#1 Ulysses, James Joyce

The #1 book on Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list is Ulysses by James Joyce. If you’ve been joining me on this journey to savor humanity’s best art, you know that I’ve been intimidated by this one. I started my “100 Best Novels” quest with Joyce’s "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (#3 on the list), and then re-read Gatsby (#2). I couldn’t put it off any longer, so I finally started Ulysses. It took me months to get through it, but I finished it! I was tempted to write this post as follows: "Ulysses: I finished it." 

I’ve been keeping a list of all the books I read since 2003. Most years, I read somewhere between 45-55 books a year. In 2021, I only read 20. THAT’S how long it took me to read. It’s a delirious dive into different styles, Dublin districts, multiple motifs, and Ireland’s dramatic history. I loved it and I spent many days swearing at it.

After I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce inspired me to do some research into Ireland and its history and I became quite engrossed in it. The quest for independence and the civil war and the Celticism and the mystique is all so heartbreaking and enchanting. I suggested to my husband, Roger, that we take a trip there and he agreed. Our trip turned out to be booked after vaccines and before the Omicron variant - our first bit of Irish luck. 

U2's beloved presence is everywhere,
here's a particular quote I loved

James Joyce based Ulysses on Homer’s Odyssey. According to scholars, each episode in Ulysses corresponds to a different adventure from the Odyssey. However, Joyce wanted to illustrate that ordinary people make heroic quests in their daily lives all the time - you don’t have to go to battle against one-eyed monsters while lost at sea. As this expert notes: 

“Ulysses is about the lives of a few people in Dublin in 1904… the experiences these people undergo, which are largely mundane, reflect the trials, tribulations, infidelities, missed opportunities, unfulfilled promises, odd coincidences, small satisfactions, and pleasant joys we all aspire to." 

This quote moves me deeply. One of my steadfast beliefs is that there is so much beauty and magic in the mundane - those parts of life we think we have to slog through quickly to get to the good part. I just have to pay attention and be present for them. I suck at this often and I bet you do, too. When I’m traveling, suddenly the mundane comes to life, simply because I’m away from home. I feel more expansive, more generous to human imperfections, including my own. And when I return home, I appreciate anew the little mundane stuff of my daily life, like my shower pressure, my favorite coffee mug, and the way the light gently peeks around my bedroom curtains in the mornings, while I am snuggled up all toasty in my own comfy bed.

Museum of Literature in Dublin

Museum of Literature in Dublin

I had given up on finishing Ulysses in the months preceding our trip to Ireland, but I resolved to try again. What could be cooler than reading it while in Dublin, visiting the very streets and shops he wrote about in the book? I started it again from the beginning and read it throughout our visit. And throughout our visit, I found “odd coincidences, small satisfactions, and pleasant joys” galore. 

On our first full day in Dublin, we enjoyed a literary walking tour through St. Stephen’s Green. Here is a picture of Roger and me with the man himself, James Joyce. 

Roger, James Joyce, and me, St. Stephen's Green

During this tour through St. Stephen's Green, we met a nice couple from Limerick. They gave us all kinds of great ideas for other parts of Ireland we might want to explore. Roger and I tend to keep our vacations very loose and unstructured so we can take advantage of random opportunities like this. With their colorful descriptions of the area, they convinced us to travel west across the island to Galway on the Atlantic coast. 

Ulysses Rare Books

While we made those arrangements, we continued our exploration of Dublin. James Joyce’s likeness and legacy are everywhere - there is even an annual celebration called Bloomsday, a commemoration of his life and work. It’s named after Leopold Bloom, one of the main characters in Ulysses. We ate lunch at Davy Byrnes, the pub where Bloom ate in Ulysses and where Joyce frequented himself. We stopped at a rare book store called Ulysses, where I gawked at shelf after shelf of first editions by writers like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett. Roger even indulged me with a trip to the Museum of Literature of Ireland, that was full of both literary inspiration and a spacious, playful aesthetic. We did a lot of non-Ulysses sight-seeing as well. We took the Guinness and Jameson tours, road e-bikes on the Howth peninsula, explored the Cliffs of Moher, traveled the Wicklow Mountains, and saw our first live soccer match.

