The best book I have ever read is truly an outstanding piece of literature. It is complex in its plot, filled with numerous twists and turns that keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

The characters are sophisticated, each with their own unique personalities and motives. The author has done an excellent job of developing them, making them seem real and relatable.

Despite its complexity and sophistication, the book is also great fun to read. The writing style is engaging and the story flows smoothly, making it a page-turner from start to finish.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good read. It is a masterpiece that will leave you thinking long after you have finished the last page.

Welcome to... JULYSSES.

This is part of a project in which I undertake to read intimidating classics over the course of a month, in chunks that I convince myself are approachable. This book, which is a nightmare in some ways, apparently doesn't have "chapters," as that would make it seem more doable. Instead, it has 3 books and 18 unlabeled, basically unmarked episodes. So, I'll be doing one of those a day.

In other words, I'm acting out of self-hatred again.

EPISODE ONE
I hate that these are called episodes because it makes me think about Star Wars, and thinking about Star Wars makes me feel nostalgic and excited. Right now, the only things I should be feeling are grit and determination.

I anticipated that the difficulty would lie in the super-dense language, but it's actually that it all sounds very funny, and it's easy to fall into reading without thinking about it at all. I'm just letting the words glide through my brain, straight vibing.

EPISODE TWO
These first two episodes have been pretty short, which can only mean suffering for future me. Too bad for her! I'm having a great time.

EPISODE THREE
Another short episode, and we've finished the entire first book. The level of unearned confidence I'm getting from how chill and fun this has been so far... James Joyce should be scared. It's also fun that the word "snot" was in the 1930s Irish lexicon.

EPISODE FOUR
Do you ever read a kind of gross description and think, welp, that's gonna stick in my brain for the rest of my life? File the faint urine flavor of sheep's kidneys under that.

EPISODE FIVE
When I was 14 and read The Odyssey in school, I was a little brat and insisted time and again that it was sooo boring. Imagine past me's disgust at finding out I'm now voluntarily reading an Odyssey retelling with no monsters, no witches, and no gods. Just a bunch of drunk Irish guys. In other words, the Odyssey motif is just now starting to be more apparent here.

EPISODE SIX
Well, these are still nice and short, but it's getting to the point where I'm impressed with myself just for understanding at all what a paragraph means on the first read. So, scratch the hubris from before, I guess.

EPISODE SEVEN
Oh boy, we're getting experimental. The sudden fun we're having with formatting is not upping my confidence. I have to say, everything I'm hearing about this Molly gal is making me yearn for more content. We've got a hottie adulteress singing genius who bosses her husband around in the picture? Let's get back to that!

EPISODE EIGHT
I took a week off of this project, flew a redeye last night, and am currently chugging an energy drink in the hopes that scientists have had a breakthrough on sleep-replacement technology since I last attempted this. In other words, I could not be worse prepared to take on James Joyce right now. Thank god for other people's analyses.

EPISODE NINE
Shoutout to James Joyce. Would love to understand anything he writes on the first read by myself with no help from summaries or outside insights someday. This was actually more comprehensible than usual because it's made up mostly of self-serious and annoying wordplay-based literary discussion, which is my primary form of communication, but still.

EPISODE TEN
Toss me in the midst of a varying-perspective crowd of random Irish city-dwellers, and suddenly I'm having a blast and a half. I should've just read Dubliners. If only I could make as good of a pun with that one.

EPISODE ELEVEN
In this section, the book is mostly making mean comments about its characters via nonsense words and euphemisms, which makes it incredibly relatable to me. Even more so because it also seems as haunted by the question of when the hell Molly is going to show up as I am.

EPISODE TWELVE
It's honestly terrifying that I've read two-thirds of these sections and am not even halfway done in terms of page count. What horrors await me? Oh sure, why not, let's switch into first person and a variety of exaggerated styles all in one episode. I was just thinking we weren't having enough fun with experimental structure.

EPISODE THIRTEEN
One thing about me is: if I'm reading a classic, I am going to find and become obsessed with the single solitary female character with interiority. Even if its intention is to make fun of readers like me. Okay, well. Jail for Bloom in my opinion. And probably James Joyce too while we're sentencing.

EPISODE FOURTEEN
I have to say, I've taken the prior 13 episodes for granted. I thought I was being pretty reasonable about how difficult of a read this has been, but I didn't take the time to be grateful that Joyce was actually writing with modern English words. You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

EPISODE FIFTEEN
God damn it. I knew this was coming. Today's section is 181 pages long.

