Pugnose
Pugnose
In Brief
In Lotus Eaters, as Bloom strains to catch a glimpse
of a woman's delicately stockinged leg across the street, his
view is suddenly and violently interrupted: "A heavy tramcar
honking its gong slewed between." His frustrated reaction,
"Curse your noisy pugnose," may at first seem directed at the
man beside him, since M'Coy has been babbling inanely and
Bloom has tried to keep him from blocking his view of the
action. But a reader who holds on to this little facial detail
will discover in later chapters that the pugnose actually
belongs to the man driving the tram, or perhaps to the
platform on which he stands. Strangely, Bloom supposes that
the motorman has deliberately interfered with his sexual
fantasy.
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The tram blocks Bloom's view only a moment after he tries to
keep M'Coy from blocking it: "He moved a little to the side of
M'Coy's talking head. Getting up in a minute." After this
comical objectification of a noise-making head, "noisy
pugnose" sounds like more of the same. But in fact Bloom
has taken a different noise—the trolley's clanging gong—and
attached it to a different face. Lestrygonians finds
Bloom absurdly supposing that the tram's motorman deliberately
moved his car forward in order to frustrate his lecherous
gazing: "Up with her on the car: wishswish.... Think that
pugnosed driver did it out of spite."
In Circe this fantasy of a malevolent tram driver
becomes a hallucination in which a municipal "sandstrewer"
transforms into a DUTC
"trolley" and nearly runs him down:
BLOOM
(Halts erect, stung by a spasm.) Ow!
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs his footgong.)
THE GONG
Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN
Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
Perhaps nothing more than sound-play is involved, but the
tram driver's pugnose is linked later in Circe with
Bloom's confession of a dark sexual deed. When Bello demands,
"Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all
your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid
for once…. Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing,"
Bloom stammers out: "I rererepugnosed in
rerererepugnant..." The offending driver's pushed-in nose (or
perhaps his association with the blunt projecting platform on
which he stands?) here morphs into a nose that has relished
pushing itself into offensive things. Does Bloom translate the
demand that he confess a "Repugnant" action into the
similar-sounding "repugnosed" because his humiliation at the
hands of a dominatrix somehow calls up the sexual frustration
he endured earlier in the day?
Thanks to Scott Shepherd for pointing out to me the person to
whom the noisy pugnose belongs!
