Updated: May 22, 2023
“Well, here come James Joyce the writer, drunk again with Ernest Hemingway.” – Nora Barnacle
The ancestry of the Six-Word Story is diluted with debate and debunkery.
The apocryphal origin story of “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” is pure Hemingway. Supposedly, Ernest scrawled his super sad hexad on a napkin to win a bet at the Algonquin Hotel’s “vicious circle.” This precarious provenance was solidified through retellings and sanctified on stage in John De Groot’s play, “Papa.”
Several versions of the sextet appear in print prior to Hemingway’s alleged authorship. But what are we without our lore and legends? In the spirit of fabulation, let’s embrace the cheapest of double-negative debate tactics: the “evidence” does not prove Hemingway did not birth the eight-syllable sextuplet.
Plus, Hemingway’s words regarding Ulysses, “Joyce has written a most goddamn wonderful book,” make him a friend with benefits of the doubt.
What better excuse to double down on a hundred-year-old wager and create a fresh, new form. The Hemingway Half-Dozen Prose Poem.
Stephen Ponders
Bloom Wanders
Molly Conjures
Stay tuned for the balderdash backstory of this unprecedented literary invention.
Same bunkum time, same baloney channel.
ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP
- Ulysses, Aeolus episode
Pride, the Deadly Sin of the Professor, will get you bounced from the NFL of James Joyce Facebook Groups. And that’s only the half of it.
In my previous report on the Banishment Bowl Game, I coped to an impersonal foul. My necessary roughness was in defense of an innocent interpretation. A Logic to the Lunacy: The Daughters of Erin prayers are log lines for the middle twelve episodes of Ulysses. (Read the full gender-bender flea-flicker here. Bring Kleenex. More than tears may spill during that Crying Game.)
An all-star member of the mighty Joyce Group, a beguiling white-armed Nausicaa, contested my play. “Let’s hear your ‘theory,’” he demanded. The insidious, insinuating “perverted commas” are his.
Since my original reply to his teasing challenge is now hidden behind a firewall of ostracism, I’ve had to recreate it. I scrounged around the locker room for drafts of my “theory’s” defense. I scanned chicken-track marginalia of my Gabler edition, unsticky Post-its, the bathroom ceiling of the pub down the street, stray sheets of toilet paper, mostly unused, and old Tinder messages.
Always a good sport, I refused to remind the sweet seductress that he had implicitly agreed with eleven twelfths of my premise when he said, “Number six doesn’t fit” (“Wandering Soap, pray for us”). I answered the call of Devo’s Jocko Homo, “Are we not men?” and allowed the vampy vixen his disjointed dalliance.
Forever the gentleman, I refrained from asking him any of the following: Are we to believe Joyce fumbled the pigskin on this one prayer? Tanked the game? Shaved points? With his famous fanatical belief in the juju power of numbers? Of course, I would never probe him with such penetrating questions. He wasn’t to blame for his lack of logic. Nymphs will be nymphs.
A paradigm of polity, I restrained myself from berating him with Joyce’s own words, “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” My crafty coquette wanted me to violate a different portal. Zuckerberg’s fair land of Facebook did not hold his equal! Tossing prophylactic protection to the wind, I went deep. I answered his siren song with the following:
“Bloom buys his Sweny soap in the morning, and the lemony cake goes on its own little odyssey from pocket to pocket to pocket throughout the long day. After the soap is overtly mentioned in the last lines of Lestrygonians, it vanishes from the text during the Scylla & Charybdis as if it has wandered off stage. Bloom all but disappears while he wanders the outskirts of the Hamlet-fisted episode until its end when Bastardly Buck Mulligan refers to him as, “the wandering jew.” Later in the Circe episode, the anthropomorphized soap says, “We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I. He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.”
Granted, the sixth prayer of the Daughters of Erin may not be as explicitly on the nose as the others. But, with a little lubrication we can make the appeal to Bloom’s totemic soap fit in its corresponding episode. Of course, I’m curious about any other theories.” (Notice my noble omission of perverted commas.)
And no reply.
Poof! My Gerty was gone. The situation was fluid, until it wasn’t. He’d hit it and quit it.