EPISODE SIXTEEN
In the moments when I can actually understand what's going on here (before reading summaries and analyses which I always do like a good student), this book is a blast. It's so goddamn funny to be nervous to have your friend over for a sleepover because when you brought home a random dog off the street with a lame paw your wife was mad, and this is basically the same since the guy hurt his hand earlier.

EPISODE SEVENTEEN
Happy penultimate day of Julysses to all who celebrate. If the entire thing were written in this Q&A format, I would be a lot more confident in my basic comprehension.

EPISODE EIGHTEEN
We're doing this. We're finishing this out. All that stands between me and the end is our biggest challenge yet: James Joyce writing about what he thinks women think about sex. All those times I asked for more Molly content... I knew not what I brought on myself. That and the fact that all 50 pages of this is like 8 sentences.

OVERALL
For sure, this is a masterpiece, and also reading it is an unrelenting nightmare at every second and on every page. The idea that any book should require multiple months or semesters or years of study to understand is contrary to my belief system. (I don't know what my belief system is, but it's definitely against that.) I don't know if I'm glad I read it, and I do know I could read this three more times and still not fully understand it, but you've got to hand it to Joyce: it's incredibly funny to write a deeply respected, unbelievably layered and complex literary masterpiece that is 99% about some guy being horny. This is truly the throughline of great literature.

Rating: 3.5

In the Arctic scene of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece "2001", when the primeval mammals come into contact with the wonder of the Monolith, they approach the artifact with awe and fear, gently tapping it with their primitive tools. This image was in my mind before I "set sail" for the first reading of the much-talked-about "Ulysses" by James Joyce. "Foolhardiness indeed..." I thought, embarking on this endeavor on a fine August day, with the holy mania of the neophyte. The journey was tumultuous, yet fruitful.

Without a willingness to persevere, the notorious difficulty of the book does not lie in its content. Its basic themes, according to Joyce himself, are simple: Reaction and resistance to tradition and regression (linguistic, cultural), to organized religion, to all kinds of egotism (of language, of country, of the hero), but also the need to find a new vision and flee towards the future... and some others. Of course, nothing is presented straightforwardly, since any references are indirect, veiled, elliptical, seeking the painstaking participation of the creative reader.

The uniqueness and essence of "Ulysses" lies elsewhere, as everything written "passes" proudly into the "Elysian Fields" of Ithaca. Here, the pioneering use of "stream of consciousness", of inner monologues, reflects the inner world of the heroes, infinitely extending their perception of themselves and -as a mirror- of our own, which is constantly being reconstructed, remodeled, and reassembled with each reading.

Here, Joyce's elastic language constructs the world (of the book, of the existent, of the universe...), and the sounds build reality, rather than being the result of the objective facts of reality. Here, the predominance of the narrative tone ultimately and irrevocably determines the reality in which the reader is baptized. Here, the concept of "creative reading" (according to Harold Bloom) is at its core, as the combination of author-reader is essential for the superficial -necessarily- first encounter with this multifaceted text, in all its extent.

Until, through the unified final paragraphs (in the chapter of Penelope), the reader is led breathlessly to that laconic "Yes!", seen as an affirmation of life, as a positively marked choice, as an agreement with love, with life, with creation that defies time and death.

But what is "Ulysses" for me? A Cathedral of knowledge, a Book of Books enclosed within the Paradise/Library of Borges. It is, at the same time, the "room of desires", in which you enter and exit differently each time, as this book reads you, tears you apart, remodels you.

Finally, the same holds true for its reading as for life itself, whose fragmented essence it mimics (or perhaps the opposite is true?): "One is the same as none". Other readings, more complete, will necessarily follow, where the first simply opens a channel of communication with the inductive and at the same time difficult text. This "spiritual voyage" may never end, but for the time being I remain grateful because I became a member of the infinite, through one day of the life of Leopold Bloom, that of June 16th.

"Et in Arcadia ego".

The 22nd book of 2022 marks my second reading of "Ulysses." I initially didn't plan to read it again until the end of the year, but couldn't resist starting on its birthday. This rereading has opened up even more doors within the novel. Having also read Ellmann's brilliant biography on Joyce, I have a deeper understanding of the work. Ithaca still makes me laugh the most, and I see why it was Joyce's own favorite. I also adore Hades. Bloom's humanity is restorative to read in our current times.

