As is well known, the book has two heroes, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. As a gross generalization, Bloom is body while Dedalus is mind. We are told what Bloom likes to eat (“the inner organs of beasts and fowls”), and what he does indeed eat, during the course of the day. By contrast, Stephen at one point (Chapter 16, late at night) states that he hasn’t eaten anything since the previous day.
For this, my second go-round with Ulysses, undertaken in this Covidian year which makes hermits of all of us, I decided not to read it at all. Instead, I listened to the large-cast, multi-voiced, sound-effected reading done by Irish state broadcaster RTÉ back in 1982, the James Joyce 100th anniversary year. (You can find this spectacular audiobook here.) The novel can be intimidating on the page, but hearing it performed gives it a whole new dimension, a livelier, more inviting one. An enveloping, sensual dimension.
But the audio experience, just by itself, wasn’t enough. If you were sitting in one of the pubs mentioned in the book – in Larry O’Rourke’s or Davy Byrne’s, watching and hearing the cast of characters as they passed through – wouldn’t you feel a libation might be appropriate? And so, I accompanied each chapter with its own beverage, and (scandalously enough) more than one in the case of the longer chapters.
The action of Ulysses begins early in the morning of June 16, 1904. The banter of Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, and the fresh sea air, put me in a coffee mood. In this case, it was Signature Select House Blend, sold by Jewel, the local grocery store. This really is a case where “store brand” is better than name brands. Even my wife, who claims to be unable to tell the difference between types of coffee, commented on how good it tasted.
By the time I got to Chapter 4 (“Calypso”), where Leopold Bloom and his large appetites are introduced, I was still drinking coffee, because Bloom was in breakfast mode and so was I. By now I had switched to Lavazza Gran Selezione, in honor of Joyce’s long residence in Trieste and his love of Italian literature. However, Bloom’s breakfast preferences (“grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine”) are most definitely not mine. I stuck with oatmeal.
As we moved into midday, I felt the need for a change of beverage, but it had to be gradual. As Bloom went about his ad-selling business and began thinking about lunch, I relaxed with a glass of Camp Coffee Break, a coffee stout brewed by the downstate Illinois brewery Triptych. The smoky and intense blend of coffee and chocolaty smoothness was a perfect accompaniment to Joyce’s transition from morning to afternoon. I was sure that the Guinness-gulping denizens of the Dublin pubs would have appreciated this one if they’d had the chance to try it.
Chapter 12 (“Cyclops”) actually takes place in a pub, so the choice of tipple was in a sense predetermined. At the start, I went with an old favorite: Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro, a dark, smooth brew that goes down easily, suitable for post-lunch banter. I followed up with something lighter, the American pale ale Chilly Water, from Tighthead Brewery in a town not far from me, Mundelein. This fruity brew energized me for the rest of Bloom’s afternoon.
In Chapter 13, Bloom “commits adultery in his heart” (as Jimmy Carter would have put it) with Gerty MacDowell. To accompany this, I chose Neapolitan Milk Stout, by Saugatuck Brewing of Michigan. The chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavors made a good match to the sweet, florid, overheated language of this chapter. To make it even more appropriate, this beer won the Silver Medal at the Dublin Craft Beer Cup in 2017.
One of the densest stretches of prose ever written, Chapter 14 recapitulates the history and development of the English language in a series of parodic episodes. For this, I required an equally dense beer with a sense of history: Old Rasputin Russian imperial stout, made by North Coast Brewing, of Fort Bragg, California. It’s supposedly inspired by a beer created by English brewers in 18th-century Russia, who had been brought in for that purpose by Catherine the Great. During our big drive down the West Coast last year, we stopped at this very brewery for lunch, and I was able to pose for a photo with the life-sized cardboard cutout of Rasputin in their gift shop.
Night closes in shortly thereafter, and to fit the mood, I greeted “the heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit” (Chapter 17) while slowly sipping another elegant brew from Triptych, namely, Nü Troll, described by the brewery as an imperial stout in which “incredibly dark, bitter, semi-sweet chocolate mingles with a strong hint of peanuts, marshmallow, caramel and vanilla.” Then it’s time for bed with Leopold and Molly Bloom. For my nightcap, I chose Fat Pug Oatmeal Stout by Maplewood Brewery. It produces “a complex yet mellow flavor” that is perfect for inducing a good night’s sleep.
Although the action of Ulysses takes place in a single day, I do not recommend trying the above program in a single day. I took about three weeks to do it.