THE BRITISH ARMY IN ULYSSES

This second volume of a nonfiction series explains the numerous military references throughout James Joyce’s Ulysses.

As Fishback observes, Dublin was a garrison city of the British army during the years Joyce resided there, spanning from his youth to his time in college. As a result, it should come as no surprise that his most famous and interpretively daunting work, Ulysses, is dotted with numerous references to military life, especially since it was during a time Europe was engulfed by war. The author aims at an exhaustive catalog of those references that explains their meanings and historical contexts. Fishback documents the presence of the British army in Ireland on Bloomsday, including an account of the spread of venereal disease through its ranks. The author devotes particular attention to Maj. Brian Tweedy and his daughter, Molly Bloom, explaining in impressive depth the development of their characters by Joyce before and during the writing of the book as well as the real people on which those players were based. Fishback’s depiction of Tweedy’s regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, is particularly edifying. But this volume repeats a practice of its predecessor—the author seems intent on providing an excessively comprehensive guide, packed with minutiae, to understanding Ulysses and its novelistic universe. For example, the book opens with the Sandycove Martello Tower, but a discussion of the design of that structure’s roof provides no interpretive insights. Moreover, a thorough account of the history of British Gibraltar, including its commercial shipping business, sheds no light on Joyce’s densely difficult and allusive classic. Still, the novelist’s fervent fans and literary scholars specializing in Joyce will benefit from Fishback’s encyclopedic labors.

An illuminating but overstuffed examination of the military details in Ulysses.