Finishing the 900+ page novel and realizing it's just one day makes me appreciate the hugeness and smallness of life. It's a masterpiece, yet many people never try it due to its reputation. There are hard bits, but the novel's general feeling of illuminating ordinariness outweighs that. It's also funny, funnier than many postmodernists. It's honest, filled with the raw aspects of life, and yet, it's one of the best books about life ever written. Joyce's writing of the ordinary is truly extraordinary.

Just like last time, when I put the book down and went for a walk, I felt like I was inside "Ulysses" or it was all around me. It's one of those books that can be life-changing. The fast facts from Ellmann's "James Joyce" provide interesting insights into the novel's creation and characters.

My first reading in 2019 was a secret. I started it to get over heartbreak and had no intention of finishing it. But as the pages passed, I began to enjoy it more and more. I had previously hated on Joyce and "Ulysses" during my university days, but my opinion has since changed. The novel is a wild and mad ride, filled with strange images and scenes, but it also has a strange clarity. It's like coming out of a stupor.

I recently had a poetry lecture that made me think about "Ulysses" in a new way. The lecturer said that people don't ask what classical music means, they just let it happen. I think this is applicable to "Ulysses." You don't have to understand every single word to enjoy it. I didn't understand everything, but it didn't stop me from following the plot and the characters' feelings.

As an aspiring writer, "Ulysses" has opened up a million doorways. It shows what's possible with words and the power they hold. I've given it five stars because it's a feat, regardless of whether you like it or not. It's one of the most ambitious things I've ever read. To those who want to read it, I would say just try. Let your mind open and let "Ulysses" in. It's worth it. It's changed my writing and my understanding of the world of novels forever. And I'm sorry, Joyce, for what I've said in the past. I was wrong.

Bloomsday Requiem
June 17, 2016
(A day late and a dollar short)

Today, I bid farewell to my long-held ambition of reading Joyce's Ulysses. This aspiration was born within a twenty-two-year-old who believed himself to be rather intelligent and thus thought it imperative to read what everyone claimed was an extremely clever book. It endured for thirty long years and more than half a dozen failed attempts, including this final one of listening to it as an audiobook.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.

After my initial unsuccessful try, I recognized that I lacked the sufficient depth and breadth of reading to fully appreciate the magnitude of Joyce's creation. So, I set it aside, confident that once I corrected that deficiency, the book would reveal its secrets to me, and I would join the learned group that sang its praises.

However, that never came to pass.

I did expand both my reading and education. I delved into modernism, learning about its origins and rationales. I read cheat sheets designed to provide first-time readers with easier access to Joyce's convoluted genius. But all was in vain. As I grew older and wiser, each new attempt to make it through the length of this tome defeated me well before the hundredth page.

Along the way, I discovered that I fundamentally loathe modernist literature. I view it as intellectual masturbation and a cultural dead end. I could pen an essay on this, but the details are not crucial here. The point is, realizing my personal aversion to modernism did not lessen my ambition to read Ulysses. I despised Eliot's The Waste Land, yet I had read it in its entirety, studied it, and thus had the basic foundation necessary to discuss my perspective on it. I desired to be able to do the same for this work regarded as the pinnacle of modernist literature.

As previously mentioned, I have failed in that ambition. My final attempt was to listen as the book was read to me via the Blackstone Audio edition. It is a fitting tribute to my thirty-year ordeal that I made it no further than the Calypso episode that concludes with Bloom defecating.

My ambition to read this book is now deceased. There will be no more attempts.

I understand that Ulysses is a book that keeps literature professors employed as a priesthood to explain the inner mysteries of great works that the common people can never fathom. I appreciate its value as a pastime for the literate elite. But that does not change the fact that the book is a dismal procession of mind-numbing boredom. It is less a work of genius than a clever parlour trick played by a mischievous trickster on his fellow intellectuals. I am done playing this game.

Rest in peace.

Ulysses is a remarkable literary work that delves into the lives of various characters in Dublin. The story follows Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and many others as they go about their daily activities. The book is filled with Joyce's brilliant wordplay and linguistic pyrotechnics, which keep the reader engaged and entertained. However, it is not until the 'Penelope' section, Molly Bloom's final soliloquy, that the true heart of the book is revealed.

Molly's stream-of-consciousness is a beautiful and complex exploration of her thoughts, memories, and desires. It is a powerful piece of writing that makes the reader feel as if they are inside her mind. The way Joyce captures her voice and her emotions is truly remarkable. It is this section that gives the book its emotional depth and makes it a truly unforgettable read.

Overall, Ulysses is a masterpiece of modern literature. It is a book that rewards multiple readings and offers new insights and pleasures with each encounter. While it may not be a book that moves everyone emotionally, it is a book that will surely impress and delight those who appreciate great literature. And for me, Molly's final 'Yes' is a word that will stay with me forever.

However, yes. I dare to say it. After three failed attempts and a little over three months of dedication and tireless perseverance, I managed it and finished it! Note: I didn't breeze through it. I read the chapters over and over again. The last one alone took me nearly a week (5,000 words tightly packed into 8 SINGLE sentences WITHOUT FULL STOPS!), and I mustn't forget that without the reading guide by Marangopoulos that I was using in parallel, I wouldn't have even reached the middle.

The method I followed took its final form after the 3rd canto. I read each chapter separately, without the references. Then I read the references on the text (some crucial, some not), and as I finished each canto, I picked up the Reading Guide and read its interpretation without the references, and at the end, the plain references, not on the text.

Ulysses is an extremely, extremely simple in its plot book. It tells the story of one day of Leopold Bloom, on June 16th (one day after my birthday, okay, I admit I'm not from 1904...), today known as Bloomsday. Mr. Bloom wakes up and wanders the streets of Dublin, visiting various places within his 24-hour day until he returns home. That is, what we all did, do, and will do every day until the end. THIS.

But Joyce doesn't just stay with THIS. Because Joyce is a GENIUS.

Ulysses is an extremely difficult in its comprehension and execution book. The author loves Homer, has studied his work in depth, and has equated this ONE day of Mr. Bloom with the TEN years that Odysseus took to return to his Ithaca, to his son, to his father, to his Penelope. The seven (for some eight, for others ten) years that the Homeric hero spent in the arms of Calypso, punished by Poseidon because he blinded his son Polyphemus, are enclosed in the original text of the Homeric Epic within some single lines. The exact opposite happens in Joyce's text. ONE SINGLE day, a 24-hour day that seems endless, martyrdom, literally unfinished, requires 1,000 pages to fit within them. So much does this day count, every day for Joyce. So much time as it takes for most people to read the Odyssey, so much time as an entire life lasts.

The text is difficult, having read "The Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov in the summer and having struggled a lot, I now believe that compared to Ulysses, it is easy! Joyce is the absolute rationalist, but he doesn't show off his erudition. His work is the product of deep knowledge, and he himself doesn't seem to write with the ulterior motive of reaping the praise of his readers.

He writes in this magical and original way for the reader, simply and only because he can.

And the final result not only justifies him, but with certainty, we can now talk about an unsurpassed literary achievement, a unique experience for the one who has truly decided to deal with this magical and much-publicized text, which will not shy away from the mythical difficulties in the structure, the writing, and the literary technique of the entire work. The reader travels parallel to Mr. Bloom, parallel to Odysseus. His Ithaca is strictly a personal matter for him, but undoubtedly, it exists somewhere, it is something, and his wandering until the end to face it on the horizon was not, is not, and will never be an easy conquest.

I declare myself a huge, eternal, equal admirer. I recommend it and will continue to recommend it unrestrictedly.

Odyssey proved to be an amazing experience. It was fun, engaging, and expanded the boundaries within which the language can function. Given the critical myth that surrounds this title, I expected something terrifying, but in reality, it turned out to be a much less harmful creation than expected. In fact, if aliens ever visit us and come across the text of Odyssey, I'm sure they will define the words as "magic".

It consists of 18 episodes, each with a different storytelling technique. Some of the episodes focused more on the technique (Episode 11 - Sirens) than on the content. Others focused more on the content, on the information about the heroes, than on the technique. This unevenness annoyed me for a while, but then it seemed to start sounding in tune with the whole character of the novel.

This novel is about the human microcosm. Through the various storytelling techniques, the best model of the human microcosm has been obtained. And the meaning of reading it is to explore this place with curiosity. If you don't approach it with curiosity, you're unlikely to discover anything that will excite you.

