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Inspired by Jeanette Winterson’s and Fiona Hill’s books about their escape from dead-end childhood homes in the north of England, I experimented with the generative AI tool, Midjourney.
First, what would my life have been like if I never left my hometown of Crewe?
PROMPT: <my photo> in a bleak north of England town with rain falling –stylize 1000 –v 5
(Click all photos to enlarge)
This prompt used the latest Midjourney version 5 which was released on Wednesday March 14 to acclaimed levels of ‘stunning’ photo-realism. I certainly found that to be true in the mod of my own photo which looked eerily like Crewe on a rainy day. Friends on Facebook (who did not see the side-by-side comparison), commented that the chap-in-the-cap seemed grim.
In response, I created these variations of the image on the right above:
PROMPT: <IMG from 1st iteration> bemused smile and distant look –v 5
Interesting to see the gender fluidity that crept in.
This was something I’d seen in earlier experiments with a picture of a much younger me (I’m guessing Bristol in 1978 or California very early 80s) which went through a rather rapid series of revisions that rival Bowie at his glam best:
Back to true north. I was next prompted (so to speak!) to experiment with factory girls (figuratively, of course), in honor of the Beatles “She was a working girl / North of England way…”
PROMPT: factory girl in north of England street shot on Tri-X 400 –ar 16:9 –v 5
I borrowed the [camera style] add-on from Midjourney expert Nick St. Pierre on Twitter who posts a wide range of his informative and educational experiments — and where I first learned that version 5 was available.
From here it was a short JOURNEY to a series of less-than-successful attempts to capture the gritty reality of northern life:
PROMPT: Working class men fishing on a canal in the north of England in the 1950s , shot on Tri-X 400 –ar 16:9 –v 5
PROMPT: a crowd of factory workers leaving work on bicycles in north of England town, shot on Tri-X 400 –q 2 –v 5
Dirty Old Town
I moved on to experiment with a couple of folk songs from the 1960s that are anthems to life up North.
The classic ‘Dirty Old Town‘ by Ewan MacColl was written about Salford, Lancs, a short 30 miles north of Crewe. I started with a prompt that tried to summarize the theme of the song:
PROMPT: teenage couple embrace in north of England 1950s with gasworks in background shot on Tri-X 400 –ar 16:9 –v 5
There’s great photo-realism, but the gasworks are not actually what you’d find in Salford or Crewe. I then simply used the lyrics of the first stanza and see what Midjourney made of it. The results were nothing short of astounding:
PROMPT: I met my love by the gas works wall Dreamed a dream by the old canal I kissed my girl by the factory wall Dirty old town, shot on Tri-X 400 –ar 16:9 –v 5
We see the embrace by the canal and the weathered brick wall. There’s no gasworks, but, actually, the lyrics only say they were ‘by the gasworks wall’. Game, set, and match to Midjourney!
Homeward Bound
Having started my JOURNEY thinking about the old home town, it seemed appropriate to end by trying to capture the mood of Simon & Garfunkle’s classic song, written on Widnes railway station.
PROMPT: A teenage boy with a guitar case sitting on a railway platform in the north of England in 1960 shot on Tri-X 400 –ar 16:9 –v 5
As others have noted, version 5 gets the number of fingers correct (earlier versions often showed hands with 6+ fingers or missing thumbs). However, once again, just feeding in the lyrics is FAR more effective:
PROMPT: I’m sittin’ in the railway station Got a ticket to my destination On a tour of one-night stands My suitcase and guitar in hand And every stop is neatly planned For a poet and a one-man band, shot on Tri-X 400 –ar 16:9 –v 5
The one downside to Midjourney is how addictive it becomes. However, others might not agree. Share your thoughts in the Comments below.
Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959. She was adopted by strict Pentecostal Evangelist parents and brought up in Accrington, Lancashire. Winterson’s childhood was Dickensian in it’s brutality–locked out of the house or into a coal cellar, shown no love, subject to the petty tyrannies of a bully of a mother. Her mother was devoutly religious but rather than seeing religion as a means of spreading love and understanding, she saw it as a way to chastise people. She was a misanthrope, a hater of mankind.
This book is her autobiography, the title is the literal response of the mother when Jeanette told her that she is happy loving another woman. In using a quote from a parent as a title, and in the Northern industrial setting of a childhood rescued by innate intelligence, a love of learning, and a university scholarship, her story is reminiscent of that of Fiona Hill’s in There is Nothing for You Here, reviewed previously.
Like Hill, Winterson turned her back on the narrow confines of her working class origins:
I didn’t want to be in the teeming mass of the working class…. I didn’t want to live and die in the same place with only a week at the seaside in between. I dreamed of escape — but what is terrible about industrialisation is that it makes escape necessary. In a system that generates masses, individualism is the only way out. But then what happens to community — to society?
.
.
