...more

Almost at once among the groups of visitors the beanpole unanimously baptized as the "man with the Macintosh" (a Macintosh computer, that is) stood out, the machine he was frequently to consult slung over his shoulder, although he never said a word. His exact opposite was also immediately visible, thanks to the great flabby rolls of his humanity and his affable demeanor. This fifty year old with a Yankee nasal drawl presented himself to left and right as Professor Ludwig Jones, Phi Beta Kappa, like some great bear or Orsonwellian Falstaff about to burst the seams of his lizard-green tweed suit.

A gaggle of lost Japanese ladies goggled at each other and cried triumphantly: Nora! then fired off their cameras, Mari-on!, as they entered the labyrinth of screens and panels where photographs and captions offered a detailed chronology of The Works and Days of James Joyce.



The ABC of Ulysses

Flanked by the rotund Professor Jones on my right, and the strange Macintosh man still staring at his computer screen on my left, we began to gather round the Cicerone. The circle was unbroken by three readers carrying (each one, one each) a volume of the monumental illustrated edition of Ulysses in three parts: a lanky gent with a white-flecked beard wearing prehistoric white overalls; to his left, the slender form of a dark-haired girl poured into in a pair of white shorts, cropped hair and laughing black eyes ("eyes of the night") over the indigo "Ulysses Museum" T-shirt, fronted and back-sided by Joyce; to her left, a few paces away, wrapped in a grayish coat with bulging pockets, the tiny old man with white locks and crackling breath, sucking on an extinguished pipe.

The mature reader (did she call him Ananias?), the young female reader (Babel or Belle?), and the old critic. Let's call them A, B, and C, for short.



Eminent Homerians

At the back of the first antechamber, we were now contemplating the painting Joyce Contemplating the Bust of Homer. This depicts the author of Ulysses lost in thought, left hand at his waist, and right hand resting on the marmoreal garlanded head of the author of the Odyssey.

Here’s Homer, A exclaimed in Latin, and his disciple.

Both of them in blind men’s glasses, B said.

Homerici oculi, Professor Jones chimed in, also practicing his Latin. Eminent Homerians.