The Business of Naming Things

by Michael Coffey

  —Nope. Close. Three: What odds did Throwaway pay?

  Bored now you are.

  —Et cetera, Jimmy. You’ll get in, don’t worry . . . if your mommy allows for your further corruption.

  You feel odd for a moment as you realize you’ve not told this idea to anyone other than professor Gordo over a brief pint and you’re telling it to a seventeen-year-old and so what if you convince him, but that’s not the issue, why isn’t your circle something else. You can tell this to Red Murray down at the News. Try this on Larry Merchant? But you carry on. The eagerness of a young son is more than enough. You go on.

  —This is what we do and it addresses the very problem you are having right now, Jimmy. All we read in this class is the first six chapters. The three of Stephen’s and the three of Bloom’s, takes both of them from about eight till eleven on Bloomsday, breakfast to funeral. Dedalus goes and picks up his pay, walks the strand. They are beautiful; you are right. Nothing like it before or since. Ineluctable modality of the visible. Signatures of all things I am here to read.

  —Yes, yes, says Jimmy. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

  —He’s got a bright light on. And he follows these guys around, this Odysseus, and this son, this, what, Telemachus. They are wandering and of course their paths must cross; they must find each other. Father and son. That’s the odyssey, isn’t it. Coming home, Odysseus home to Penelope and his boy. Stephen’s lost his mother, hasn’t he. He sees her at sea. His father is an earache. Did you see that Bloom has to share a carriage with the old man Dedalus to Glasnevin? Question four: Who’s in the carriage with Bloom?

  —But I tell you what I think—why the whole book changes. Episode seven, Aeolus. Something breaks there and it gets more broken—he goes further and further from writing a novel. He’s writing about something else. He’s writing about the novel or writing itself, not these guys’ stories. He’s interested in how bad the novel is as a form. An English invention and he’s a good Irishman. He hates the English and their ways. Hated Dublin, too, but it was in his blood. So what’s he do? I think he couldn’t stomach carrying out the plot where, you know, A meets B. Stephen meets Bloom; then what? A contrivance. Or worse. I really think Joyce saw the conventional novel like a form of imperialism. Abuses circumstance, abuses mystery, in favor of . . . imposing a story. Rewriting maps, borders. Eliminates. I mean, people fart in Ulysses.

  —So what does Joyce do, that’s the point. He looks for a resolution, what Gordo called a formal resolution. Aesthetic. He leaves off any pretense to having this turn out to be a story with an ending that has a beginning. It is a novel that had a beginning and a novel that finds an ending as a novel, not as a story. As a collection of words. He’s got these people looking for people and they’re not going to find them. Bloom—his dead son; his lost father. Stephen—his lost mother; a real father. His father’s dead to him. At the end, what? Stephen walks off into the night. Where’s he go? Bloom crawls into bed, where old Blazes Boylan had been not too goddamned long ago. Maybe he gets breakfast in bed tomorrow. Fat chance. Thing is, Joyce doesn’t give a fuck about the narrative development after’s he’s set up a big map. Happy endings are not his business. He wants to get everything in instead. Circumstance, like I said. Mystery. The whole world of a day.

  The mike shrieks with feedback and some guy in a suit announces to boos that Chet Baker can’t make it tonight and you see that Mulligan has already split from his table and taken the dame with him. And some other musicians are stirring in and will set up, but the dissent lasts only a moment and back to the tinkling set and the barkeep, Al Parker, says to you, Bob, this round’s on the house. But not the shots. Good luck.

  —So this is it, you go on, blowing through your own stop sign. If you make the class and get your five right then you have to finish writing Ulysses. Finish Ulysses, and turn it in at the end of term; I don’t want to see you till then. Your first six chapters are written for you. You find a resolution on whatever level, and you decide, and argue in a short paper, how you resolved it and how you think Joyce resolved it or didn’t resolve it. That’s it. What do you think?

  —There’s Jim Doyle. Right there. Near the Yuengling sign. Ask him, Bob.

  —Doyle knows, you say. Get him over here.

  Your other Jimmy friend. At Temple now after the merchant marines. Wants to be a playwright.

  —Doyle, you say. You love this guy, got a twinkle like Spencer Tracy.

  —Just telling Jimmy here about my theory—yeah, Chet Baker’s canceled; let’s just visit, eh. Seeing Doyle’s heavy coat. Is it, starting to rain? All the more reason. You call Al over for another round and settle Jim Doyle in. On his own. Reading Ibsen, you see, in his CPO coat pocket.

