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Philip Kitcher on James Joyce's Ulysses

Episode 15

No One Is Anything

Featuring Philip Kitcher

Audio episode · 15 min

Philip Kitcher on Ulysses

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A cloud crosses the sun on Westmoreland Street, and Leopold Bloom decides that no one is anything. Philip Kitcher reads that sentence, in the eighth episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, Lestrygonians, and refuses to take it at face value. First he goes back ten years, to a windy night and a supper of mutton and chutney, and makes a case for the Blooms' marriage that most critics decline to make. Then he follows Bloom to a Sunday walk by the Tolka, where a hummed song and a touched arm start to mean something new. What is Bloom's pessimism for? Kitcher thinks the answer lies closer to home than the stars.

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O, I So Want to Be a Mother: The Man Who Gives Birth in Joyce and Shelley

Both novels put a man in labor. Philip Kitcher's Joyce makes him the book's tenderest wish; Charlotte Gordon's Shelley makes him its original sin.

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No Voltaire: Joyce's Priest, Voltaire's Pangloss, and Two Ways of Not Asking

Philip Kitcher calls the Jesuit who blesses a barge of turf a second Pangloss; Salman Rushdie's Voltaire fought Jesuits all his life. One drowned ship each.

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Why Is the Funeral in Ulysses So Funny? Comedy and Death in Joyce's Hades

Ulysses is funny on purpose, Kitcher argues: in Hades, comedy and death share a carriage, and laughter keeps Joyce's seriousness honest.

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The Interior Monologue: How Joyce Puts You Inside Stephen, Bloom, and Molly

The interior monologue is the engine of Ulysses, Kitcher argues: language attuned to each character, opening Stephen, Bloom, and Molly to the reader.

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The Dead and the Yes: Joyce's Two Endings in Mercy

For Banville and Kitcher, 'The Dead' and Molly's 'yes' are the same turn: Joyce ending both Dublin books in mercy, holding the living and the dead together.

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Dublin as a City of the Mind

Kitcher and Banville converge on Joyce's Dublin as a city of the mind: Banville's paralyzed Dubliners, and Kitcher's Bloom, the man who chose freedom.

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Antisemitism and Belonging in Ulysses: Whose Country Is It?

Kitcher names the antisemitism around Bloom and its engine, 'Boys' Club Morality': Dublin excludes its most decent man for the very virtues it lacks.

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