From: sherman@broxton.math.ucla.edu (The Ahkond of Swat)
Subject: Re: Shade #31
Organization: The Island of Misfit Toys
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 92 03:08:59 GMT

In article <1992Nov20.212656.5526@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:

>This issue is part one of "Ernest and Jim", in which Shade finds
>himself in Paris of 1927, mixed up with Ernest Hemingway, James
>Joyce, and a Metan agent who is insufficiently philosophical about
>having his parts rearranged.

Here are some reactions/explanations for a lot of inside Joyce jokes, as
well as other reactions from the point of view of a Joyce buff.

Perhaps some Hemingway buff out there could enlighten us as to the 
Papa references.  Ditto for Gertrude Stein, although here appearance
is brief.

Cover: "A Portrait of the Metan..." reference to Joyce's first novel,
_A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_.

By the way, Hemingway and Joyce often did drink together, but usually
with other people.

Page 1.
Panel one: "I think I've gone blind!"  This did happen to Joyce on several
occasions; he had a large array of eye ailments and had many eye operations
during his life.

Panel three: "My watch has stopped" The protagonist of Joyce's _Ulysses_,
Leopold Bloom, has a pocketwatch which stops at approximately the time that
his wife Molly consummates her extramarital affair with Blazes Boylan.

Panel four: "the constitution of an oxen" Cheap wrangling in of the word 
"oxen", which refers to "Oxen of the Sun", an episode (chapter) of _Ulysses_.
Of course, "oxen" is the plural of "ox" and Joyce would never ever say
"an oxen."

"Nora": Joyce's wife.

Page 2.
Panel four: "Ineluctable morbidity of the temporal!" This is an echo of the
line "Ineluctible modality of the visible," a famous quotation from the 
"Proteus" episode of _Ulysses_.

panel five: "When it's awake" Reference to _Finnegans Wake_, Joyce's final
work.  The riddle "When is a man not a man?" occupies a central symbolic
role in one of its chapters.

Page 4. 
panel two:"Dreams are my territory" _Finnegans Wake_ is an attempt to 
capture the essence of dream consciousness.  It is itself the dramatization 
of a dream.

Big error: Joyce had blue eyes.  His glasses did magnify them so as to make
them look large, as in this drawing, but they were very blue.  Tsk tsk.

panel three: "Daedalus": Joyce's autobiographical character Stephen Dedalus
appears in both _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ and _Ulysses_.
The maze-maker role of the mythical Daedalus became for Joyce a metaphor
of the creative mind, of the artful artificer.

Page 16.
panel five: this does sound like some Joycean hyperbole, but clumsy.  This
is a caricature at best, not a duplication of style.

Page 18.
panel two: "Deal with him, Hemingway!" Reportedly, Joyce once picked a 
fight with a passerby in Paris.  When the other fellow appeared eager
to actually fight Joyce, Joyce retreated behind Hemingway and said "Deal
with him, Hemingway!"  

panel five: "The Left Bank, Paris, Europe, Planet Earth, the Universe"
As a child in _A Portrait_, Stephen Dedalus idly writes something like
this in his school notebook, locating himself in his year, school, city,
country, continent, planet, cosmos.

Page 19.
panel two: "long may its ears have cotton wool" this is a new one on me.
Anybody recognize this?

Page 20.
panel one: This is an accurate depiction of Shakespeare and Company, a 
bookstore/publisher that published the first edition of _Ulysses_ anywhere.

panel five: "Oh God, not that awful Stein woman!"  Joyce didn't get along
with Gertrude Stein, largely because he loved being the center of attention,
and Stein and her circle were not prepared to treat him this way.  I don't
know whether he ever said such things as this; as far as I know, he simply
kept his distance.


Any other Joycean allusions, references, whatever?  Please send them to me;
I'd be most interested.
--
  Bill Sherman      S^1 `--> S^(2n+1) -->> CP^n     sherman@math.ucla.edu
Courage, men!  -Doc, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", facing the
 prospect of washing before dinner
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc