Wednesday, February 17, 2016 // The Statement
4B

Telemachus: 8:11 a.m.
The epic begins with a ringing phone.
I pull my pink comforter off of my body, climb 

out of bed and answer the phone. I open my front 
door to find Kelli, a fellow “Ulysses” reader. Kelli 
has dark hair, a nose ring and a wide smile. I 
realize I’ve never actually had a conversation 
with her.

For our final exam in John Whittier-

Ferguson’s class on James Joyce, we will be 
reading all of Joyce’s “Ulysses” aloud. I offered 
my apartment as a starting location because the 
novel opens in a tower, and I live on the 10th 
floor. It’s not Dublin, but I do have a pretty good 
view of the Diag.

Kelli and I make awkward small talk in my 

kitchen until Yardain walks in, unannounced. 
Yardain was one of my first friends freshman 
year, and now, in the middle of our senior year, 
our relationship has an easy familiarity. Proving 
this point, he immediately begins cracking eggs 
into a large glass measuring bowl. Watching 
him, I realize I’ve made my first error of the day.

“Oh no!” I say. “I don’t have olive oil.”
“It’s fine,” Yardain says. “It’ll be fine.”
I don’t listen. I played a key part in organizing 

our group’s reading, and I can’t shake the feeling 
that I’m going to mess it up somehow.

I race downstairs, walk to 7-Eleven and 

buy some spray oil. I find that the weather is 
unseasonably warm for mid-December. When I 
get back, Yardain delegates me to the vegetables. 
I begin chopping up onions, mushrooms and red 
peppers as group members file in. There are 12 
of us in total.

My apartment is small, and soon every chair 

is accounted for. Three people sit at the kitchen 
counter, four on the couches and two in desk 
chairs I stole from bedrooms.

David joins Yardain and I behind the kitchen 

counter. David is the English major version of a 
class clown. In class, he openly begins questions 
with, “So, say I haven’t done the reading…” We 
all love him, including John, our professor. 
Actually, I think John loves him most.

David begins making bacon, which he picked 

out when we went grocery shopping yesterday. 
He reminds me a bit of Leopold Bloom, the 
protagonist of “Ulysses.” Both eat pork for 
breakfast even though they are Jewish. Both are 
unconquered heroes.

The premise of “Ulysses” is this: Bloom 

walks around Dublin, Ireland for an entire day. 
He believes his wife, Molly, is cheating on him 
at home and refuses to return until late into 
the night. We plan to mirror Bloom’s progress. 
We’re going to walk all over Ann Arbor as we 
read, trying to spend each chapter somewhere 
similar to where Bloom was in Dublin.

All 18 chapters of “Ulysses” are named after 

and based on chapters in Homer’s “Odyssey.” 
“Ulysses” is a modern-day epic.

At some point in the morning, someone 

begins reading.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the 

stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a 
mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing 
gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind 
him by the mild morning air.

The reading progresses smoothly from one 

person to another. The sound mixes with the 
sizzling of the bacon and the pouring of coffee. It 
all feels calming, like a bedtime story.

Some people are better readers than others. 

One group member, Nick, is particularly 
fantastic. It seems he was born to read “Ulysses” 
aloud.

As Nick reads, I pack my backpack. 

Throughout the day, Bloom keeps with him a bar 
of lemon soap and a crumpled up letter. I pack 
smarter, albeit nearly as light: a zip-lock bag of 
goldfish, a phone charger and a small notebook.

We finish the first two chapters, which are 

relatively short, and everyone begins to cheer.

“Shut up and read,” David exclaims.
And we do. Someone begins reading the third 

chapter as we all stand up and put our coats on.

It is time to leave my island behind. I lock the 

door behind me and feel an ocean of uncertainty 
ahead of me. Who will I be when I return?

***

English Professor John Whittier-Ferguson is 

sitting in his office eating a bagel with cheese.

John is tall, thin and undeniably heroic. He is 

dressed in a royal blue button-down paired with 
dark wash jeans.

Every two years, on average, John teaches a 

course devoted almost entirely to “Ulysses.” In 
the class, which I took in my Fall 2015 semester, 
we spent the first five weeks with Joyce’s 
“Dubliners” and “A Portrait of the Artist as a 
Young Man,” then dedicated a full nine weeks to 
“Ulysses.”

At the end of the course, students get together 

in groups and read “Ulysses” aloud from start 
to finish. Though optional, the reading stands 
in place of a final exam. Students who don’t 
participate take a written final that involves 
passage identification.

I ask John how the reading is graded.
“Everyone gets an A,” he says. “It’s so much 

harder than the exam.”

John’s office is a tribute to Joyce. The 

bookshelves are lined with secondary texts, like 
“Ulysses Annotated” and a full set of “Finnegans 
Wake” encyclopedias.

“Some books have these sort of cultish things 

around them and this is one of them,” John says 
of “Ulysses.”

