Lost the Straight Way

A circus clown walked up to Leopold Bloom's seat and called him father. Bloom tells that story to Stephen in the small hours of James Joyce's Ithaca, the seventeenth episode of Ulysses, as proof that the past cannot be changed, and Philip Kitcher thinks it is not about the past at all. He reads the clown, a marked coin, and the offer of a bed as a man circling a question about his own marriage that he cannot put plainly. Then the two men go out under the stars, the questioner answers everything and tells you nothing, and Bloom, alone, opens a drawer that holds his father's last letter.

Content note: this episode includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you love is struggling, or thinking about suicide, you don't have to carry it alone. In the United States, you can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any time, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. Outside the United States, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential support lines by country.