got away with it: more about the author

I google a bit: I do not repeat here the short general preliminaries I found googling "James Joyce" and "Joyce Ulysses", (say, on wikipedia) which readers might find helpful to check before reading on.

hung to burn in hell by the academic Joyce community: this edition "fixing 5000 errors" initially got hailed as the new standard reference, and other versions on the market (like Penguin) got corrected accordingly. But then, after vehement and ugly discussion among the leading Joycologians of that moment, trading murky insults and accusations, this was revoked.

the smell of a rat: while the book's title, Ulysses - name of a Greek bronze age hero whose return journey to his house and wife, at sea, thrown astray by adversities of all kinds, took 10 years - is quite handsome for a one day santering through town of a man who has a problem with his wife at home, the Homeric schemes Joyce provided after the book appeared, strongly seem improvised and inspired by the questions he got from would be experts in literature eager to acquire fame of their own by academizing it. Joyce immediately sensed he should cooperate, and that by making some absurd schemes, preferably inconsistent, he could pull the legs of the overly venerating part of his readers, at the same time stimulating sales boosting analytical fury.

Chapter 1

poor lice-ridden uneducated savage foreign intruders from the Middle East:  apostles.

paganism: all religious and non religious beliefs not based on Abrahamic religion (that is, not based Judaism, Christianity or Islam)

Chapter 2

no dogs to check for game hit: contrary to Stephen, philosophers adopt standards and check their claims against them, like hunters fire to hit game and have dogs to check whether - or not! - this actually resulted in game hit by retrieving it when found.

Chapter 3

Obesitas mentis: obesity of the mind.

Gallo-Hellenic pagan view: Gallic: Celtic. In Chapter 1, Buck satirically refers to  the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic (ancient Greek) Studies, founded in 1879, by proposing to "Hellenise" Ireland.

Chapter 4

By contrast, Homer's Calypso defies my personal pocket feminology: In Joyce's rat-scent spreading schemes, this chapter, 4, introducing Bloom's wife Molly, corresponds to the Odyssey book "Calypso". But Molly is a rather normal and predictable woman, while Calypso has, from a modern Western vantage point, even more so from a ancient classical one, a highly surprising type of female personality.

Chapter 5

Which author in his senses would expect you to pay for what you deserve?: Derives from the general law that if a book is enjoyable to read, hence worth money, it is not good for you. The reverse, of course does not hold at all: if a book is disgustingly hard it is rarely good for you as well, but the very few ones that are, all are in that very section.

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Goes for Hamlet's father but had another been there first might well have taken up the son: Stephen wishes to show off to his present company his agility in intellectual debate, and does care little whether he himself really entertains the view he takes up to defend.

Chapter 10