"A byebye bingbang boys!"

(302.11-304.2)  Well, maybe the letter that Kevin wrote and was the subject of yesterday's reading didn't end, as I thought it had, with a signature of "Blott."  I now think that was just an inkblot, because the letter writing resumes in today's reading.  This is a new paragraph, so it seems logical that the "him" that is its focus is Dolph, the "aboleshqvick" (as McHugh notes, "Bolshevik") for whom writing is the one subject that "he had ever funnet without difficultads" (had fun at or found without difficulties).  Dolph takes a pen out of his pocket so that he can go about "signing away in happinext complete," or writing happily to complete the letter.  A parenthetical, which sounds like it's the voice of Kevin, seems to confirm the thought that Dolph's completing the letter.  "Exquisite Game of Inspiration!  I always adored your hand," Kevin says in the parenthetical.  "Can you write us a last line?"  

McHugh notes that the act of Dolph finishing the letter for Kevin calls to mind the time when Joyce composed the last line of a prize-winning poem otherwise written by Joyce's then-friend Oliver Gogarty (who is immortalized as Stephen Dedalus' false friend Buck Mulligan in Ulysses).  Dolph concludes the letter with poorly spelled language (for instance, "And i Romain, hup u bn gd gil.  Unds alws my thts.").  Once it's finished, Kevin pays his brother for his work, affixes a stamp, and mails the letter.

Now Dolph's attention is on the subject of writing, and so he gives a quick lecture to Kevin on how to be an effective writer.  He prefaces his demonstration by saying that he's going to show Kevin "the way Romeopullupalleaps," or the way Romeo woos.  (In her footnote, Isabel calls Dolph "Mr Tellibly Divicult" and notes that, while she thought he was an angel, he failed three times in trying to solve the heliotrope riddle.)  Dolph shows Kevin how to properly shape his letters ("Bould strokes for your life!") and then explains how he can incorporate bits from seven notable Irish authors (who McHugh notes are paired with the six chakras of the yogic doctrine of Kundalini, plus a Joycean bonus seventh):  "Steal" (Steele, heart), "Barke" (Burke, throat), "Starn" (Sterne, naval), "Swhipt" (Swift, spleen), "Wiles" (Wilde, sacral), "Pshaw" (Shaw, fontanella), and "Doubbllinnbbayyates" (W.B. Yeates, intertemporal eye).  Then Dolph gives examples of three great Irish patriots:  Daniel O'Connell, James Connolly, and Charles Stewart Parnell.

Kevin has had enough at this point.  He's "wreathed with his pother," or full of wrath with his brother.  McHugh notes that this language echoes the language of Genesis 4:5:  "and Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell."  Hungry for another biscuit and still overwhelmed with all this math work, he strikes Dolph:  "hit him where he lived."  The narrator says that this attack isn't out of the ordinary:  "he fight him all time twofeller longa kill dead finish bloody face."  With one punch, Kevin has won.  In a kind of reverse echo of that passage from Genesis, the narrator says, "And his countinghands rose."  

We'll return tomorrow, with Dolph down for the count, to see what happens in the second-to-last reading of this chapter.