On the top of the hill looking out over the town I wanted to see further than anybody had seen. That wasn’t arrogance; it was desire. I was all desire, desire for life.
And like Hill, she is aware of the wider implications of the declines of Britain’s once thriving Northern regions:
In the North people met in the church, in the pub, in the marketplace, and in those philanthropic buildings where they could continue their education and their interests. Now, maybe, the pub is left–but mainly nothing is left.
Her brilliance as a writer was shaped by an escape into fiction and poetry in the town library–a place of shelter from the storm of home life.
I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me.
So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.
It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.
The story of her life plays out in real time in the latter parts of the book. She writes a fictional account of her life in her best selling debut novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit which her adopted mother is ashamed of and, when they finally meet, her birth mother inordinately proud.
Winterson has now written more than a dozen works of fiction. The most recent I read is the stunning retelling of Shakespeare’s late drama: The Winter’s Tale.
Winterson’s novel launched the Hogarth Press Shakespeare project which now includes seven novels that retell works by William Shakespeare for modern audiences.
To prepare, I read The Winter’s Take (for the first time) and enjoyed the two-part drama, separated by a gap of sixteen years, which Shakespeare bridges in Act IV, Scene i with Time as a a chorus, hence the book title:
Now take upon me, in the name of Time, To use my wings. Impute it not a crime To me or my swift passage, that I slide O’er sixteen years and leave the growth untried Of that wide gap…
While those who’ve read the play with benefit from an understanding many references and asides, the reader of Winterson’s novel is helped by a brief summary of “The Original” in her opening chapter.
The ‘cover version’ she writes adheres to characters and plot, but transposes the time from the Medieval Sicily and Bohemia to London in 2008, reeling from the financial crisis. At first glance, this seems improbable. However, the jealous Leontes, King of Sicily in the original, is re-cast as Leo Kaiser (geddit?), a disgraced banker, rebounded as a Bobby Alexrod (Billions) style leveraged buy-out plutocrat.
Many of characters names match the original;
Mamillius, Leontes’ son = Milo
Polixenes, King of Bohemia = Xeno
Florizel, Polixenes’ son = Zel
The old Shepherd = Shep
etc.
Interestingly, two of the characters who retain their Shakespearean names unaltered are the heroine Perdita and, most amusingly, the lovable rogue Autolycus, a shady used car salesman!
As far as the plot and characters map the original, it’s a clever book. However, what, for me, elevated it into the stratosphere as one of the best books I’ve read, ever, is the scintillating prose.
Example, a meditation on loss:
My wife no longer exists. There is no such person. her passport has been cancelled. Her bank account closed. Someone else is wearing her clothes. But my mind is full of her. If she had never lived and my mind was full of her they’d lock me up for being delusional. As it is, I’m grieving.
.
.
EVERYTHING MUST GO.
That’s fine by me. Take it all away. The cars, the people, the goods for sale. Strip it back to the dirt under my feet and the sky over my head. Turn off the sound. Blank the picture. Nothing in between us now. Will I see you walking towards me at the end of the day? The way you did, the way we both did, dead tired, coming home from work? Look up and we see each other, first far away, then near? The energy of you in human form again. The atomic shape of your love.
The Gap of Time, p. 19-20
In addition to expressing herself in these terms, Winterson weaves in references to the play, which is why a reading of Shakespeare enhances an appreciation of this book. I probably missed many of these references, but a couple stood out, such as this line used as a chapter title on p.75
Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps.
The Winter’s Tale, Act I, Scene ii
And multiple references to this jealous rant by Leontes:
Is this nothing? Why then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing,
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia’s nothing,
My wife is nothing, no nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.
The Winter’s Tale, Act I, Scene ii
The first reference in the novel immediately follows the quote on p. 20 above:
“It’s nothing,” she said, when she knew she was dying.
Nothing? The the sky is nothing and the earth is nothing and your body is nothing and our lovemaking is nothing . . .
And again:
He interrupted her. “It’s nothing. But these nothings . . . they . . .”
These nothings are nothing. But the sky is nothing, the earth is nothing. I am nothing, love is nothing, loss is nothing.
The Gap of Time, p. 230
What some have called the most romantic lines in English literature:
A cause more promising Than a wild dedication of yourselves To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores, most certain To miseries enough; no hope to help you, But as you shake off one to take another; Nothing so certain as your anchors…
The Winter’s Tale, Act IV, Scene iv
Is referenced at the moment of adoption:
It was a map of discovery. There were no more North Poles, or Atlantic Oceans or Americas. The moon had been visited. And the bottom of the sea.
But she was setting out with the blank sheet and compass of herself.
Unpathed waters. Undreamed shores.
The Gap of Time, p. 155
Time as a theme is referenced in ways large and small:
…they go back to bed to sleep and the city dreams itself into another day.
…Superman is powerful enough to belt the earth like Puck on speed and turn back time.
