ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with Mary Fisher-Adams about the importance of both Donald Meltzer's claustrum and Fisher's proleptic imagination. Adams' claim that Stephen Dedalus, Bloom, and Molly are claustrum-dwellers implies that their lives are tunnel-visioned and lacking in development. Against the background, Bloom is attacked for his Jewishness by the Citizen and counters triumphantly by pointing out that Jesus was a Jew. He then flees the pub, pursued by the Citizen/Cyclops and his barking dog, hurling an empty biscuit tin after him. Or think of the scene where Gertie MacDowell, crippled and isolated, drowns herself in sentimentalized romantic fancy and shows her knickers to a masturbating Bloom while the Host is elevated at Benediction in a neighbouring chapel. Meltzer spent many years dreaming of trying to escape the anal claustrum, but was so afraid of the outside that he went back in. Gradually, he was able to dream of living outside and learning to survive there.
