Click the image above for a larg­er ver­sion

Just above you’ll find a sketched-out map of the paths Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom took through Dublin on June 16, 1904. If you’ve ever read James Joyce’s Ulysses (find it in our lists of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books), you may well have tried draw­ing one of these your­self, con­nect­ing the loca­tions as each chap­ter finds one of the pro­tag­o­nists some­where else in Ire­land’s cap­i­tal on that “ordi­nary” day. Maybe you want­ed to test the plau­si­bil­i­ty of the com­mon asser­tion that, giv­en accu­ra­cy and detail with which Joyce wrote about the city, one could, in case of the apoc­a­lypse, build the city all over again using the nov­el as a plan. This par­tic­u­lar Ulysses fan map, how­ev­er, comes from the hand of a very spe­cial read­er indeed: Vladimir Nabokov, author of a few much-dis­cussed works of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture him­self, includ­ing Loli­ta, Pale Fire, and Speak, Mem­o­ry.

For those who teach Ulysses, Nabokov has a sug­ges­tion: “Instead of per­pet­u­at­ing the pre­ten­tious non­sense of Home­r­ic, chro­mat­ic, and vis­cer­al chap­ter head­ings, instruc­tors should pre­pare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s inter­twin­ing itin­er­aries clear­ly traced.” A post from Raynor Ganan quotes him as say­ing that, adding, “Would you not have donat­ed a litre of your own spinal flu­id to audit this lec­ture?” Indeed, Nabokov speaks from expe­ri­ence, hav­ing not only pro­duced well-respect­ed lit­er­a­ture but taught it, too. The fruits of his time at the front of the class­room appear in his col­lec­tion Lec­tures on Lit­er­a­ture, though if you want to get as close as pos­si­ble to the expe­ri­ence of sit­ting in on one of Nabokov’s class­es, go back into our archives and watch the WQED drama­ti­za­tion, star­ring Christo­pher Plum­mer, of his talk on Kaf­ka at Cor­nell. It won’t give you any insight into Joyce’s Dublin, grant­ed, but some Yale grad stu­dents’ more recent project to dig­i­tal­ly, inter­ac­tive­ly map Ulysses just might.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.