He’s not wrong. “Ulysses” takes place on 

June 16, 1904, a day that has now been dubbed 
“Bloomsday,” in honor of Leopold Bloom. All 
over the world, in places from Canada to Croatia, 
people honor the book by reading it aloud, often 
in marathon readings like ours.

Bloomsday began in Dublin in 1954. The 

University’s tradition began 37 years later, in 
1991. John was just out of graduate school at 
Princeton University, and it was his first year 
teaching “Ulysses.” Three students — Ethan 
Goodman, Jessamyn Hatcher and David Zaft — 
floated the idea of a reading instead of a final.

“Like so many great things, it’s student-led 

and student-originated,” John says, modestly.

John is the type of professor who keeps in 

touch with his students after they graduate. 
Every time he mentions a “Ulysses” veteran, 
he follows their name with what they are doing 
now. Things like, “He went into the Peace 
Corps,” or “He’s back in town, applying for an 
MFA.”

I wonder, hopefully, if I will be one of these 

students in 10 years.

***

Proteus: 9:21 a.m.
We don’t want to split up, so all 12 of us crowd 

into one of my building’s two tiny elevators. The 
elevator travels two floors down then opens 
again. A boy stands still for a moment before 
entering.

“Is the other elevator broken?” he asks, 

confused as to why there are so many of us.

“Sure,” I tell him.
We reach the first floor and step out, like 

clowns getting out of a car. David reads as we 
walk through the Diag. His reading is quick, and 

An 

Ann Arbor 
Odyssey

it will only get quicker throughout the day. He is 
the fastest reader out of all of us.

It’s still early enough that the campus is 

pretty much deserted, and I feel peaceful as we 
walk. Soon, I’ll be graduating, leaving all of this 
behind. It feels right that I’m experiencing Ann 
Arbor, an old place, in a new way.

We end up in Mason Hall, sitting on the tiled 

floor with our books on our laps as students 
hurry past us, yawning on their way to their 10 
a.m. classes. Now, Yardain is reading. He keeps 
his voice deep and puts extra stress on every 
third word.

A wayward freshman approaches our group.
“Are you guys registering?” he asks.
“No,” we all chant in unison. He walks away, 

embarrassed.

As chapter three ends, I run upstairs to turn 

in a final paper for an English class. I hand it to 
my GSI, Dory, then tell her I can’t stay for our 
discussion, because I need to get back to my 
“Ulysses” reading. She doesn’t mind.

“I’ve heard of that before,” she says. “That is 

so cool!”

***

Calling Ethan Goodman, I feel as though I’m 

about to talk to a famous person. Twenty-five 
years ago, this man was ambitious enough to 
convince his English class to read all of “Ulysses” 
aloud. He now works at an important-sounding 
New York law firm.

Though John takes no credit for the creation 

of the reading, Ethan says John’s teaching style 
played a crucial part.

“The way John ran the class, which was really 

a collaborative discussion group more than 
anything else, seemed to naturally lend itself to 
a capstone that was more than sitting in a room 
and writing in a blue book,” Ethan says. 

I can stand behind this — John’s classroom 

does not feel like a place where there is a right 
answer. Rather than lecture at his students, 
John helps us to dig deeper into passages that 
interest us, leading us to unlock key parts of the 
text that may be difficult to access. A blue book 
exam does not seem the best way to assess how 
far a student has come with the text. 

Ethan and his classmates did the reading on 

half-Bloomsday — so December 16, 1991. At that 
point, students hadn’t yet begun to travel around 
Ann Arbor, trying to match Bloom’s path in 
Dublin.

“Back then it was all in one place,” Ethan tells 

me.

The things Ethan says about John’s class, 

“Ulysses” and Ann Arbor sound almost too 
familiar. It’s as if nothing has changed in all of 
these intervening years.

I ask Ethan how “Ulysses” has affected him 

over the years. It feels like I am about to hear my 
future.

“It seems to reveal itself in various ways 

depending on where you are in your life,” he 
says. “When you’re a student … it can be one 
thing, but later on, when you pick it back up, 
you’re going to see certain things in a whole 
different light just because you will have gained 
some life experience.”

***

Lestrygonians: 1:10 p.m.
A few chapters later, we’re all starving. In four 

hours, we trek all over campus. From Mason Hall 
we go to the cemetery on Observatory, where 
David sits on a grave and Yardain says, simply, 
“Don’t do that.” Then, we retrace our steps back 

to the Student Publications Building, where we 
all have chairs for the first time in a while.

Now, we’re at a long, Harry Potter-esque table 

in Pizza House, waiting for our food. It’s a Friday 
afternoon and the restaurant is predictably 
empty. Music plays overhead, but it can’t 
compete with the sound of us reading.

The 
waitress 
approaches 
and 
seems 

unflustered by our open books. It’s as if people 
come in here reading “Ulysses” every day. 
Honestly, I’m sure she’s seen weirder. We order 
two large pizzas — one vegetable, for non-
carnivores like myself, and one pepperoni.

