'm interested in at all.  I can listen to the riff of "Ocean" and respect it as bitchin', or to the chorus of "Whole Lotta Love" and think that it is both catchy and truly rawk.  It's just music that is too guitar-y, too tied to a certain ethos that I don't identify with, and too...not making me ever want to come back to it...for me to really love.

2. Andy Kaufman

Andy Kaufman was probably the last person in current history--and may go down as the last person ever--to have a genuinely new concept of comedy from what came before.  He had a really firm conviction that comedy was never "in your head," and he only wanted to get the gut, uncontrollable laughs that came from genuine surprise.  Which is a pretty cool concept: anyone who really sticks to their guns on what they seriously believe is funny and doesn't cave into "cheap laughs," whatever they think those are, is pretty respectable to me.  Problem: I don't find Kaufman that funny.  His stand-up mostly strikes me as reaching, and while I think he's funnier on Taxi, he supposedly thought that was the biggest sell-out move of his career.  Still, it's almost impossible for me not to have respect for someone who has this strong a commitment to their comedic art (to the point of living his life as a massive joke), even if that isn't one that really resonates with me.

1. James Joyce

I'm currently reading Ulysses for a class (just to brag a little), and it's not like I actively dislike it.  I think some of the stuff he's doing is pretty cool, and I have great respect for the massive amount of work that goes into something like this.  He obviously has a clear picture of almost everything minute about the lives of his characters, and he's doing extremely innovative stuff to examine them.  I just...am not really interested in intensely oblique storytelling.  Or rather: I'm not very interested in stories that don't exist at all on the surface level.  What I'm trying to say is that chapters of Ulysses are pretty cool--once you've read them three times and then had them explained to you.  Contrast this with Gravity's Rainbow, which is immensely entertaining even if you just understand the surface level, then gets better the more you look at and consider it.  Ulysses doesn't have a surface level.  It's not that it's not brilliant--from a formal perspective, it clearly is--but I wish it was a lot more basically accessible and enjoyable.

Oh, and also: supposedly Joyce used to always ask people if they thought his books were funny.  Ulysses isn't funny.  Sorry, but burying a dumb scatalogical joke in several layers of complexity doesn't make it any better than a dumb scatological joke.  Again, my comparison: Pynchon is hilarious.  Joyce is extremely well put-together, but really not funny.  Oh, another thing: man, I really did fucking love that bird girl passage from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  I just can't bring myself to love Joyce as a whole.