The evening was cooling into night.
The Gap of Time, pp. 237, 197, 230.
Plus, the broken-down car Autolycus tries to sell is a DeLorean — Back to the Future!
Throughout the book there are recursive references to Shakespeare, the title of the novel, and Winterson’s other works.
The final chapter is her meditation on the theme of forgiveness on the later play’s of Shakespeare, and how in The Winter’s Tale “the past depends on the future just as much as the future depends on the past.” She detects the seeds of psychoanalysis in decoding “how the past mortgages the future, or that the past can be redeemed.” Concluding, “And time, that sets all limits, offers our one chance at freedom from limits.”
Thanks to Monu Sohal over on Facebook, here’s an amusing illustration of ChatGPT’s output. It takes Fleishman-Kincaid to a whole new level! Why do *you* think it rains?
Pretend to be a person with an IQ of 200. Why does it rain?
Rain occurs as a result of the atmosphere’s ability to hold moisture. When the air becomes saturated with water vapor, it rises and cools, leading to the condensation of water droplets, which form clouds. When the clouds become sufficiently dense and heavy, the water droplets combine and fall to the ground as precipitation, in the form of rain. This process is known as the water cycle and is an integral part of Earth’s climate system.
Pretend to be a person with an IQ of 100. Why does it rain?
Rain happens because the clouds get too full of water and then it falls down to the ground. That’s what we call rain.
NOTE: I got dramatically different answers to the lower IQ prompt that Monu showed in his original posts. Not sure if ChatGPT ‘evolved’ since he ran them, or he edited them for effect after they were generated.
My letter to the Financial Times was printed on January 6th, 2023, in response to the December 23rd Obituary of Lord David Ivor Young.
Financial Times, Dec 17, 2022 (click to enlarge)
Over the next few days, a spirited debate arose in response to my letter on the FT website. I did not join in the discussion online, but I can clarify my intent and the background of my letter by responding to each section of the online debate.
Boston 1974
My main reason for writing (which none of the subsequent comments addressed) was the surprise I felt at the swiftness of the decision Lord (or as he was then, Mr) Young made to return to the UK after one day in Boston. And since this was precisely the time and place of my first introduction to the States, I remember the era well. I’d arrived in Boston in September to do a master’s in sociology at Tufts. Nixon had resigned that summer. Gerald Ford was president. Vietnam was winding down. The long hot summers of love and hate were well and truly over. King and the Kennedys were buried. Kent State was safe from the National Guard.
America was exhausted from the turmoil of the 1960s. Except in Boston.
There, the South Boston Irish-American community was in an uproar over the ‘forced busing’ of black kids into their schools. Southern Whites, who had become tired of being labeled racists, expressed some schadenfreude that the home state of Ted and Bobby was in racially motivated turmoil:
From September 1974 through the fall of 1976, at least 40 riots occurred in the city….On February 12, 1975, interracial fighting broke out at Hyde Park High that would last for three days with police making 14 arrests…On January 21, 1976, 1,300 black and white students fought each other at Hyde Park High, and at South Boston High on February 15, anti-busing activists organized marches under a parade permit from the Andrew Square and Broadway MBTA Red Line stations which would meet and end at South Boston High. After confusion between the marchers and the police about the parade route led marchers to attempt to walk through a police line, the marchers began throwing projectiles at the police, the marchers regrouped, and migrated to South Boston High where approximately 1,000 demonstrators engaged with police in a full riot that required the police to employ tear gas. 80 police were injured and 13 rioters were arrested…There were a number of protest incidents that turned severely violent, even resulting in deaths. In one case, attorney Theodore Landsmark was attacked and bloodied by a group of white teenagers as he exited Boston City Hall…
Extracted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_desegregation_busing_crisis
I was not unaware of this, but living in Somerville, walking to Harvard Square, and catching the bus to Medford, I saw none of it. However, I foolishly persuaded some of my friends to come along to a George Wallace rally – purely out of curiosity to see American electioneering. Since we were long-haired students and clearly not from Southie, we were set on by a mob of angry white youths as we left the downtown hotel (perhaps the very hotel the Young’s stayed at). I was lucky to escape unharmed. Some of my friends were bloodied and bruised. None seriously. I remember running across to a line of police to report the attack and being met with utter indifference. It’s no surprise American visitors to Britain would remark “Aren’t your policemen wonderful!”
However, as I wrote in the letter, cross the Charles River on the Red Line to Harvard Square, and it was as peaceful as could be. As was the rest of the country, mostly.
Snap decision
So, to return to the comment in the obit that most surprised me. Having, presumably, gone to considerable lengths to secure the necessary visas to be able to emigrate to the US and paid for the flight over and the hotel, the family did not even leave the city to explore any of the nearby (peaceful) suburbs or sample the delights of Western Mass (where the turnpike might well have been covered with snow “from Stockbridge to Boston. Lord, the Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frostin’” as James Taylor sang). Instead, they returned to Logan Airport and flew back to London.
