If, in real life, we met Mr Micawber in a dark room, we would know it was Mr Micawber from his peculiar tropes; Bloom in similar circumstances we would not know. Only if we were granted the power to enter the minds of fictional characters, in some literary man's heaven where they had become as real as the blessed saints: would we know we were savouring essential Bloom. Indeed, It is difficult to imagine any of Dickens's characters. as possessing minds as opposed to pieces of simple psychological clockwork: Bloom has little other than that endless inner flow.
--from Anthony Burgess, Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce