An Excuse to Quote Joyce

This week we are up to discussing why I wrote the eighth story in Aberrant, the story being entitled, Henry Flower's. Basically, I wrote this story so I could use an epigraph from my favourite book, Ulysses. I have always enjoyed reading epigraphs, a quote preceding the text proper, intended to summarise the theme of the work or chapter. I regularly use them and one day decided to use one from Ulysses, which I have read fourteen times.
     Ulysses was further exploited in this short story when I named the main character Henry James Flower. Henry Flower is a pseudonym that the main character of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, uses in romantic correspondence with a young lady, Bloom being married. The reason why I used James as the character's middle name is pretty obvious.
     But as to my tale, it relates the story of a young man who chooses homelessness, opting out of western society. Consequently he has very little money and is caught in the act of stealing. Things eventually spiral out of control and Henry finds himself in remand. His father, a successful lawyer, comes to his rescue though, to such an extent that he convinces his son to consider abandoning the squatting 'lifestyle' and take up safe housing. My own life of homelessness, between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-seven (am currently aged forty-five), was largely freely chosen, like Henry's, although there was an element of being pushed into it by my paranoid schizophrenia. My parents were instrumental in getting me off of the streets and this experience is reflected in Henry Flower's.
     This short story was one of the favourites of mine in writing Aberrant Selected and its epigraph is one of my favourite quotes from my favourite novel. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did in writing it.