I'm describing my big Bloomsday Halifax project by writing up what I did for each episode. In this entry, I'm covering Episode 12 of "Ulysses": "Cyclops".
Cyclops is a fascinating episode in "Ulysses". In it an unnamed narrator, often referred to by critics as "the Citizen", has a rowdy conversation at Barney Kierghan's pub, veering into fervent Irish nationalism and culminating in an anti-semitic attack against Bloom. The Citizen's narration alternates with another voice, ludicrously high-flown and overwrought, expanding every side reference and dirty joke into mythic proportions. The juxtaposition of the crass voice and the heroic voice is often bitingly ironic and frequently hilarious.
I had many different ideas of what to do for this episode. The Citizen's argumentative and crass style reminded me a lot of the kind of discourse one sees in online discussions on Reddit or X/Twitter. I thought of having some kind of social media integration that would send walls of verbiage to trolls, like a literary copypasta:
Online Troll: Delete your account.
Cyclops Bot: The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli's scale, and there is no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn's Quay ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres, two roods and one square pole or perch. All the lordly residences in the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive. From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials, crest, coat of arms and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the giant's causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed southwest by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a special *missa pro defunctis* shall be celebrated simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly called away from our midst.
But with the collapse and splintering of social media over the last year, especially with the shutting down of open APIs, this seemed impractical.
I also had trouble figuring out where to set this episode in Halifax. Barney Kierghan's is a bit of a hole-in-the-wall dive with a rowdy clientele. I don't tend to go to those kinds of places anymore. I ended up settling on Stillwell on Barrington, an iconic downtown standby and part of the revival of Barrington ten years of so ago. It's certainly not a dive bar, but sometimes has more of a laddish hipster crowd than some other places.
Unsure of how to adapt argumentative racist attacks and surreal grandstanding into a visit to a craft beers place, I decided instead to focus on another printed item that people could collect or enjoy on site. There are several mentioned in the chapter, including a collection of job application letters from hangmen, but I finally settled on something that came out really well, but also get way out of hand: A reproduction of the latest issue of The Police Gazette.
— And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police Gazette with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint.
— Give us a squint at her, says I.
And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor.
The Police Gazette was a weekly 16-page news magazine with a laddish bent, featuring stories about boxers and criminals, and risqué-for-the-time photos of gymnasts and vaudeville performers. It turns out that Archive.org has microfiche scans of decades of issues!
The June 11 1904 edition probably wouldn't have made it from New York to Dublin by the 16th, but it had more interesting articles, including Jui-Jitsu lessons! So I decided to see if could print up a few copies, recreating the old physical object from 120 years ago.
Some research revealed that the original issue itself was roughly 18" high by 12" wide. I checked with my friends at The Printing House to see if they could do double-sided folded prints on cheap 18"x24" newsprint-style paper, and it turns out that wasn't the kind of thing they do. Instead we just printed double-sided on somewhat thin 18"x12" white paper and I stapled them together.
I think one of the things that fascinates me about "Ulysses" is it's an obsessively detailed snapshot view of a specific moment and place in history. I enjoy the book as much because I'm a history buff as I'm a literature buff. Reading through the scans of the Police Gazette let me feel a bit like I was back in that time too. But there was going to be a problem with printing it: the scanning process didn't do very well with the pictures. The cover was especially disappointing:
I tried doing web searches to see if there were any other pictures around of "Vera Curtis" but had no luck. Squinting I could sort of see some lacy fringes. I decided to see if Dall-E could help. The new version lets you converse back-and-forth with it to refine your image ideas. I gave it the raw caption and then specified it should be black-and-white and look like a magazine photograph. I was curious what the caption meant by describing her as a "Panama Girl", as the US had only just taken over the Panama Canal project a month or so before, and the big hype wouldn't be for another decade or so. Still, after some prompt experiments and back-and-forth it gave me this particularly striking image, which I made a bit high-contrast and grainy in Pixelmator (to cover up some of that "AI glow" that was still peeking through) and then put it on the front page.
This is one of those projects I just go back and look at every so often just because it looks so impressive. I know that deep down I didn't technically create that image, but I did prompt and curate it, which counts for something!
I got a dozen or so copies printed up and brought them with me when I went out for lunch and drinks with friends. There was appropriate oohing and aahing, but then we noticed that somehow I had completely misread the caption: Vera is showing the latest style of an up-to-date PAJAMA girl! Not Panama, but Pajama! I fired up Pixelmator again and twiddled with the darkness and contrast until I could get a better sense of the original. Yup it's pajamas!
In retrospect, the generated cover image, while striking, is perhaps a bit too classy for the Police Gazette. It's still a favourite, and I think it makes a much stronger impression than the original.
I considered replacing or upgrading more of the pictures in magazine, but I was already getting way too deep into this Police Gazette project and it was taking up far too much of my time. I had 17 other episodes to figure out–not to mention my regular work as well! I did manage to add a few AI-generated images of pit bulls and their moustachioed owners. Through the magic of Google and DuckDuckGo I was actually able to find some better scans of some of the more notable athletes.
Maybe by next year I'll have some more time to replace or upgrade more of the photos.
By far my favourite part of the Police Gazette is the ads in the back. They're a real snapshot of a time and a target audience. Click/tap to see a larger version if you're interested in the fine print. I wondered about the business model for some of these companies, since they seemed to be giving away their miracle cures for free. My best guess is they would follow up with some kind of upsell or vaguely blackmail shake-down, or, in an echo of how these kinds of things work even today, they now had the mailing address of the kind of person who will actually send away for a syphilis cure or manhood improver from the back of the Police Gazette. A valuable lead!
If you're really interested in the whole issue (and it's only a little bit racist!) you can find my enhanced PDF of it here (it's a largish file BTW). Alas they don't actually teach much Jui-Jitsu.
Finally, for the screen background, I was able to put one of the better-scanned pictures into a nice shot of Stillwell's bar. This is actually one of my favourite backgrounds from the whole project. It fits the pugnacious mood of the episode—and he even has only one eye!
