{"id":116038,"date":"2017-09-27T09:00:19","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T13:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=116038"},"modified":"2017-10-11T11:34:23","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T15:34:23","slug":"joyces-unpunctuated-rigmarole-numerical-spangablasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/27\/joyces-unpunctuated-rigmarole-numerical-spangablasm\/","title":{"rendered":"Joyce\u2019s Unpunctuated Rigmarole of Numerical Spangablasm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

An seventeenth-century shilling.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Joyce was good. He was a good writer. He makes me grumpy a lot, especially Ulysses<\/i>, but he was good. There are at least twenty irresistible qualities to Ulysses<\/i>. At or near the top of the stack, at least for me, is the way he traffics in what I call \u201chyperrealistic unnecessaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shakespeare was like that, too. Sprinkled all through his plays are these exchanges that are not at all essential to the plot but that \u201cring true\u201d in some surprising way, causing one to turn \u2019em over and over in one\u2019s mind, pleasurably.<\/p>\n

FIRST PLAYER
\nBut who, O who, had seen the mobled queen?<\/i><\/p>\n

HAMLET
\nThe \u201cmobled\u201d queen?<\/p>\n

POLONIUS
\nThat\u2019s good. \u201cMobled queen\u201d is good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above is especially ticklish because Hamlet, a moment before, had sputtered in indignation at Polonius\u2019s having interrupted the player\u2019s speech. Suddenly, surprisingly, and delightfully, Hamlet himself interrupts\u2014and deflates the very speech he was just defending. And then Polonius reverses himself as well!<\/p>\n

Moreover, the fact that the whole thing turns on the word \u201cmobled\u201d raises the pitch well into the \u201cexquisite\u201d range. (The best Simpsons\u00a0<\/i>episodes are full of this kind of thing, as well.)<\/p>\n

But to return to Joyce: the unnecessary bits that are just so perfect are everywhere in Ulysses<\/i>. I want to unpack one of them from my favorite chapter (chapter 1), for the benefit of American readers who have absolutely no idea how traditional British money works. Here is the passage:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0Haines said to her:
\n\u2014Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn\u2019t we?
\nStephen filled again the three cups.
\n\u2014Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well it\u2019s seven mornings a pint at twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That\u2019s a shilling and one and two is two and two, sir.
\nBuck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his trouser pockets.
\n\u2014Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
\nStephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried:
\n\u2014A miracle!
\nHe passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
\n\u2014Ask nothing more of me, sweet.\u00a0<\/i>All I can give you I give.
\n<\/i>Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
\n\u2014We\u2019ll owe twopence, he said.
\n\u2014Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning, sir.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every little dot of that is excellent. Mulligan\u2019s sigh. Haines\u2019s smiling banality. The woman\u2019s \u201cuneager\u201d hand. But my purpose here, this morning, is to explain the bill. Her unpunctuated rigmarole of numerical spangablasm is, for me, the crown jewel in this passage, the main reason I remember it.<\/p>\n

But first, a little backstory. Like all other Americans with literature Ph.D.s, I have had the old British monetary system explained to me a hundred times. But the thing is hopeless. Bobs, tanners, groats, florins, crowns, guineas\u2014there\u2019s quite a few too many of these. Also, there is the error of thinking the pound is the basic unit. Nothing costs a pound; everything costs a shilling.<\/p>\n

For me, the only solution was to go to coin shops and purchase actual specimens of the key items mentioned above. Graduate students of America, listen to me! Go online and buy yourself an eighteenth-century shilling. Pay whatever they want. If you simply stare at a shilling (it\u2019s a handsome coin) for long enough, a lot of your anxieties\u00a0will relax. As Isaac Watts says: \u201cLet Induftry and Devotion join together, and you need not doubt the happy Succefs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s revisit what Mother Grogan (or whatever her name is) says.<\/p>\n

Well it\u2019s seven mornings a pint at twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That\u2019s a shilling and one and two is two and two, sir.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let us not make this any more complicated than it needs to be. Here are the essentials. A shilling<\/b> is twelve pence<\/b>. A florin<\/b> is two shillings<\/strong>. Thus,\u2014<\/p>\n

(a)\u00a0<\/strong> A pint of milk for each of seven\u00a0mornings, at twopence a pint, is fourteen\u00a0pence (\u201ca shilling and twopence over\u201d).<\/p>\n

(b)\u00a0<\/strong> But these three\u00a0most recent mornings, they\u2019ve had quarts<\/i> of milk, which go for four\u00a0pence each (naturally, since a quart is two\u00a0pints). Three\u00a0quarts x four\u00a0pence = twelve\u00a0pence, i.e., a shilling.<\/p>\n

Having calculated (b), she adds (a) to it: [a shilling, for the quarts] +<\/i>\u00a0[\u201cone and two,\u201d i.e. a shilling and twopence, for the pints]\u00a0=<\/i>\u00a0[\u201ctwo and two,\u201d i.e. two\u00a0shillings and twopence].<\/p>\n

Mulligan gives her a florin (= two\u00a0shillings)\u2014that\u2019s why they still owe twopence<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Got it? You\u2019d probably better read the last few paragraphs over again. Concentrate.<\/p>\n

Now, obviously the reader is not supposed to follow the original any better than Mulligan does. Indeed the iggskwizzitness of the passage is bound up in the fact that this humble, uneducated woman thinks rings<\/i> (for a moment anyway) around these supposedly superior young men. And she does so without aggression or victory, or anything else. She\u2019s mainly wary of them.<\/p>\n

Just the same, it bothered me for years, knowing that the novel\u2019s original readers were not nearly as flummoxed as I was. I mean, you\u2019re supposed to be bewildered, but not rendered utterly helpless.<\/p>\n

Splendidly, the reader of the present note now understands the passage as well as anyone alive. Until forgetting sets in, your mind has achieved union, not with that of James Joyce but with that of Mother Grogan, or whatever her name was.<\/p>\n

Gratia Domini nostri Iesu Christi cum omnibus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anthony Madrid\u00a0lives in Victoria, Texas.\u00a0His second book is\u00a0<\/em>Try Never<\/a>\u00a0(Canarium Books, 2017)<\/em>.\u00a0He is a correspondent for the\u00a0<\/em>Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Joyce was good. He was a good writer. He makes me grumpy a lot, especially Ulysses, but he was good. There are at least twenty irresistible qualities to Ulysses. At or near the top of the stack, at least for me, is the way he traffics in what I call \u201chyperrealistic unnecessaries.\u201d Shakespeare was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22700],"tags":[30771,30773,30770,1320,22927,947,30774,30768,948,30772,30769,946],"class_list":["post-116038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-correspondents","tag-buck-mulligan","tag-florin","tag-haines","tag-hamlet","tag-isaac-watts","tag-james-joyce","tag-mother-grogan","tag-polonius","tag-shakespeare","tag-shilling","tag-simpsons","tag-ulysses"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJoyce\u2019s Unpunctuated Rigmarole of Numerical Spangablasm<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u2018Ulysses\u2019 for American readers who have absolutely no idea how traditional British money works.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/27\/joyces-unpunctuated-rigmarole-numerical-spangablasm\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Joyce\u2019s Unpunctuated Rigmarole of Numerical Spangablasm by Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"September 27, 2017 \u2013   Joyce was good. 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