Buttigieg as Joyce's Ulysses

[mobeau69]

Given that CNN just declared Buttigieg to be “the hottest” candidate in the race, might we expect a Molly Bloom response from citizens? Will they ask him with their eyes to ask them for their vote?

I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

After all, voters do fall in love with their candidates.

Incidentally, the best twitter response to Buttigieg’s love of Joyce has got to be this one from David Dayen, who riffs off the novel’s opening line:

Stately plump Pete Buttigieg came from the town hall, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.


https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/buttigieg-as-joyces-ulysses/

[Celerity]

1. I would lay a decent wager that Trump doesnt even know who Joyce is, let all have read ANY of him.

The intellectual gulf between Buttigieg and Trump is so vast one would have to shoot off to Mars to find a canyon large enough to serve as an apt metaphor.

from you link:

Robin Bates:

“You’re a big James Joyce buff. Is running for president more like Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake?

I can’t imagine why Lizza brought up the impossible-to-read Finnegans Wake unless to suggest that campaigns are so crazy and confused and candidates’ language is so slippery that people can’t make heads or tails of any of it. In any event, Buttigieg opted for Ulysses and his response was unexpected and smart:

Pete Buttigieg:

Definitely more like Ulysses than it is like Portrait. Finnegans Wake is dream speak. Ulysses is consciousness meeting reality. But here’s why I think Ulysses is extremely relevant. People believe Ulysses is this complex, difficult, inscrutable text full of references. And it is a difficult text, but its subject matter couldn’t be more democratic. It’s about a guy going about his day for one day. That’s the plot of Ulysses. And, to me, that’s what makes it very touching. You’re in this guy’s head, and you’re kind of seeing life through his eyes, and at the end through his wife’s eyes.

That’s how politics ought to be, too. The reason any of this stuff matters is that it affects us in the everyday. And I think the greatest literature, whether it’s Ulysses or [Egyptian author Naguib] Mahfouz, when it touches politics, it’s about how politics can make our everyday better or worse. And I think that same understanding of the imperative and the primacy of lived experience ought to be how our politics works.

Trump, if asked the same question would just gurgle and bark, like a flaccid and ageing orange-dyed sheepdog that just was served seltzer water in its bowl.