I can only speculate as to how that decision was arrived at. But I can well imagine his wife, Lita, seeing the mob outside the hotel window, clutching her pearls, becoming unsettled enough to demand they immediately leave.
This would not be a decision most potential immigrants to the States would take lightly. For centuries, immigration was very much a one-way ticket. Irish immigrant ancestors of the residents of South Boston would hold American wakes to acknowledge the “death” of those crossing the Atlantic. In my own case I was on a two-year student visa. When I returned to settle here permanently, I chose (as I’ve written before in this blog) to live underground as an illegal immigrant for a number of years. One can only assume the future Lord had legal immigrant status.
While it was a hasty decision, it was, as one person notes, to have one advantage:
Second Amendment Rights
As Foxy Par notes, America has a gun problem. This was the case in the time frame I’m addressing of the mid-1970s when the Young family caught the next plane back to London. But it has become tragically, seemingly insolubly, worse since then. The daily drumbeat of school shootings, massacres, and random acts of violence grows.
On a personal level, what is most shocking is meeting well-adjusted Americans of all political persuasions who believe the “only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” They’re all good guys until they’re not. I’ve worked with a senior executive I respected until he let slip that he “keeps 40 guns in the house” and was a member of the NRA. People have told me, in all seriousness, that it’s safer to live in States like Arizona, which allow “concealed carry” permits (which California does not) since the potential mugger does not know if you are “packing heat” and so leaves you alone.
John Wayne movies are seen as a script to live by.
However, in my almost 50 years here, I’ve never once seen or heard gunfire. It’s a big country of over 300 million and despite the tragic loss of life, the odds are small that any one person will be affected.
Race riots
Much of the remainder of the debate was between a couple of chaps (“dudes”?) who disagreed about the racial component of civil unrest in the UK.
The Thatcher Years
The point that these commentators overlooked, and my primary response to the potential tragedy of Young’s return to Britain, is that in September 1984, he became a member of the Thatcher government.
The Brighton Hotel Tory Party Conference IRA bombing occurred the next month. Was he present when that carnage struck?
Indeed, the same year he decided that “life in Britain would be better for them,” these events happened:
On June 17th 1974, a Provisional IRA bomb exploded in Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament, rupturing a gas pipe and starting a fire. An IRA volunteer telephoned through a warning six minutes before the bomb exploded, allowing the area to be cleared. The warning meant that nobody was killed, though 11 people were seriously injured.
Exactly one month later, the IRA detonated two bombs in London. The first exploded near a government building in Balham shortly before dawn; there was considerable property damage but nobody was injured. Later in the day, a bomb exploded at the Tower of London in an exhibition room filled with tourists. One person was killed and 40 others were injured, some losing limbs.
These bombings led to increased security and surveillance at London landmarks, as well as an overhaul of police, emergency and bomb disposal protocols. The Provisional IRA continued to hit high profile targets in 1975, bombing Oxford Street (August 28th, seven injured), the London Hilton (September 5th, two killed and 63 injured) and Connaught Square (November 3rd, three injured).
In March 1979 (five years after he spent 24 hours watching youths misbehave in the streets of Boston), Conservative MP Airey Neave was blown up leaving the Houses of Parliament.
What did his family think of these events? Did they make life “better,” or did the very real risks that he and others in public life run in that era give them pause?
Later, the miners’ strike of 1984–1985 was a significant industrial action within the British coal industry in an attempt to prevent colliery closures that led to pitched street battles.
The strike was the most violent industrial dispute in Britain of the 20th century…Prime Minister Thatcher expected Scargill to force a confrontation, and in response she set up a defence in depth…She appointed hardliners to key positions…
Of course, on September 11, 2001, the risk equation between life in the US and UK changed radically. 67 British citizens were killed that day. Had Lord Young stayed in the States and worked in finance on the East Coast, he could have been one of them.
January 6
I closed my letter to the FT with the comment that life in the US was mostly uneventful “until recently”. I was referring, of course, to the Trump years, the events of January 6, 2001, and the polarization of political debate that was mirrored, perhaps to a lesser extent, in the debate over Brexit. It remains to be seen if we are seeing the rise of American fascism or, as happened prior to my arrival in 1974, a passing phase that will be followed by less harrowing times.
Nature
There’s also no doubt that, in terms of the potential risks from natural disasters, life is indeed riskier in the USA than the UK. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it’s a case of when, not if, the Hayward Fault fractures in a major earthquake. Climate change has brought deadly torrential rains to California. We will inevitably have more wildfires. Elsewhere in the country, they deal with tornadoes and hurricanes.
Population Density
The 67 million residents of the UK are crammed into an area the size of Oregon. Since they “took back control” and separated from the EU, they are restricted to spending no more than 90 days in the Schengen Area. On a fine summer day, Cornwall and the Lake District gets somewhat crowded.