Joyce chilling at Temple Bar

One day we went to Merchant's Arch in Temple Bar for some shopping. We wandered into Jam Art Factory, where I found too much to love - antique book page prints, funky, clunky jewelry, and adorable ceramics. The person working there was more than happy to share my obsession with Ulysses. I rarely remember my dreams, but every night in Dublin, while reading Ulysses in every spare moment of the day, I had the most vivid dreams of my life. She told me that many people have intense dreams when they read it. It includes a lot of prose that is dreamy and hallucinatory - this is partly why it is so challenging to get through. We chatted at length about other Dublin sites and events related to the book. We confessed our mutual desire to one day finish the novels we each were writing. Our brief conversation hit so many meaningful points that, when we left, I joked to Roger that I needed to sit down for a minute to compose myself. Later that day, while enjoying lunch and live music at the famous Temple Bar, we discovered that the singer used to live an hour away from us here in Wisconsin. So much of this trip was magical.

Our weekend getaway to Galway was a huge hit. After a beautiful day of driving the countryside and exploring the oldest pubs on the island, we found ourselves at an outdoor beer garden down by the coast. [Side note: Because we were both a bit nervous about driving on the unusual side of the car and on the unusual side of the road, we helped each other out by yelling “PEDO” every time we saw a pedestrian. Yes, we are twelve.] Back to our lovely beer garden, and who should we see walking by but the couple from our very first day in Dublin! Neither one of us could remember their names, but the gent was wearing a red shirt and there was no way I was going to let this coincidence go - after all, we were only in Galway because of their kind counsel. I ran down the block yelling, “Red shirt! Red shirt!” at the top of my lungs in my obvious American accent. Thankfully, they remembered us and we were properly reintroduced - hello Dennis and Maria - and they joined us at the beer garden for a few pints and some raucous storytelling while the sun went down. Magic.

Cool 3D art, Museum of Literature in Dublin

Many people experience joy from traveling, but this particular trip, after two years of fear and worry and too much homebound captivity, illustrated not just the joy of travel, but the joy of talking to strangers - the joy of randomness, the joy of odd coincidences that can make perfect strangers bonded together, even if only for a few short minutes. I don’t mean to get too sappy about this - after all, Roger and I have a saying: “You know who I hate? Others!” (Because come on, we’ve all been there.) But what struck me most about this trip is how much we missed each other during this pandemic. We didn’t just miss those we know and love, we missed our fellow humans more broadly. It fills my heart with hope. 

Relishing all this amazing art - in the form of novels, albums, and music - has inspired me to start a Meetup group to discuss these pieces with others. I encourage you to join me at one of the upcoming online events. This project has changed my life for the better and I would love to bring more people along for this ride. Our next book is Lolita, but do check out the events for albums and movies too. Let’s inspire each other! 

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” ― James Joyce, Ulysses

Roger enjoying a Guinness at the Gravity Bar overlooking the Dublin skyline

"May the roof above us never fall in, and may the friends gathered below it never fall out". -Irish toast

#3 The Godfather (1972)

I have always loved this movie, and Godfather II even more. Watching it again these days though, all I could think about was the turbulent moment we are living through. As Robert Ebert notes in this review, this movie is so absorbing that we actually romanticized organized crime in the US. 

Ebert: “During the movie we see not a single actual civilian victim of organized crime. No women trapped into prostitution. No lives wrecked by gambling. No victims of theft, fraud or protection rackets. The only police officer with a significant speaking role is corrupt.” 

Organized crime affects every single one of us in the form of higher taxes and fewer social services as our law enforcement agencies work to combat the violence, financial crimes, cybercrimes, and corruption. And it’s global now. Our national security apparatus has long deemed Transnational Organized Crime as a national security threat and a threat to democracy around the world. All those crimes make everything more expensive for the rest of us. It endangers our health through human trafficking and counterfeit pharmaceuticals. And it corrupts local, state, and national officials, who are supposed to be working for us. 