I’d been ghosted by a Joycean Jezebel, fluffered by a fluffy-tailed playmate. He was a black widow honeypot the entire time. A true assassinatrix.
Without warning, without even throwing a penalty flag, the NFL of James Joyce Groups blackballed me. Adding insult to injury, the No Fun League blocked me. Adding involuntary celibacy to insult and injury, the Non-Fornicating League cock-blocked me.
Yet, one thing is to blame. It was my beastly pride that killed the beauty. And maybe a little lingering lust.
Stay tuned for more deadly sin confessions.
Same sordid time, same shameful channel.
Pride, the Deadly Sin of the castaway Professor, will get you expelled from the ivory walls of James Joyce Facebook Groups lickety-split.
If only I had never written “A Logic to the Lunacy.” A proclamation that the twelve prayers of the Daughters of Erin in the Circe episode are also log lines for the middle twelve episodes of Ulysses.
But I did it. I tossed my bottled message into the cyber sea of love. My eyes locked onto the curvaceous notifications bell in the upper right corner of my window onto the world. I quivered with anticipation.
The ding-a-ling flared crimson. An alert! I have known the ecstasy of having my like button touched. It’s happened tens of times over the years. This was different. A comment! By a gentleman caller.
Like good girl Gerty MacDowell, I felt "the warm flush, a danger signal always…surging and flaming into my cheeks.” I slipped into a fresh outfit and petted the bulging, blushing, bell with my cursor, revealing the mysterious comment.
“Number six doesn’t fit.”
So sharp. So confident. So, so manly. His Alpha-ness was overwhelming. My suitor was testing me, “One of love’s little ruses.” I could feel in my heart of hearts he was tall.
Anyone with eyes can see how Joyce played perfect matchmaker with the Daughters of Erin prayers and the Odyssey episodes.
“Kidney of Bloom, pray for us” and the Calypso episode were made for one another.
“Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us” and the Cyclops episode are a match made Heaven.
The other prayers and their compatible episodes slip and slide together as lovingly as vegan sausages and Voodoo Doughnuts. Except that one. Sinister number 6.
“Wandering Soap, pray for us” and the Scylla & Charybdis episode do not conjoin smoothly. The only thing this snug squeeze needed was a bit of tender loving lubrication.
I took an ice-cold shower and responded, “Thank you for the comment. I do have a theory on that. But what do I know? I’m just a lonely boy who writes hangman puzzles for a living.”
His retort came hot and heavy.
“Let’s hear your ‘theory.’”
My soul swooned. “A fair unsullied soul had called to him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he had been!” I tried to ignore his macho, negging quotation marks. No wonder Joyce called them, “perverted commas.” What power those petite symbols have.
My finger caressed his like button below his captivating comment. I did not want to make the fatal mistake of over-eagerness like in the past. It took every gram of self-governance to grant him a white-rose thumbs-up, instead of a red-rose valentine.
I would prove myself worthy with a proper response. I sought out Earth’s greatest Thought Leaders for guidance.
I binged-watched the classics of coupling: “Sex and the City,” “The L Word,” “The G Word,” "The Unsafe Word," “The Diphthong.”
I rummaged through my hope chest and re-read the masterworks of mating: “The Rules,” “The Five Lust Languages,” “Men are from Hell, Women are from Heaven,” “Mashing in Captivity,” and of course, “Fight Club.”
I bettered my body through rigorous regimen: Pilates, hot pink yoga body sculpting, Jazzercise, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class, no-gi, with eye contact!
After a long, harrowing digital fast, I finally felt ready. I composed my epistle.
But since my excommunication, I no longer have access to the words I’ve posted on the illustrious group’s timeline. And I would never, ever defile my own humble website with unchecked speculation, let alone our most-distinguished social media platforms or the time-honored World Wide Web itself. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty."
So, sit tight. I will find the keys to their little locks and search my dear diaries and cobble together a respectable re-creation of that horrid reply that resulted in my banishment. Time is required to heal this wounded heart.
Curse my damnable pride!
Stay tuned sadists, more masochistic confessions to come.
Same shameful time, same sorrowful channel.