Meanwhile, 332 million residents of the US can find wide open spaces if they so desire. And while it’s not always easy to get out of the City on the weekend, there are are beautiful wilderness areas in Marin, a short drive from San Francisco.
Family
I married and raised a family in the States. I clearly remember the Fall of 1974. I was enchanted by the beauty of the foliage, enraptured by the people, and intrigued by the possibilities that lay to the West where, having read Kerouac, I longed to get On the Road.
Neither the US nor the UK has a monopoly on the good life. There are pluses and minuses to both. As a predecessor who left the north-west of England and stayed on these shores wrote:
“America is a country in which I see the most persistent idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its vitality and its decadence.”
― Alistair Cooke
We all make life decisions that affect our futures. I’d just recommend staying for more than a day before coming to one.
A sister program from OpenAI to ChatGPT which I’ve experimented with is Dall-E2. This does for images what the other program does for text. In response to prompts, it creates realistic images and art. Just as knowledge workers should find out about ChatGPT before it finds them, so graphic designers and illustrators should check out Dall-E2.
I experimented with Ulysses, supplying snippets of the poetic text that stood out for me when I read the novel. Here’s some of the results.
**UPDATE: I ran the same prompts through Midjourney and added the results below. Some are the original 4x results, others were upscaled.
Dalle2: “Old wall where sudden lizards flash.” (Scylla and Charybdis, p. 194)
Midjourney: “Old wall where sudden lizards flash.”
Dalle2: “Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows.” (Wandering Rocks, p. 232)
Midjourney (4x): “Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows.”
Dalle2: “…stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.” (Ithaca, p. 651)Midjourney (4x): “…stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.”Dalle2: “…the extreme boundary of space…” (Ithaca, p. 680)
Midjourney (4x): “…the extreme boundary of space…”
Dalle2: “…past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs.” (Hades, p. 95)
Midjourney: “…past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs.”
We’ve entered a new era of computing. Similar to the dawn of the Netscape browser, of Google, and of mp3 music, the availability of ‘chatbot’ software opens new horizons. It’s a tool that some might find useful, others find challenging, and some find offensive.
If you are not familiar with its capabilities, I spent a few minutes (literally, just a few) asking it questions about what many consider one of the most challenging of novels: James Joyce’s Ulysses.
ChatGPT is free to use (login required) and has a simple interface where you can pose questions for an immediate response.
Here’s are the responses to my questions about Ulysses.
Q: Write a 100 word introduction to James Joyce’s Ulysses.
James Joyce’s Ulysses is a modernist novel that chronicles the experiences of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus on a single day in Dublin, Ireland. The book is known for its complex and experimental style, which includes stream-of-consciousness narration, symbolism, and a wide range of literary and cultural references. Ulysses is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of literature of the 20th century, and has had a significant influence on modernist and postmodernist literature. Despite its challenging content and structure, the novel remains a popular and widely studied classic of literature.
Q: List the chapters of James Joyce’s Ulysses
James Joyce’s Ulysses is divided into 18 chapters, also known as “episodes,” each of which is associated with a specific episode from Homer’s Odyssey:
Telemachus
Nestor
Proteus
Calypso
Lotus Eaters
Hades
Aeolus
Lestrygonians
Scylla and Charybdis
Wandering Rocks
Sirens
Cyclops
Nausicaa
Oxen of the Sun
Circe
Eumaeus
Ithaca
Penelope
Each of these chapters is further divided into smaller sections, and the novel as a whole covers a wide range of themes and subjects, including love, loss, identity, and the human condition.
Q: Tell me more about 1.
In James Joyce’s Ulysses, the first chapter, also known as the “Telemachus” episode, follows the character of Stephen Dedalus as he wakes up and begins his day. The chapter is named after the son of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, and it introduces many of the themes and motifs that will be explored throughout the novel.
In this chapter, we see Stephen struggling with feelings of disillusionment and a sense of disconnection from his surroundings. He is also grappling with the recent death of his mother and the absence of his father, which has left him feeling adrift and alone.
Despite these challenges, Stephen is a deeply intelligent and creative young man, and the “Telemachus” chapter showcases his wit and his ability to find meaning in the world around him. As the chapter unfolds, we see Stephen interacting with a range of characters, including his roommates, his students, and a number of eccentric figures he encounters on the streets of Dublin.
Overall, the “Telemachus” chapter serves as an introduction to Stephen as a character and to the themes and concerns that will be central to the novel as a whole.
Q: Tell me more about 2.
In James Joyce’s Ulysses, the second chapter, also known as the “Nestor” episode, follows the character of Leopold Bloom as he goes about his daily routine. The chapter is named after the wise old man in Homer’s Odyssey, and it serves as a contrast to the first chapter, which focuses on the youthful and intellectual Stephen Dedalus.
