Wonderworker

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In a JJON note, Robert Janusko reports that a product called the Wonder Worker was "listed in the London Gazette, 4 May 1928 as available from 'Frederick Adolph Werner; Patent Medical Appliance; Coventry House, South Place, London, E.C. 2'." An advertisement published in the London Daily Express in 1922, which was discovered by John Simpson and reproduced on another JJON page by Ronan Crowley, lists the same address, which corresponds closely with the address listed in Ithaca as the source of the advertisement: "Wonderworker, Coventry House, South Place, London E. C." The 1922 ad mentions a "booklet" which interested readers could obtain to learn more about the product––no doubt the inspiration for Joyce's "prospectus."

Janusko tracked down Werner's July 1917 patent application, which was approved in April 1918, as well as a second application in 1924-25. The first document identifies the device as belonging to "that type of insoluble rectal suppositories in which two bulbous portions are united by a narrow neck," but Werner's invention additionally features "a bore extending lengthwise through the instrument" (depicted with dotted lines in Figs. 1, 2, and 3) "to allow foul gases to escape." The shorter and wider "bulbous portion" of the device is "adapted for maintaining the piles or hæmorrhoids separately on opposite sides of the posterior of the rectum and so preventing friction between them." The second patent application describes an improved version that "consists in dispensing with the lengthwise bore […] and shaping the several parts of such an appliance that its dimensions correspond, or approximately correspond, and comfortably adapt themselves to the anatomical dimensions of the affected parts of the human body."

Readers of Calypso learn that Bloom periodically suffers from "piles" (i.e., hemorrhoids) and thinks about how to keep them from flaring up, but it seems that his request for a prospectus has been prompted also by gassy intestines. In Sirens, as cider wreaks havoc on his guts and he searches for ways to release the gas without embarrassment, he thinks, "Wait. That wonderworker if I had." In Circe he ponders the unfortunate mental and physical things that sleep can bring out of a human being: "Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent."

The absurdity of keeping an appliance lodged in one's rectum only to eliminate offensive fart sounds (and wouldn't free passage of gases risk the release of offensive smells?) gives way in Ithaca to a wildly comic parody of the device's advertisements: "It heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in breaking wind, assists nature in the most formidable way, insuring instant relief in discharge of gases, keeping parts clean and free natural action, an initial outlay of 7/6 making a new man of you and life worth living. Ladies find Wonderworker especially useful, a pleasant surprise when they note delightful result like a cool drink of fresh spring water on a sultry summer's day. Recommend it to your lady and gentlemen friends, lasts a lifetime." The "testimonials" from various satisfied customers include a soldier who exclaims, "What a pity the government did not supply our men with wonderworkers during the South African campaign! What a relief it would have been!"

This delightful parody reflects the popularity that the invention gained among British men and women. Janusko quotes from Norman Lewis's 1985 autobiography Jackdaw Cake: "More extraordinary even was the addiction to the use of the Wonder Worker. This was a small spade-shaped Bakelite contraption designed for insertion in the rectum, intended originally as a cure for haemorrhoids but later accepted for its talismanic properties in the treatment of all human ills. [Joyce calls it a "thaumaturgic remedy," a miracle cure.] Innumerable intelligent people, including the cream of local society such as the Bowlses, Orr-Lewis––who had survived the Titanic disaster––the fearful virago Lady Meux––once a Gaiety Girl––probably General French who had presided over the massacres at Ypres, possibly even Miss Tupperton herself, were walking around with these things stuck up their bottoms" (53).

The most hilarious detail in Joyce's parody is the brief instruction, "Insert long round end." In addition to playing on the squeamish discomfort that prospective buyers must have felt about this product, the sentence intensifies one's inescapable sense that the Wonderworker resembles an anal dildo or butt plug. The vaguely sexual aura of the device keeps company in Ithaca with the error that has caused someone to address the prospectus to "Mrs L. Bloom" and to enclose a note beginning, "Dear Madam." No doubt embarrassed by his interest in the product, Bloom seems to have inadvertently invited misapprehension by abbreviating his first name to "L." But by this point in the novel, readers schooled in his use of pseudonyms to receive illicit sexual correspondence (Lotus Eaters) and his dark fantasies of being sexually violated (Circe) will inevitably be tempted to speculate whether the Wonderworker quells desires as effectively as discomforts.

In his note, Ronan Crowley suggests that Joyce was also thinking about the transgressiveness of writing about matters rectal, anal, and excremental. In September 1916 he wrote to Yeats, "‘I can never thank you enough for having brought me into relations with your friend Ezra Pound who is indeed a wonder worker'." Since Werner's invention had not yet been patented, marketed, and advertised, there can be no reason to suppose that this sentence contains a veiled reference to it. Pound was simply showing himself to be a wonder worker––a thaumaturge––in his dogged devotion to getting Joyce's fictions published. But a couple of years later, in March 1918, Pound wrote to say that he felt compelled to delete the account of Bloom's defecation from the version of Calypso published in The Egoist. He also objected to the fart that concludes Sirens. Pound feared running afoul of Britain's harshly adjudicated obscenity laws, and he felt that shoving distasteful matters into readers' faces was aesthetic overkill––"bad art."

In the 1922 edition of the novel Joyce alluded to this exchange, and to his eventual triumph over such censorship, by having Bloom think of Philip Beaufoy's story that they will "Print anything now." Pound's aesthetic criticism clearly provoked him. In a draft of Circe he had Bloom say of Beaufoy's story, "It is bad art, not true to life." The published version of the chapter toned this down but kept the phrase "bad art." Although Circe describes the Wonder Worker only as "that English invention," Joyce did name the "wonderworker" in the chapter where Bloom loudly farts, and then again in Ithaca where it is called a "thaumaturgic remedy"––details that surely contain some sly reference to the American genius who had done so much to help him get published.

It is hard to know exactly what to make of these buried allusions, but the intention cannot be entirely friendly. In 1918 Pound had insisted that Joyce tell the truth without including offensive material. In the version of Ulysses published in 1922 the impulse to give "inoffensive vent" is associated with a wonderworking rectal suppository.