  —Doyle here doesn’t buy it, right, Jim? Too much the playwright, but it’s an interesting point. Tell him, you say.

  Doyle’s a reticent friend, and the way you can talk, that’s a particular disadvantage. But he’s careful and knows what he thinks and what he thinks he is not afraid to tell you.

  —Joyce aspired to the theater, he tells you. Wrote one play but was headed there again, maybe didn’t know it. But Ulysses ends in performance, a verbal performance—an orgasm, of course—but it is a monologue, a great one, Molly coming to yes. A fifth of the book is a play, with stage directions. Nighttown. An impossible piece to stage, for obvious reasons—and never in Dublin! And it’s the perfect ending, the only ending, brings it all full circle. The book finds home, the omphalos, even if Bloom and Dedalus don’t. That’s my view. Believe me, Bob, he tells you, those students of yours will do no better.

  —You see, you say to Jimmy Curran. It will make for great debate. And Doyle here—he’s made my class. If he wants to . . . I’ll feed you the answers, my two Jameses, you say.

  You wink at him and you all toast.

  —Maybe that’s right, Jimmy Curran says, looking at Doyle but talking to you. This book is done, let’s study it, not finish it. Happened what, fifty years ago. Before the wars, before the Republic even.

  There’s another round from Al Parker, the beer, the whiskey. That kind of night. If fucking Chet Baker had kept his nose clean, it’d be different. You recognize what’s happening—getting a little surly—but you can control it.

  Jimmy Curran speaks up. I just don’t know that it works, he tells you. It’s not a novel is all I’m saying.

  —Curran, you’re a little young for this, don’t you think? Bedtime. He’s immediately hurt. You punch his shoulder and smile. You can kid a kid, you say. He relaxes, but he looks at his watch. Doyle shifts closer, moving into the space you’ve just contested a little. A Jim Doyle move. Last thing you want is a fight at sea. Peacekeeper.

  —Let me say this, you say—as if you ever have had to claim the floor, your gift, to be the youngest and everybody doted on what you had to say, those still around anyway. Hey now. Look at Dubliners. Every story tight as a fucking drum. Sight, see it right, the right voice, you say—poof: epiphany. Every one of ’em. A secret formula taken from the Bible. Joyce probably puked his fucking guts out when he realized that.

  —Bob, Bob, says Jim. Now slow down.

  Slow down, boys, huh? You say, It’s fucking raining, it’s a fucking Monday night, the blues, and we are in Philadelphia and I got a house I owe on and a new kid and a job selling ads, so I’m firing through this right now. C’mon, this is interesting. If not, fuck off.

  You excuse yourself with some courtesies and go to the jakes, leak and one to take the edge off the whiskey, which has made you ugly, you know, and you are sorry for it. Pissing, you remember standing next to Dylan Thomas in the White Horse and you look there like you could conjure him here in Pep’s and you can’t and you remember Ginny and Cassie making fun of you: Be a poet; don’t chase one. Thanks a lot. Hoofers.

  You wrote for Hallmark, six months. Okay.

  They were something. Not hoofers, sirens, yours. In the white tile in front of you, you see Ginny Brogan’s face in that geis
ha routine she did. Cabaret. In the Village. Rubber-band eyes. What’d she. . . . Adorable.

  Back to the bar and you hate to tell Jimmy it’s time to go, but he’s reloaded his question. Beer to his head. It doesn’t work, he says. The book. I don’t know what it is.

  —Look, you say. A book about identity is entitled to have some identity problems of its own: it should. I think Joyce resolved it. As much as a book with a ghost in it can be resolved.

  —Let’s go.

  It’s raining hard now, but it feels good after a long hot June. The streets are sloshing; your feet are wet. Jimmy’s in Keds. Doyle, you say to Doyle, well shod. You look at his bruised rib-soled deck shoes from the good ship Lollipop. You think, Grossbooted drayman.

  —Let’s down to the Z Bar, you say. Mulligan said Prez might show up. You lie, but it’s strategic—keep these pals moving; it’s too early. Life is good; there’s air to breathe.

