Ulysses "Seen" - Telemachus, Episode Two!

"He's the only man in Dublin has it. A dark horse." Like Bloom we're a bunch of bloody dark horses ourselves, and so it is that Ulysses Seen henceforward is a creation of Throwaway Horse LLC. Who are we? Rob Berry the artist of course, and Mike Barsanti, your faithful guide, and Josh Levitas, breathing life into these lumps of clay, and Chad Rutkowski, the lawyer lurking in the shadows. But why an LLC? Because we really like this format. We hope you will really like this format. And we hope that Ulysses, the first hyper-text novel, will prove a catalyst for presenting other magnificent works of intimidating literature in the same kind of explicatory, direct-to-your-mind style as what we are doing with Ulysses Seen.

Art by Gabe Ostley

Each of us loves this book, and it kills us that it has gotten the reputation for being inaccessible to everyone besides the English professors who make their careers teaching the book to future English professors who will make their careers doing the same. 'Tweren't supposed to be that way. It is a funny, sometimes obscene (but not in the legal sense), book about the triumphs and failures of hum drum, every day life. It makes heroes out of schlubs and cuts the epic down to size. And its elitist reputation has placed it well on its way to being as relevant to our cultural currency as conjugating Latin.

What these guys have done is remove the unnecessary obstacles. Rob eases us into turn of the (20th) century Ireland through the familiar language of comic books. And Mike uses the infinite resources of the web (not to mention his own estimable insight) to tame the million and one references and allusions in the book to the point where they'll fetch your slippers and the morning paper. You're going to see the increasing importance and the increasing integration (what's that?) of the blog posts with the text, you're going to see the format evolve into something interactive, and you're going to see the format leap from your desktop and onto your cell phone and beyond. So stick with us. Your patience will be rewarded.

But we can make more irrationally exuberant promises at a later time. Let's move on to why you came here in the first place.

And what a change in tempo this next installment offers, divorced from exuberance of any kind. We leave Mulligan and his clowning and get a taste for what makes the jejune jesuit so fearful. Stephen's overwrought musings about the past heartless bullying of a fellow student soon turn darker, and we find ourselves as trapped by the specter of the agonizing death of Stephen's mother as Stephen himself. And it is here that Rob's talent asserts itself, focusing the narrative punch for our movie-addled minds on the foreboding visions that plague Stephen, gripping us with the same images that are gripping Stephen.

Mike will take you more thoroughly through this segment, please make sure you've signed up for the blog posts.

And remember, should shimmering bowls of black bile be something you find happens to match your dining room drapes, original artwork is available here.