weekly check-in (Ulysses ep 12)

This a recurring weekly online meetup to discuss what we've read, what we're reading, and what we want to do.

The motivation behind this is two-fold:

1. I've put James Joyce's Ulysses on the schedule for October, about 20 weeks out. It has 18 chapters, and I promised readers that we would have a weekly meetup to review our progress.
2. We keep reading books about self-improvement, and yet this 'self' continues to struggle to improve. Maybe this is a chance to join with other strugglers to move forward.

Here's a link to the Ulysses resources that I find useful.

Episode 12, "Cyclops"

• This episode is narrated by an unnamed inhabitant of Dublin (the "I" of the chapter) who works as a debt collector.
• The narrator goes to Barney Kiernan's pub where he meets a character referred to only as "The Citizen". This character is believed to be a satirisation of Michael Cusack, a founder member of the Gaelic Athletic Association.
• When Leopold Bloom enters the pub, he is berated by the Citizen, who is a fierce Fenian and anti-Semite. The episode ends with Bloom reminding the Citizen that his Saviour was a Jew. As Bloom leaves the pub, the Citizen throws a biscuit tin at Bloom's head, but misses.
• The episode is marked by extended tangents made in voices other than that of the unnamed narrator; these include streams of legal jargon, a report of a boxing match, Biblical passages, and elements of Irish mythology.