Sensory Overload in James Joyce's Ulysses When writing about the experience of reading Ulysses, one critic commented that "it's a bit like wearing headphones plugged into someone's brain and monitor an endless recording. of the subject's impressions, reflections, questions, memories, and fantasies, as triggered either by physical sensations or by the association of ideas” (Lodge 47). Indeed, the sense of hearing plays a crucial role in much of the novel. But in the "Wandering Rocks" section in particular, one experiences a sort of sensory overload as one is presented with nineteen hour-long vignettes about the lives of Dublin residents that, while seemingly disparate, are events cleverly linked. Parallax, a term found primarily in photographic terminology, refers to "an apparent change in the direction of an object, caused by a change in viewing position that provides a new line of sight" (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, third edition). It's as if Joyce uses 19 different "live" shots in this chapter, alternating between wide angles and zooms, moving from an extreme close-up to a long, slow tracking shot. Visual acuity is often distorted by Joyce's simultaneous narration angles. As one scene abruptly transitions to the next thanks to Joyce's literary remote control, the reader is bombarded with an accumulation of visual stimuli, much like watching a multi-channel television screen. The result is a sort of parallax of prose, an interesting chapter in which Dublin society is presented as both connected and disjointed; as if imprisoned and yet wandering aimlessly in turgid streets. Which seems to have particular importance in the "Wandering Rocks" section...... middle of paper ...... days. trans. Justin O'Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler. New York: Random House, 1986. Kumar, Udaya. The Joycean labyrinth: repetition, time and tradition in Ulysses. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991. Lodge, David. The art of fiction. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. McCormick, Kathleen. “Just a flash like that”: the pleasure of “crossing” the interpolations in “Wandering Rocks”. "James Joyce Quarterly 24 (Spring 1987), 275-90. Power, Arthur. Conversations with James Joyce. Ed. Clive Hart. London: Millington, 1974. Williams, Trevor. "'Conmeeism' and the universe of discourse in" Wandering Rocks.' 1983), 5-44.