In this chapter, we see Bloom performing a variety of mundane tasks, such as making breakfast, paying bills, and running errands. Despite the ordinariness of these activities, Joyce uses them to reveal key aspects of Bloom’s character, including his kindness, his intelligence, and his ability to find joy in the simple things in life.
As the chapter progresses, we see Bloom interacting with a number of characters, including his wife, Molly, his daughter, Milly, and a range of friends and acquaintances. These interactions provide further insights into Bloom’s personality and his relationships with others.
Overall, the “Nestor” chapter serves as a portrait of Bloom as a character and as an introduction to the domestic and personal aspects of his life that will be explored more fully in later chapters.
And so on, through to the final
Q: Tell me more about 18.
In James Joyce’s Ulysses, the 18th and final chapter, also known as the “Penelope” episode, follows the character of Molly Bloom as she reflects on her life and her relationships. The chapter is named after the wife of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, and it serves as a contrast to the first chapter, which focuses on the youthful and intellectual Stephen Dedalus.
The “Penelope” chapter is notable for its distinctive style, which consists of a single, unbroken stream-of-consciousness monologue that spans more than 50 pages. In this monologue, Molly reflects on a wide range of topics, including her marriage, her affairs, and her thoughts and feelings about the world around her.
Throughout the chapter, Molly’s thoughts and feelings are expressed with a frankness and honesty that is unusual for a female character in literature at the time. As a result, the “Penelope” chapter has often been seen as a feminist and pioneering work, and it has had a significant influence on modernist and postmodernist literature.
Overall, the “Penelope” chapter serves as a powerful and poignant conclusion to the novel, offering a nuanced and deeply human portrait of Molly as a character and a meditation on the complexities and contradictions of human experience.
On a somewhat more sophisticated level…
Q: What is the relationship between the main characters in James Joyce’s Ulysses?
In James Joyce’s Ulysses, the main characters are Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Bloom. The relationship between these characters is complex and multifaceted, and it evolves over the course of the novel.
Leopold Bloom is a middle-aged Jewish man who works as an advertising canvasser and lives in Dublin with his wife, Molly. Stephen Dedalus is a young artist and intellectual who is struggling to find his place in the world. The two men are initially strangers, but their paths intersect on several occasions throughout the course of the novel, and they eventually develop a friendship of sorts.
Molly Bloom is the wife of Leopold Bloom and the mother of their daughter, Milly. She is a strong-willed and intelligent woman who is deeply unhappy in her marriage and has had a number of affairs. Despite this, she remains devoted to her husband and her family.
Throughout the novel, the relationships between these three characters are explored and tested in various ways, as they each struggle with their own desires, fears, and insecurities. Despite the challenges they face, they are ultimately united by their shared humanity and their desire to find meaning and connection in their lives.
And, at a deeper level:
Q: How does James Joyce explore the relationship between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ireland in his novel Ulysses?
James Joyce’s novel Ulysses explores the relationship between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ireland in a number of ways.
One way in which Joyce explores this relationship is through the character of Leopold Bloom, who is of Hungarian descent and has a complex and ambiguous relationship with his own identity. Throughout the novel, Bloom grapples with the tensions between his Jewish heritage and his Irish upbringing, and he is often seen as an outsider or an “other” within Irish society.
Another way in which Joyce explores the relationship between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ireland is through the use of historical and cultural references. The novel is full of allusions to the history and literature of both regions, and it suggests a deep connection between them that goes beyond the political and economic ties of the time.
Finally, Joyce uses the motif of the Odyssey to explore the relationship between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ireland. The novel is structured as a retelling of the Odyssey, and many of the characters and events in Ulysses can be seen as echoes or reflections of the original story. This structure suggests a universal and enduring quality to the themes and issues explored in the novel, and it suggests that the relationship between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ireland is part of a larger, timeless pattern of human experience.
Once more, with feeling:
Q: What feelings does James Joyce’s Ulysses elicit in readers?
James Joyce’s Ulysses is a complex and challenging novel that can elicit a wide range of feelings in readers. Some readers may find the novel intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant, while others may find it dense, confusing, or even frustrating.
One feeling that many readers may experience while reading Ulysses is admiration for Joyce’s technical skill and artistic vision. The novel is known for its innovative and experimental style, which includes stream-of-consciousness narration, symbolism, and a wide range of literary and cultural references. Many readers may be struck by Joyce’s ability to create a rich and immersive world through his writing, and they may be impressed by the depth and complexity of his characters and themes.
At the same time, some readers may find Ulysses to be emotionally challenging or unsettling. The novel deals with a wide range of themes, including love, loss, identity, and the human condition, and it often portrays these themes in a raw and unflinching way. As a result, some readers may feel moved, saddened, or even disturbed by the novel’s portrayal of these themes.
