Gossip

181: "— But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began impatiently.
[...]
— Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived? As for living, our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal."

379: "To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip."


Since neither Stephen nor Bloom gossips much, we need to track opportunities they forego, and gossip they've heard in the past.

How hard is it to distinguish gossip?
It's usually but not always negative and useless.

If you report back to someone the stuff others are saying about them, is that gossiping? (No, unless it's gossiping about gossiping)
Is history gossip? Only when it's about personal stuff?


3: "— God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English. Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knifeblade." BM gossiping about H

5: "— The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me have anything to do with you." BM on aunt on SD

5: "— You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you..." this sounds like (exaggerated) gossip that mulligan has spread

6: "God knows what poxy bowsy left them off." inchoate gossip?

6: "— That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you have g. p. i. He's up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane." bm reports back others' crit

6? "The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula." self-gossip

7: "God knows you have more spirit than any of them." dissing generic others (haines-aunt-gpi guy?) behind their backs

7: "He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other." clear instance of gossip

7: "God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it." opposite of gossip?

7: "What have you against me now?" sd withholds possible gossip from target?

8: "— You said, Stephen answered, O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead." so sd was offended to overhear bm gossiping???

10: sd's memories of his mother include physical scraps of her past, memories she's shared (Royce), and direct memories

19: "— O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
— Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily."

21-22: Mulligan and young man clearly gossip about Bannon and Seymour

24: history as gossip?? also literature?

24: "— Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear."

24: "Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico Road, Dalkey." gossip sd has heard?

25: "Two in the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he watched their faces. Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle." imagined gossip??

26: "By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy." unshared poetic 'gossip'?

26: "Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine." unshared negative judgments

28: "His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode."

29: "Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned."

29: "— Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said."

29: "the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles"

30: "— He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but an Englishman too."

31: "— I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe nothing. Can you?
Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Köhler, three guineas, Mrs McKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.
— For the moment, no, Stephen answered.
Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.
— I knew you couldn't, he said joyously."

31: "Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? "