The Second Eye Winks

Thirty-odd times in Cyclops, the twelfth episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, the story in Barney Kiernan's pub stops and another voice takes over: a lawyer, a travel writer, a procession of saints. Philip Kitcher thinks the interruptions do real work, and that the word cyclops names something a philosopher can define. He explains why the asides are there, finds a familiar set of names hidden inside one of them, and wonders who in that pub has one eye. His answer takes in the citizen, the narrator, Martin Cunningham and Leopold Bloom, and then turns to the man who wrote the chapter's final sentence, and asks how many eyes he has.