It's Bloomsday today, and Father's day tomorrow. James Joyce 's Ulysses , set on the 16th June 1904, is a phenomenal, bewildering, literary roller-coaster of a book which everyone should read [1] and which I would be fool to attempt to write about. Since previous posts have well-established me as such, here are my hasty scribblings. Still, points for topicality, no? Fittingly, fatherhood is a running theme. A father in search of a son: middle-aged Leopold Bloom, (the Odysseus figure), lost his infant son 11 years ago and feels emotionally estranged from his wife (the Penelope figure) of whose numerous affairs he is well aware. A son in search of a father: 22 year old aspiring writer, Stephen Dedalus (the Telemachus figure), has suffered the long-running neglect of an alcoholic father and has recently lost his mother. The story describes, in a variety of challengingly experimental literary modes, events in both their lives -- ranging from the basest of bodily functions