Clearing Up Other Mysteries in Joyce's Ulysses: Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner's Literary Detective Work Yields More Gems

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• Clearing Up Other Mysteries in Joyce’s Ulysses: Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner’s Literary Detective Work Yields More Gems
• Robert J. Seidman (bio)

ANNOTATIONS TO JAMES JOYCE’S “ULYSSES,” by Sam Slote, Marc A. Mamigonian, and John Turner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. xlvi + 1367 pp. $165.00 cloth.

“Notes are necessary, but they are necessary evils.”

Samuel Johnson¹

In his introduction to Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov’s 1962 hilarious, heartbreaking novel, the narrator Charles Kinbote offers these instructions to the reader: “Although those notes . . . come after the poem, the reader is advised to consult them first and then study the poem with their help, rereading them of course as he goes through its text, and perhaps, after having done with the poem, consulting them a third time so as to complete the picture.”² Nabokov closes Kinbote’s imperious directives to his readers by concluding: “To this statement my dear poet would probably not have subscribed, but, for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word” (29).

Thus, Nabokov seems to defend the use of footnotes, though some readers claim his massive particularity gets in the way of appreciating the novel. I disagree. Why? Because often an apparently minute characteristic or seemingly innocent detail can jolt the reader’s expectations, adding layers of meaning, irony, humor, and buoyancy. James Joyce delighted in giving slight twists to his kaleidoscopic vision, presenting new angles of existing literary, theological, historical, and personal assumptions. For instance, there are imposters in his otherwise unexceptional massive lists of saints: Molly Bloom, for instance, appears as “S. Marion Calpensis” in “Cyclops.”³ In the same list, the vicious cur Garryowen is elevated to “S. Owen Caniculus,” as in “canine” (U 12.1696). During our work, Don Gifford and I developed noses able to sniff out many of the insider jokes and covert allusions.⁴ Clearly, the trio of Sam Slote, Marc A. Mamigonian, and John Turner, the current annotators, enjoyed a similar learned instinct.

If Stephen Dedalus has “much, much to learn” (U 7.915), so do I, the surviving early annotator. The new Annotations to James Joyce’s “Ulysses” has a great deal to teach to this Joyce buff. The scholarly [End Page 607] work here offers insights into Joyce’s intentions and tracks the precise movements of his supple, monumentally well-stocked mind. The handsome, if overweight, volume (1367 pages) offers deeply knowledgeable readings of Joyce’s notebooks and letters, peeks into the multiple drafts of Ulysses, and—what was hugely impressive to me—presents brief relevant insights into the staggering range of the Irish author’s sources. These literary sleuths have tracked the ingenious and often slippery Joycean intellectual gymnastics to a good number of his well-camouflaged lairs. The authors have also benefited from a staggering range of Joyce scholarship since 1988, when the revised and expanded second edition of “Ulysses” Annotated was published. The digital world’s global resources have further informed and inspired this recent volume. The meticulous research of the editors will be welcomed by those willing to plunge into the deep end of the scholarly pool to come up with an additional shading and still other factoids.

I like to picture Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner together juggling sources, dictionaries, and countless reference volumes, consulting one another, disagreeing, agreeing, refining, and polishing, and I offer thanks to these gifted scholars for their meticulous research and concise writing. I was touched to find an added personal bonus on receiving a copy of the text. When I opened the book, I read this moving dedication: “Respectfully dedicated to Don Gifford, Robert J. Seidman, and Weldon Thornton.” Don Gifford and I always understood that our notes were provisional. Indeed, one-hundred-plus entries were added and/or corrected in our 1988 edition. I still receive notes from aficionados who offer revisions. On 1 July 2016, the distinguished author Colm Tóibín wrote:

On the Ulysses issue, I think I found a new annotation: “12.669–70: the stern provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell ffrenchmullan Tomlinson.” The name Maxwell in the compound name (which I think is Tomlinson Tomkins Maxwell ffrench Mullen) in “Cyclops” would have been...