Bloom is also eating lunch. A Gorgonzola 

cheese sandwich. An interesting choice for a 
man who ate pork kidneys for breakfast. My 
vegetarian pizza makes me feel closer to him. 
Greaseabloom.

There’s so much in “Ulysses” I’ll never get. 

Having studied the book for three decades, John 
recognizes this. He does not expect his students 
to understand the entire book. Part of the beauty 
of the marathon reading is that group members 
all come with their own backgrounds, and we all 
have certain parts we understand best.

“It’s hard to think of a book that’s harder to 

read in a college assembly of people, because it’s 
very hard to do on your own, even with good 
notes and all the best will in the world,” John 
says. “It’s one of those things that it really helps 
to be a part of a group, encouraging everybody 
together.”

At Pizza House, I sit next to Nick, the one 

who’s excellent at reading aloud. It turns out 
Nick has even more secret skills: He is a die-
hard Shakespeare fan. Lucky for me, I have been 
in the market for a Shakespeare fan. Joyce’s 
references to Shakespeare are nearly constant.

Nick begins to explain a theory about 

Hamlet that Joyce presents in “Ulysses”. When 
he finishes, I still don’t really get it, but I’m 
captivated anyway. Here I am, in Pizza House, 
reading “Ulysses” aloud and discussing theories 
on “Hamlet.” This, I think, this is the reason I 
became an English major.

***

John has a dream that, he admits, will never 

be realized. He imagines all of the generations 
of “Ulysses” marathon-readers will one day all 
stand in a room together, talking about the book.

In writing this article, I have sort of helped 

fulfill John’s dream. I keep reaching out to 
former readers, reminding them that they did 
this amazing, insane thing and I did it, too. We 
might be in completely different places in our 
lives, but we all have one thing in common: an 
almost unhealthy obsession with Joyce.

I have already talked to Ethan, a member of 

the first generation of readers. Next, I call Tom 
McBrien, who is of the most recent generation 
besides mine and a former Daily Copy Chief. 
He did the reading in the Winter 2015 semester. 
Though Tom and I are much closer together in 
years, his observations about the reading are 
completely in line with Ethan’s.

Tom gives a description of the reading 

that leaves me laughing out loud and nodding 
emphatically, though he can’t see me.

“It was like an English major hazing,” he says, 

seriously.

Like me, Tom did the reading in his 

senior year. He says, at the time he did it, the 
opportunity to wander all over Ann Arbor was 
particularly special. He knew that his time with 
these places was coming to an end.

“It’s kind of an emotional thing going to 

all these different places in Ann Arbor that 
I’ve been before, but meshing them with this 
incredible work of literature,” Tom tells me. “It 
became part of how I see the city.”

Like many of us, Tom’s experience with 

“Ulysses” has affected the way he sees the world. 
He says he’s found that “Ulysses” has this way of 
mirroring life in a way that’s almost spooky.

“There are so many things in it that are 

unforgettable and these things keep cropping 
up,” he says. “I don’t know what kind of wizard 
James Joyce was, but he found the most amazing 
way to capture so much of life in that book.”

***

Sirens: 4:32 p.m.
Eight hours in, the rhythm of the book 

becomes the rhythm of my thoughts. My 
thoughts 
are 
wandering. 
My 
wandering 

thoughts.

“Ulysses,” as a book, has a liveliness to it. 

The book presents thoughts and ideas that can’t 
be attributed to any character. It is, at turns, 
musical or mocking or angry or tired or sad.

“Sirens” does not abide by the laws of 

narrative, but by the laws of music. It has a 
prelude. It repeats words just for the sake of 
sound, and has random interludes everywhere. 

When we reach the prelude of Sirens, we 

are all standing on an Ann Street sidewalk. We 
gather in a circle and hold our books into the 
middle like hands in a cheer. We take turns 
reading single lines. It is windy with a slight chill. 
The words are a spirit, a possession jumping 
from person to person.

Bronze 
by 
gold 
heard 
the 
hoofirons, 

steelyringing.

Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
The thing about these lines is they start to 

make sense when read aloud. Hearing them, 
I realize that Joyce heard them, too. That a 
chapter relying on sound can’t make full sense if 
read silently.

“It shows me how much Joyce read it aloud 

in his head,” John says later. “He has a very 
amazing sense of the spoken word and the 
rhythm of things.”

I don’t doubt this. Joyce was a lot of things: 

novelist, poet, lover, father, closet atheist. He 
was also a singer and a pianist. In all of his works 
— from his short stories to his novels — there is 
distant music.

As of the late 1920s, scholars agreed that 

both Homer’s epics — “The Iliad” and “The 
Odyssey”— were probably the result not of 
one man’s genius, but of a centuries-long oral 
tradition. Homer was just the guy who thought 
to record them.

Joyce wanted to write an odyssey. And he 

took it one step further than I realized.

Photos by Grant Hardy / Daily

By Amabel Karoub, 
Daily Staff Reporter

Read more online at michigandaily.com

5B

A day with 
‘Ulysses’