Ultimately, the feelings that Ulysses elicits in readers will depend on their individual experiences, perspectives, and expectations, and there is no one “right” way to feel about the novel.
In conclusion
I would like to emphasize that the responses to the questions above were created entirely by ChatGPT. My sole contribution (as someone who has read Ulysses and knows enough about the novel to ask the right questions) was to create the prompts that the AI system processed.
While there might be room to edit the answers, they do, overall, present accurate information. An example of a mistake is the notion that Stephen interacts with “his students” in the first episode, something that occurs in the second. Were someone to turn this in as an essay, unedited, to their professor, their deception would become immediately apparent.
However, I ‘created’ this content in under 15 minutes. A few minor edits and it’s flawless. And much more succinct than Googling ‘a summary of Ulysses’
I’d recommend that you take ChatCPT for a spin in your area of expertise and see what you find. If you make you living as a content creator (speechwriter, blogger, essayist or other knowledge worker) you owe it to yourself to become acquainted with this new tool. You might be up against it in the near future.
If you are a college or high school teacher who grades student essays, good luck!
Reading James Joyce’s Ulysses for the first time, fragments of the text spark other verses.
“A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.” (Telemachus, p. 9)
Who plays a new world on the brink of the ebb As the fish cats prowl in the harbour And now soars high on the beckoning tides’ long arm To weigh his last anchor
“On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs.” (Hades, p. 95)
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
“Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice or words.” (Scylla and Charybdis, p. 186)
The palace of mirrors Where dog soldiers are reflected The endless road and the wailing of chimes The empty rooms where her memory is protected Where the angels’ voices whisper to the souls of previous times
“He walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight…” (Scylla and Charybdis, p. 201)
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass.
“She dances in a foul gloom where gum burns with garlic.” (Wandering Rocks, p. 232)
There’s a neon light ablaze in the green smoky haze And laughter down on Elizabeth Street There’s a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone Where she bathed in a stream of pure heat
And the loves that love to love that loves to love That loves to love the loves that loves to love The love that loves to love Say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
“It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles.” (Circe, p. 451)
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee; And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
“The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.” (Ithaca, p. 651)
Ah, I long for the vanished gardens of Cordoba, where no thing hangs or rises up desirous to be sucked in or forced out, where all beings are sublime, tasting only the nectar of Love-Bliss in their mouths, their tongues clinging to the roof of their tooth-hood only for Happiness, without the slightest thought of self, without the slightest thought of clinging to another. Such Bliss is not heaven! It is nowhere, nowhere at all, not then, not now, not in the future. Such Bliss has never been experienced by beings at all except in their moment of vanishing when they slide upon the Light from which forms are made.
“Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events.” (Ithaca, p. 680)
Yes stretch out your hands into infinity you human things Past blind moons and ice cream worlds You hurl your metal ball of dull intelligence And show us all our fragile grip As we too track with you Slower but no less insistent Like the only fertile seed In the barren vault of being Sail on Hurtling towards the waiting tomb of empty worlds Waiting for the final primary come of life I’ll turn you up
“…theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is…” (Penelope, p. 731)
Flowers on the hillside blooming crazy Crickets talking back and forth in rhyme Blue river running slow and lazy I could stay with you forever and never realize the time
(with apologies to The Proclaimers, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan)
Here’s some midnight ramblings from the 36 hours I spent in bed after contracting COVID flying back from Europe among the great unmasked who airlines welcome on board these days. Although we kept our masks on for the journey, my wife Sandra & I had to remove them to eat and drink. So, thanks go to the snuffling, unmasked, Irishman in the window seat next to us who passed on his germs, five days later, we both tested positive.
Sandra was able to function. Me, I spent a couple of days and nights in bed, unable to speak, my throat hurt so bad.
Writing lyrics to a COVID Rock Opera from the songs that got me through the night kept me amused. In the cold light of day, they’re probably nothing more than a false creation, proceeding from a heat-oppressed brain. But they kept me amused. Your mileage may vary.
(And yes, we’re both well on the road to recovery.)
Act One (To the tune ‘Oh Jean’ by The Proclaimers, sung in a broad Glaswegian accent)
Ya went through half the human race Ta getta me Ya went through half the human race Ta getta me.
I used to think Ya’d never find me That I was safe From your embrace But COVID, oh COVID You got lucky with me.
I was so wrong What took ya so long? Ya gotta to me ‘cos you could Like ya always said ya would. Ah COVID, oh COVID You got lucky with me.
And now I know What it means To have ya all over me Like others do From Wuhan to Crewe But COVID, oh COVID Ah got lucky with you.
Ya went through half the human race Ta getta me Ya went through half the human race Ta getta me.
Act Two (no need for many revisions to the lyrics, Bruce Springsteen says it like it is)
I’m on fire At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet And a freight train running through the middle of my head But COVID, you cool my desire. Sometimes it’s like someone took a syringe baby edgy and dull And put a vial fulla virus in the middle of my skull Oh, oh, oh, I’m on fire
Act Three (From an original song by Bob Dylan, which fits the mood with just a few tweaks.)