  Your smoke is wet in the rain and you have to piss again, but the Zanzibar is closed—some Mondays, that’s right. Doyle knows Mulligan told you no such thing and you don’t hide behind the lie—there’s enough of that ahead—and Doyle steers you and Jimmy back down the street and across to a small shop surrounded by News trucks: delivery guys, bringing the paper up, early edition. What the hell time is it—2:00 A.M. by the Bulova. How can that be? You grab a copy from the back and put it back—there’s a stack inside the shop and a coffee would be good right now and you can take the paper home to Marion, businesslike; she’ll be worried. Tuesday’s coupons.

  You try to catch up with where you are in the little mop closet you have to take a piss in—micturition, of course. You’re a nation after all, unto yourself. And it is always thus. You can hear the two Jims out there lightly conversing and you know that is not a part of you; you are always your own consuming fire, one big hearth aflame, and sometimes people gather and sometimes people don’t and you can’t see out anyway; mighty Casey has struck out—like you’re in the klieg lights themselves, blind to the audience, you can only talk and talk as you hear things. You sit down in there. You sit down in a mop closet in Bud’s diner in the middle of Philadelphia USA and the rest of the world could dissolve, imagine it—the last closet standing, you exit to a ruined world. Then: mop up. You decide to smoke and think, and you can hear Ginny, or is it Cassie—really no matter—saying, What’s wrong, Bobby? Settle down. Look at yourself. What do you want. Drive you fucking crazy. You toss the butt. What are you doing? Sweet Marion’s face.

  You look at the poem in your pocket. Almost lost in the lining, so you have to dig.

  Deep in my heart’s well, fluffed and grey,

  The ashes of love no longer smolder,

  When fanned they glowed and sparked a bit

  But soon went out and now grow colder.

  Gray and bit don’t work.

  Old Bob less love was incomplete;

  New Bob of others joys will take,

  What if till then my heart skips a beat?

  I think the drink was worth the ache.

  Really, you think. Is it worth it? And what do you want? See your son. You should go home. Should have named him William, like in the book—William Doherty, D.D. Call him Liam. Maybe she. No. Not hers to name.

  Not Tim, after your da. Not after him. Loss and guilt, all that unites them, the very only thing . . . is what?

  Kevin. Kevin Barry’s good.

  Scrap that poem. But: back in your pocket. You wipe, your tail burning.

  The light in the counter area is blinding. One napkin dispenser burns like phosphorus. The fire you are in. Jim and Jimmy are at a back table, three coffees. Who’s the guy who just left? you ask. No, this one’s for you, says Doyle. No, you say. Someone just left. Someone just went somewhere, you say, looking through the plate-glass window. You realize “bud” in reverse is “bud”—obverse.

  You sit down. Somebody just left, you mutter. The seat seems warm. Its seams are warm, or is it the piping, and you get a chill; you shiver up through your tweed cap. You look at the newspaper—the consolations of print, its warm assurances, the many points of purchase, you claim them, one after another, climb around in the typography, and you realize you are reading a little item that says Clifford Brown is dead. Turnpike, rain-slicked, a turn. Two others. You can’t fucking believe it. You saw Brownie, what, six hours ago. Rain-slicked. A turn. Turnpike.

  You don’t say anything, because this can’t be true.

  —Robert Emmet buried by torchlight, Jimmy Curran says, bringing you back. He’s quoting; he’s proud of himself.

  —Yeah, you say. I’m in the book. Real Irishmen are, eh, Doyle. There’s a Doyle in there of course there is, and a Gallaher, a good long bit on a Gallaher, Ignatius. Lenehan, like Leo. I know a Martin Cunningham, sells web sheet. McHugh, O’Molloy. How many different characters? I wonder. We just saw our Buck Mulligan, with the horn. There’s some guy in Canada has done the work; it’s at the library. Word count, quarter million. Most common word: the. What’s the word known to all men? Fuck, maybe the.

  Your heart sinks and somehow you say, Brownie’s dead.

  —Brownie lives! Jimmy Curran says excitedly.

  You tell him what you know. You square the paper around for the two of them to read.

  —Late bull into the night desk. Merchant probably still there with Farragut, Phillies wrap-up. He pulled it, I bet.

  Doyle doesn’t know him. Curran looks shaken. You offer him your flask. He declines, but you take it for him. Black coffee velvet.

  —Did you see him in New York? Doyle. A sore point, New York. Drove cab, saw so much. On Jack Paar once. In the audience, Jack Paar asked you, What do you do? Nothing, all you could some up with. National TV. I’m doing nothing.

