Episode 8 — Lestrygonians

One p.m. Bloom is hungry. The chapter is one of the novel's longest and densest pieces of interior monologue — the running commentary of a hungry man walking from O'Connell Bridge to Duke Street looking for lunch. He notices everything. A YMCA leaflet thrust at him on the bridge — "Blood of the Lamb" — that he confuses for a moment with Elijah and his own name, and which he eventually folds and drops over the bridge for the gulls. A parade of nuns. A man named Bantam Lyons who interprets one of Bloom's casual remarks ("I was going to throw it away" — about the newspaper) as a tip on the horse Throwaway in the Gold Cup. Throwaway will win at twenty-to-one.

He runs into Josie Breen on Westmoreland Street — an old friend, once nearly a girlfriend. She tells him about her husband Denis, who has received an anonymous postcard reading "U.P.: up" and is now walking to the law office to sue. Bloom is sympathetic. He thinks, briefly, about how she has aged, about what might have been if he had married her instead. He wishes her well and walks on.

He goes into the Burton restaurant on Duke Street and is immediately repulsed — men eating with their mouths open, a smell of unwashed dishes, a noise of chewing and slurping. He turns and walks out. He goes instead to Davy Byrne's pub, a quieter "moral pub." He orders a glass of burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich. Nosey Flynn, the only other customer, quizzes him about Molly's upcoming concert tour and Boylan's organising — the one subject Bloom is trying to keep out of his head. Bloom is patient and evasive. He pays. He helps a blind young piano-tuner across Dawson Street on the way out, walking him to the corner with patient courtesy.