Windy Words

Noon at the newspaper, and the presses are so loud that the foreman answers with a nod. Episode seven of James Joyce's Ulysses, Aeolus, is the book's hour of wind, and Philip Kitcher reads it as a test of where talk works: on the shop floor, in the din, or in the editor's office, where every word carries and the wits perform. Bloom tries again to collect a small debt from Joe Hynes. Stephen stands by with a letter in his pocket and four lines of verse in his head. Kitcher follows the lines back to where they were written, and to what Stephen decides they are worth.