This time around, watching The Godfather got me thinking about other forms of organized crime in our history. More specifically, other times when too much power was held by too few, leading to an oligarchy of crime and corruption. I believe that this is precisely what is causing our current misery and tumult, so I wanted to look for examples of where it has happened before. 

Southern Planters & Slavery

I’ve been reading a historical fiction series about the Civil War and it’s hard not to see the southern planter class through an “organized crime” lens. If oligarchy is defined as a power structure that allows a few individuals to rule in a way that benefits them to the exclusion of the rest of society, it is clear they were an oligarchy. It was an aristocracy built on slave labor and it gave them political clout that allowed them to expand their slaveholding land into Native American territories so they could cling to power as each new state was added to the Union. 

If you are thinking it is too extreme to refer to southern planter/slaveholders as “organized crime”, let’s consider their behavior immediately before and after they lost the Civil War.

When Lincoln was elected, southern Democrats - the pro-slavery party - held almost half the seats in the Senate and had additional northern allies that they could control.  Lincoln would have been virtually powerless on the issue of slavery, not to mention he repeatedly said he didn’t intend to focus on it. The Democrats had a majority of the Supreme Court. They had just had a decade of significant legislation and Supreme Court rulings in favor of slavery. Throughout this period, by the way, they demanded the federal government’s help in enforcing fugitive slave control OVER northern states’ rights. 

They left the Union because they disagreed with northerners. Mississippi complained that northerners believed in “negro equality” and this was enough to justify secession. Texas also said they had to leave because northerners were “proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color”. Secession was illegal and shameful because they only did it to save their oligarchy.

Immediately after losing the war, the south began to institute black codes across the south. The point of these laws were to restrict the freedom of the former slaves and make sure they were still available to work on the plantations. These laws prohibited Black people from holding any occupation other than farmer or servant unless they paid an annual tax. They punished anyone who offered higher wages to a Black laborer who was already employed. 

But wait there's more! Former confederate veterans formed a terrorist organization whose entire purpose was to punish Black and white Republicans with harassment, torture, and murder. The original leadership of the Ku Klux Klan included lawyers, physicians, police officers, and plantation owners.

Members of the planter class didn’t start out as gangsters like the Corleones. But when the oligarchy is threatened, they immediately morph into a criminal enterprise. They break laws and harm people to keep it.

Organized crime is described as a “continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works to profit from illicit activities that are often in great public demand. Its continuing existence is maintained through corruption of public officials and the use of intimidation, threats or force to protect its operations.” Ding, ding, ding.

California Growers & Fair Wages

Next, I dug into the dust bowl years a little bit and the fight for fair wages. It should come as no surprise to you that this was also inspired by a novel that my book club selected earlier this year. 

The dust bowl was the biggest migration of Americans in history. Many headed to California, which quickly became overrun with migrants. Most of the farms in California were corporate-owned and they used this to their advantage - repeatedly lowering wages and pocketing the profits, while using their wealth and political power to convince law enforcement and locals that the migrants were subhuman and deserved no help.  The larger farms had onsite lodging and company stores for the laborers. These company stores charged high prices for goods and allowed migrants to incur debt that could only be paid off with wages, keeping them tied to their situation and ensuring they had no agency.

Again, it seems like a stretch to call this completely legal display of free market capitalism “organized crime”. But look at their actions when the subjugated people push back via a strike. 

First, they actively prevented workers from assembling to try to improve their lot. They encouraged police to raid gatherings and beat up anyone who either tried to educate pickers or tried to learn as a picker. Second, they used their wealth and power to control the public opinion, actively ensuring other community members ostracized the migrants from all of the rest of society, including little kids attending school or getting medical care. And finally, of course, they led or encouraged vigilante mobs who beat and murdered them for striking. 

