I will finish Ulysses eventually. I thought I took a long break between episodes 6 and 7, but took a longer break between 7 and 8. The goal of the big book project is to have something stick around in my mind for the year—War and Peace did that, but I was finished with the actual reading by February. Still, my friend Sara (

Every few episodes of Ulysses, I feels like I think “this must be the peak of how much we languish over food and digestion.” But in episode 8, we’ve reached a new height.

Stephen has exited the narrative, for now, and we’ve returned to Leopold’s stream of consciousness, with only a few exits, like the structure of episode 5. He’s been put off eating lunch by his various errands and now he’s hungry. The corresponding Odyssey story is the Lestrygonians, who Odysseus’ men meet after being waylaid by Aeolus’ wind. Nearly all of his ships are destroyed by these men-eating giants and the crews are all eaten, except those men that stayed with Odysseus and his ship in a protected cove. Leopold watches other men indulge in the base bodily desires and he side steps danger, eating a cheese sandwich.

In the accompanying schema, associated with the episode we have “peristaltic prose” as the “technique” and “esophagus” as the “organ.” As far as I can tell, “peristaltic prose” means nothing outside of Joyce combing the words, with peristaltic referring to the type of muscle movement in the digestive tract that moves material through a tube. Our prose here digests the infinite number of food references and nearly all thoughts return to food in some way.

In contrast to the other episode so far that was nearly entirely in Leopold’s head, I did feel like a lot “happened” here, though I am still unsure of that verb choice. Something “happening” in Ulysses means that I see a reference that I know Means Something in the arc of the novel, an illuminative connection to what Joyce is saying about one of his grand themes.

But I’m a romance novel lover, first and foremost, and in this episode we get one of the first truly romantic passages in Ulysses.

In a long unbroken paragraph, Leopold starts considering how humans determine and communicate which foods are safe, how appetizing berries might be poisonous, while oysters which are “Unsightly like a clot of phlegm” are enjoyed and an aphrodisiac. Then he begins to imagine a multi course meal, where he is a waiter, describing all the impossibly decadent menu items, while also recalling the working class men who would be responsible for sourcing the ingredients.

Leopold interrupts this daydream when he sees “stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.” The flies are presumably copulating. This made me think of “The Flea” by John Dunne because I misremembered the central metaphor in “The Flea” by John Dunne.1 But this makes Leopold think of an earlier, happier meal with Molly Bloom.

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman’s breasts full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.

Me. And me now.

Stuck, the flies buzzed.

Leopold recalls an afternoon of love making with Molly and all the gross digestion that we’ve gotten so far in the book, including a scene where Leopold goes to the bathroom is now connected to sexual attachment. Two of the overarching metaphors are now in alignment, if momentarily. The process of digestion and consumption aligns with the fruition and creation associated with sex when Molly gives Leopold masticated seed cake from her mouth before they make love in the outdoors.

The importance of decadent food in romance stories and the connection between food and sex, particularly in literature is well trod ground. I’m reading Skye O’Malley by Bertrice Small right now and my takeaway is how Small does all these things in other romance novels, but takes them to the nth degree. Here’s some of the food at a wedding feast: “huge bowls of raw oysters,” “platters of prawns and shrimp boiled in white whine and herbs,” “whole sea trout broiled and stuffed, first with salmon and then with smaller fresh-water trout, and finally with small shellfish,” “whole swans,” “capons with a lemon-ginger sauce,” “larded ducks,” “plump golden broiled pigeons,” “whole baby lambs,” “sides of half-cooked beef dripping their fat and bloody juices,” etc., etc.

There are multiple weddings in the book, so there are iterative catalogs of foods, dependent on the setting and circumstances of the wedding. There’s a combined sensuality and disgust associated with the meal described at a wedding between Skye O’Malley and her (first) reviled betrothed—it signals at the excess in and corruption of her first marriage.

The sexiest food based romance I’ve ever read is Delicious by Sherry Thomas, who I think excels as the exclusion of sort of grody elements of life that make romance simultaneously grimier and hotter. Like she’s one of the only authors I’ve ever read that includes references to bodily functions and there’s a great central image of a taxidermied dormouse in Ravishing the Heiress that gets death in the door in way that usually happily ever after mandate cuts off. But Delicious is a romance between a chef/cook and the brother of her long time employer/former lover. The plot itself is a dual timeline and it gets a little confusing with an hidden identity, but the core romance centers on Verity, the chef, being able to unlock a sensuality through food, hidden within ascetic Stuart Somerset.

To return to Ulysses, Leopold thinks of the meal with Molly after he has met an old lover, Mrs. Breen and they discuss a mutual acquaintance, Mina Purefoy, who has been in labor for three days. After they separate, Leopold returns to the thought of Mrs. Purefoy’s painful labor. He remembers Molly’s unceremonious labors and is grateful for them, but the undercurrent of all the talk of pregnancy and excess is that Leopold and Molly have lost a child. This is the precipitating event that changes their marriage so acutely that it has led to today, the day where Leopold is out of the house so that Molly can conduct an affair.

This is the contrast between the “me” that Molly kissed in Leopold’s romantic, if earthy and indecorous memory, and the contrasting “me now” who is wandering around Dublin, waiting for his cuckold window to pass.

On the Blooms and Barnacles post about the Lestrygonians episode, I read a quotation from Joyce to his friend Frank Budgen that “Bloom should grow upon the reader throughout the day.” And I am at the point where I just like hanging out with Leopold. I love when he flubs an understanding of science, I love he sweetly thinks of Molly and then distracts himself so he doesn’t have to think of the affair, and I get mad when he walks away and everyone describes as a nice enough fellow, but someone feels the need to remind everyone that he is a Jew and any compliment needs to a come with an asterisk.

I do know that the next episode “Scylla and Charybdis” is a much beloved episode,2 and we’re returning firmly to Stephen’s mind. Whenever I think of Stephen Dedalus, “Little Freak” by Harry Styles plays in my head, 3 so as much as I love Leopold, I am excited to get back to that guy.