  You tried. What? Wrong? Swim the Hellespont like Bryon. No guts. You tried.

  —This is awful, says Doyle. Three people gone, like that.

  Change it up.

  —Doyle, what do you hear from the girls?

  He knows. Something. Used to date Ginny with you with Cassie Meer. Double date, the Thalia. Cabaret once—Ginny singing, “I’m looking for a few stout-hearted men.” Queers loved her. Then the play.

  —She got married, guy from Catholic. Big fella. All I remember, met him once, something about Nixon.

  That’s what you meant but you’d better say, No, Cassie. My once affianced.

  —Not a word, but she and Ginny are still bunking, I’d wager. Doyle laughs and twinkles.

  Back to Ginny.

  —That play killed her, you say. The musical. We all went to see it. Closed in a week. Walter Kerr was no help. I told her, Ginny, this is old. You’re better than this. Took her downtown to see Billie with Teddy Wilson. Not what she once was, but Ginny wept. So did I.

  January. Or February, ’54.

  —You know, we had a night, you tell the Jims, looking at your eyes in your coffee.

  —I bet she was something, Doyle says to you. Lonely voice.

  But you don’t mean Billie.

  Jim Doyle wants to walk and you don’t. It’s past three and raining still. He’s got his CPO coat.

  —Wool, he says. You never feel it. Like a lamb. Stand in the rain all day.

  —Irish donkey, you joke.

  —Jimmy, come with me. We can hop the work train. I know the guy. O’Toole.

  You skip down at Broad and Market underground. O’Toole’s there with his big watch. Lets you on the platform in return for a pill and a snort.

  You don’t know how to get home. Ironic, it’s the story of Ulysses. Home, nostos, getting back to Ithaca, your wife, your son. But you don’t know why you are getting there from here. How here? Why you, only you?

  You are suddenly felled. Down on your haunches in the subway, the dark tunnel. Where’s Charon, to take you to the other side? You wait in some kind of pain—your head, your eyes, your lungs, they’ve had enough, and you itch, up and down your torso you could scratch if you could scratch. As you squat there, you reach your hands ins
ide your coat and you do, you do, you do, you do.

  Somehow better. Jimmy’s asleep already, over near the pay phone. Let someone call; no one’s calling.

  You are beyond silence down here. Unseen and out of the way and still, just fifteen feet below the skin of the earth, whirring at what, a thousand miles an hour; the earth is 25,000 miles round and goes round in twenty-four hours, about that, about sixteen miles a second, you are speeding.

  What you want to say, no audience. Always talking your world, loud, loud. Want sound, to hide in, you sometimes think. Noise. But everything’s empty here, waiting for the shovel train. Track maintenance, chug-chug. You should’ve walked it. McGillicuddy probably stocking the shelves at the state store. A pint for the morrow. Not now. Sit tight; you’re sitting tight, squatting, asquat the platform, astride a reservoir of ideas, things tried, and not. Jimmy could sleep all night. You never sleep, even when you do—whirl of lights and sounds incessant, unceasing, which word? Eternal. Music of the spheres—b-flat, a blues key. Neat trick. God’s a musician; he’s Robert Johnson. Orlovitz in New York said Miles is God. Clifford would know, if he’s there yet. He is. Good God! Younger than me. Than I. What have I done?

  This’ll work, you think. Play it out. Your class a sensation. Dwight Macdonald writes about it. About you. Who was the guy?—Albert Erskine comes knocking. Faulkner. This is what you say now and this is where you get lost. Every single time.

  You feel the loneliness in that book. The loneliness of all books in that book. That’s what deepens after many goes at it—who notices the first time that Bloom aches for not circumcising his son? Who didn’t make it. Betrays his father. Who didn’t make it. Happens so quick: Bloom revives Stephen in Nighttown; Private Carr dropped him. Has a vision of his son, who has not died—has now lived on somewhere these eleven years. A little boy looking at him vacantly. Who notices, hundreds of pages apart, that Stephen and Bloom separately notice the same cloud obscuring the same sun? Son, now you get it, fifth read.

  You don’t need help. It’s all there—signature of all things. For you to read. Stephen thinks that. Joyce knows that. But you can show others. That’d be a decent job. Do it. Have you lost that shot? Left Temple, why? Left New York, why? The things you should’ve done. Left home, left the parish, left Philly. Philos adelphos. Loving brother. Really? What brotherly love? You’re underground, your choice. On your lonesome.