Again, these growers were not initially behaving like a crime syndicate. They were not all bad people any more than any group of humans has “bad” or “good” people in it. But once they had so much power in so few hands, it didn't seem to matter that they were raking in record profits, they were ready to destroy everything to keep the status quo. It’s like something switches in peoples’ brains in these situations and they lose their sense of right and wrong. What was that definition of organized crime again? Oh yeah, “its continuing existence is maintained through corruption of public officials and the use of intimidation, threats or force to protect its operations.” See what I mean?

Today

I have been studying how Transnational Organized Crime is affecting us right now, particularly where it has already infiltrated our government, media, and other institutions. We know, through court transcripts and indictments, that foreign groups have been actively working to divide Americans by spreading disinformation, fear, and hate for years. We also know that citizens are repeatedly banned from various social media sites for spreading disinformation. And yet.

Today, citizens are showing up at local school board and town council meetings and spewing conspiracy theories, punching each other, and harassing teachers and other officials. People are pretending that COVID precautions and the vaccine are nefarious when they absolutely are not and never have been. There’s an actual cult that has sprouted up and is being actively nurtured, with believers around the world. Members of this QAnon cult have committed crimes, deserted their children, and isolated themselves from the people they love rather than give up the ludicrous farce that the world has been taken over by a secret group of people who eat and molest children. Most alarming to me, well-known public figures are advocating for fascist dictators over our own country!

Why? Who benefits when Americans are exhausted, afraid, sick, and ready to surrender our Republic? This is much bigger than left/right politics. It is absolutely some form of organized crime like the examples I shared above. Some group of oligarchs - whether foreign, like the well-known Russian mafia, or domestic, like the Koch enterprise/Federalist Society - is threatened and they are acting exactly as the groups above acted. Or, God help us, perhaps they have joined forces. I want to know who they are. I want all of their damn names and I want them tried and sent to prison.

If this topic interests you, I encourage you to give the podcast The World Beneath a listen. It’s a rich and groundbreaking series that examines how the underworld’s criminal figures have morphed and changed as organized crime went global. 

I also suggest you follow the Pegasus Project, which is an international investigative journalism initiative that revealed that governments all over the world have been using spyware developed by an Israeli tech firm to monitor people. If you enjoy spy thrillers, we’ve got one right here in real life. This software can access victims' data, messages, and photos, and can turn on the phone’s microphone, camera, and geolocation. Absolutely terrifying. A global weapon to silence truth. I expect we will learn more about the perpetrators in the future.

Times are dire, I know. But we’ve gotten out of scary moments before, and we will again, as long as most of us know how important the moment is. Pay attention, but not so much that you get discouraged and lose hope. Take care of yourself. 

Be wary of those who constantly tell you that your fellow Americans are to blame. Blame elected officials? Absolutely. They literally have staff to ensure their information is as accurate as possible. Average Americans do not. 

I know, I’m angry with the anti-vax crowd too, but it helps me to remember they are victims of our very first global disinformation war of the social media era and, as a country, we aren’t doing enough to fight it because it’s such a new phenomenon. They are drowning in it and it’s killing them and us. 

I know, I also think they should be smart enough to understand the difference between con artists and grifters, and professional journalists and epidemiologists. Just remember there are forces actively trying to keep them confused, scared, angry, and uninformed. Actively trying to hurt them. 

Talk about it with your friends and family and make sure people understand how serious this moment is.

Most of all, remember how important your actions are. Remember how vital your individual acts of kindness are to the greater world. Be kind and be a good example. Remember that most people are actually good - the bad ones just get the headlines. We are going to need each other to make it through this moment and there are more of us than we think.

#5 The Beatles, Abbey Road (1969)

Have you ever thought about the word “time”? I don’t mean the time of day, I mean the way we use the word to describe an era, a generation, a time in history. What about “all time”? The eternity of humans on earth.

I picture a river. I’m barefoot, on the bank of a mature and substantial river running from my left to my right. It’s mostly calm, greenish blue water with some faster moving spots too. And it makes that wonderful sound that rivers make. It burbles and splashes and ripples - sounds of currents I can’t see. It goes around lazy bends from time to time but it stretches as far as I can see in either direction. I walk in at the shallow river’s edge and it feels perfect. Refreshing but not cold. Warm enough, but not tepid.

