Ulysses

James Joyce · 1922 · Modernist

AI probability VEYL scanned the opening passage below.

Why the number is interesting

Placeholder score. Joyce's dense, allusive, multilingual prose is about as human as prose gets. Molly Bloom's soliloquy alone should score near zero.

What VEYL saw in the passage

Placeholder analysis — will refine when scanned. Joyce's opening is deceptively simple compared to what follows in Ulysses. Even so: the Latin quotation, the sensory precision ("a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed"), and the character voice bursting through mid-scene ("Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!") should push this score very low. AI-generated prose almost never produces the kind of specific-word choices Joyce made here ("ungirdled," "intoned," "peered down the dark winding stairs"). If Barry scanned Molly Bloom's stream-of-consciousness soliloquy from the final chapter instead, we'd probably see zero.

The passage VEYL scanned

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: —Introibo ad altare Dei. Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely: —Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

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