Riddled with Factual Holes

A new star over Stratford, a room that has stopped objecting, and a young man who is now making it up as he goes. This is James Joyce's Scylla and Charybdis, the ninth episode of Ulysses, and Philip Kitcher has reached the moment where Stephen Dedalus's Shakespeare theory becomes pure performance. Kitcher checks the big finish against the astronomy and reads the few bitter lines Stephen keeps to himself. Then he follows Stephen out onto the library steps and asks what the Homeric title, a monster on one side and a whirlpool on the other, is really about. His answer is not the one Stephen fears.