Now imagine that the river represents all of humanity. To our left, all of our past. Every human who ever lived on the earth. All of the honorable and divine moments of human kindness, generosity, ingenuity, love. All of those humans whose names we will never know and who will not be remembered. Every single human who chose good over evil has shaped our world into what it is today and has helped get us here. Each one is admirable and I’m so grateful to them for the gift of this moment. Our moment.  

Deep below the surface of our river is the muck of nastiness. Humans who choose to kill or harm or steal. Or profit from the suffering of others. Humans who choose fear and hate. Humans who lie or who are unkind. We all know what we are capable of when we are at our worst. Our river is so strong that it can handle this relatively small bit of muck. Too much muck and it will threaten the health of the river and we will need a massive cleanup project to avoid losing it entirely, so we all keep a close eye on it. We understand that we don’t own it; rather, we are temporary custodians and we need to ensure that it is healthy and strong for those who come after us.

Where I stand in our river, my feet are in the muck. They aren’t submerged, and I am free to move around, but I can feel it. I feel the revulsion as its cold clamminess squishes between my toes. But I stand atop it, knowing the worst. I learn from their mistakes and I choose kindness.

Now let’s look to our right. Future generations of humanity spread out as far as we can see on our same winding waterway. Immediate futures that we can make educated guesses about. Distant futures that we cannot even imagine and that creative artists often frame for our consideration and enjoyment. What will they make of us? What art and news and policy will they look back at hundreds or thousands of years from now and admire? Or be embarrassed by? Are we doing everything we can to ensure our river is still as clean and beautiful for them as we can make it? Every act in our daily lives, no matter how small, affects the river. Every single one of us changes our current and future worlds with our every action. We are, for them, history. Let’s make sure we treasure the dignity and gravity with which we have been entrusted.

As I gaze in wonderment, I can feel that this sublime and majestic river is, by its nature, good. When we don’t choose kindness, every single one of us has to go out of our way to override that inner voice we all have - our conscience reminds us that we know right from wrong. Our default setting is goodness and it’s indisputable. Living our lives can be so hard and I find this fact so reassuring, overwhelming even. Especially during those times when I am filled with doubt or worry. And we cannot ignore the muck between our toes. It exists and we succumb to it from time to time. But we are wired for good. 

The major world religions use a lot of water-related imagery. Christians and Muslims believe God created man and all other creatures out of water. Both religions believe water symbolizes purity, like in baptism rituals. Muslims believe water is the source of life and a symbol of paradise. Hindus believe water holds purifying and cleansing powers. They value cleanliness of body and soul so they use water in many of their rituals as well.

I think about the river all the time. Sometimes I think it is God. After all, if you believe in God, you certainly know it’s not a white-haired dude hanging out ELSEWHERE. It’s right here, with us, in us, all the time. I never know exactly what I believe about God. But if you look at all of the wondrous things we humans are capable of, the astounding power that human love has to create and transform lives all along this eternal river… to me, that is God. Or our “source”, or the universe, or whatever you feel comfortable calling it. The Divine. Accessible to us at all times. Just dip your toe in. 

Consider truly gifted artists such as The Beatles or Bob Dylan or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Something in their art spoke to so many of us that we lifted them up en masse so we could spread their message and so we could speak to each other about their work. They tapped deeply into our river - our shared humanity that tethers us together. They practiced and honed their craft and found a way to see into our souls and reflect our *selves* back to us. They speak to what our moment in the river FEELS like. We, the humans of this place and time, broadly agree that these are the messages we want to send to our future. To our beloved future humans, this is what it was like for us during our moment on this earth. These messages represent our fears and joys and trials and observations. Our calls for improvement and progress. Our heartbreak when we suffer. This is us. Isn’t that just so freaking cool?

Anyway, Abbey Road is great. Apparently I saw God or something so, you know, you should listen to it.