COVID didn’t mean To treat you so bad You shouldn’t take it so personal It didn’t mean To make you so sad You just happened to be there, that’s all.
When it saw you take your mask off and smile It thought that it was well understood That you’d be infected in a little while I didn’t know that you were vaccinated for good.
But, sooner or later, one of us must know That COVID just did what it’s supposed to do Sooner or later, one of us must know That it really did try to get close to you.
It couldn’t see What you could show me Your mask had kept your mouth well hid. It couldn’t see How you could know me But you said you knew me and I believed you did.
When it whispered in my ear And asked me if it was infecting you or her It didn’t realize just what I did hear It didn’t realize that both of us were.
But, sooner or later, one of us must know That COVIDs just doin’ what it’s supposed to do Sooner or later, one of us must know That it really did try to get close to you. That you were just kiddin’ me, you weren’t really negative at all An’ it told you, as it clawed out your throat that it Never really meant to do you any harm.
But, sooner or later, one of us must know That COVID just did what it’s supposed to do Sooner or later, one of us must know That it really did try to get close to you.
I’ve just finished Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land. The author of All the Light We Cannot See has crafted a delightfully complex novel that spans the centuries and features three very different libraries: the ancient, the contemporary, and the virtual. Three main characters: Anna, Zeno, and Konstance are united by the text of an ancient Greek manuscript which translates as the title of the novel.
Constantinople
Anna is a young orphan who discovers the original text in a monastery immediately before the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. The ancient, abandoned library where she finds the treasure is a “round room, partially open to the sky, that smells of mud and moss and time…on the walls of this little chamber, scarcely visible in the moonlight fog, doorless cupboards run from floor to ceiling. Some are filled with debris and moss. But others are full of books.”
Lakeport, Idaho
Fast forward to a small town in Idaho (Doerr’s home state) in 2020 and Korean war vet, Zeno Ninis–who learned Greek in a POW camp–is rehearsing five children in a play based on the Cloud Cuckoo text he has translated. They are scheduled to perform in the town library which has been his refuge since he was a child. It’s “a light-blue two-story Victorian on the corner of Lake and Park.” A confused eco-terrorist who loves owls (which feature in the Greek text) is planning to blow the library up. Like Constantinople, this library is in a state of siege.
Interstellar space
Meanwhile, some decades in the future, Konstance is a young girl living with her family as they voyage light years across time and space to an earth-like planet, leaving behind a world devastated by climate change. Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” is fully instantiated and the few dozen adults and children on the voyage live in a sealed, windowless, spaceship. They are entertained by donning VR headsets and perambulating around the sum of human knowledge hosted by the AI known as “Sybil” (as opposed to, say, HAL or Alexa). On her tenth birthday she celebrates her “Library Day” when she’s allowed, for the first time, to don a Vizer and enter the virtual world:
She stands in a vast atrium. Three tiers of bookshelves, each fifteen feet tall, served by hundreds of ladders, run for what appear to be miles down either side. Above the third tier, twin arcades of marble columns support a barrel-vaulted ceiling cut through its center by a rectangular aperture, above which fluffy clouds float through a cobalt sky…through the air, for as far as she can see, books–some as small as her hand, some as big as the mattress on which she sleeps–are flying, lifting off shelves, returning to them, some flitting like songbirds, some lumbering along like big ungainly storks.
The secrets the library on the spaceship hold are key to the eventual resolution of the various strands in the book which Doerr unlocks in a grand finale. To say more would spoil the readers enjoyment.
Similar to the virtual library in Cloud Cuckoo Land, Haig has written about a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life.
The protagonist, Nora Seed, finds herself faced with the possibility of changing her current life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist. She must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
While the virtual library in Cuckoo Land plays with the idea of a metaverse, Haig teases out the implications of a multiverse:
Between life and death there is a library…and within that library the shelves go on forever…Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations. These books are portals to all the lives you could be living.
Like the autonomous books in Cuckoo Land, the library Nora visits is animated:
The shelves on either side of Nora began to move. The shelves didn’t change angles, they just kept on sliding horizontally. It was possible that the shelves weren’t moving at all, but the books were, and it wasn’t obvious why or even how. There was no visible mechanism making it happen, and no sound or sight of books falling off the end – or rather the start – of the shelf. The books slid by at varying degrees of slowness, depending on the shelf they were on, but none moved fast.
The Midnight Library consoles Nora, who gradually learns to live without regret. Reviewers have noted that it gives a needed perspective at this difficult time in the world, teaches that the little things matter, and helps us learn to love being ourselves and not be influenced or concerned by how others see us.
Those who love libraries will appreciate these wonderful novels for the environments they explore and the vistas they reveal.