Undoubtedly, I was most impressed by:

- Episode 17. Or the so-called Q&A episode for me. In the footnote, it says that the storytelling technique is mathematical catechism. Hardly any normal person knows what mathematical catechism means. The narrative goes with questions and answers, I would even say: the narrator is the question, and the hero is the answer. Thanks to its technique, many gaps from the previous chapters were filled, many things were repeated that are important to be repeated and remembered. The most creatively charged text of the entire novel. As they say, if Joyce exploded only once while writing Odyssey, it was exactly here.

- Episode 18 or the episode about the woman. For the first time, the voice of the only female protagonist is heard, and her voice, within the framework of just one episode, changes the color of all the previous 17 episodes, in which we saw her only through the eyes of the other heroes. The technique is interior monologue, without punctuation marks. And I think that among the great modernists I have read, writing interior monologues - Roberto Bolaño, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner - Joyce wrote the best one - that of Marion Bloom in Episode 18. What an ending!

- Episode 13. This was one of the most interesting and unplowed episodes for me. Half of it develops from the perspective of a secondary heroine, and the other half takes place in the imagination of the main hero, with a sharp change in style when switching between the hero's fantasies and the heroine's perspective. I read it in a park and for a moment I had the feeling that I had merged with nature and completely cut off from time.

- Episode 14 - the storytelling technique mimics the development of the English language. This chapter didn't impress me as much as the others because I had already read something written with the same technique, which was much better - "Between the Acts" by Virginia Woolf. But the fact that I caught this connection between the two authors filled me with inspiration and pleasure.

- Episode 7, written in the form of journalistic headlines and leads. This was the funniest and most entertaining chapter of the novel.

I read the footnotes only at the beginning of each chapter, where the narrative technique is defined. I didn't read the other 1700 footnotes because the references didn't interest me. They are secondary and tertiary and in no way affect the main thing in this novel. Read it if you are curious enough and not in a hurry.

Finally, but not least: it's amazing to read the book simultaneously with a book friend, and wonderful discussions arise in the process.

Human beings accumulate memories in just one day in the world that would be enough for a lifetime in prison. A foreigner

I have come to praise Ulysses! Since the day it was written, perhaps as much has been said, fiddled with, and a huge body of work has been formed about it as about the Holy Books. I don't know how much more this work can be praised or what can be said about it, but starting from my own reading experience, I would like to say a few words.

I read Ulysses twice, once with a dictionary and once without any support, and often I open any page and let myself be captured by the rhythm of the book. In this regard, the work is not over for me, and I continue to discover new tastes and beauties with each new reading. The mystery of how much I have justified Joyce's desired active reader or Faulkner's suggestion of "approaching Ulysses as a priest approaches the Bible," my efforts continue.

Let's come to one of the main problems of this review. Around this book, for 90 years, such a situation has been created that everyone who approaches the text starts with a 1-0 defeat against the work from the beginning. The reader who approaches the book with the preconception of "the most difficult and incomprehensible text in the world, you are losing your way under its allusions, and the author has written it to be incomprehensible" that he encounters everywhere distances himself from the text by saying "well, there is nothing to understand anyway" or finishes it with difficulty. However, Ulysses is neither an incomprehensible text, nor as difficult as it is exaggerated, nor free from meaning. When the work was first published, it was not published for 12 years in England and America on the grounds of being obscene. Do we have anyone who calls this work obscene today? The issue of incomprehensibility should also be looked at in this way. When Virginia Woolf first read it, she wrote in her diary, "I think the work takes place in one day." Today, there is no need to read the work to know this. What I mean is this; Although the issue of incomprehensibility was understandable at first, today, in front of us, there is a work that has been laid bare (except for the Macintosh raincoat man whose identity is still debated) with hundreds of studies, interpretations, and dissections that have been done. If you say, "I'm a reader who doesn't bother," I respect you, but if you do this and then say, "Well, it's not understandable," I get very angry.

I would like to say that the right moment will not come for the reader who is waiting for the right moment to start and read Ulysses with understanding, and I recommend that he do the right readings in his prelude to Ulysses besides the right moment. These readings will also be insufficient at first because we cannot master that culture with integrity, but these readings will bring us closer to the text. First of all, Joyce's Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man should be read. In this way, we will get to know both Joyce's language and problems, and the characters in Dubliners will appear as secondary characters in the work, and Dedalus in the Portrait will be one of the main characters. I don't think it's bad to read Shakespeare's Hamlet. However, the text that must be read is Homer's Odyssey, as you know, the word Ulysses is the English spelling of Odyssey. Joyce has played his hand openly from the beginning and has emphasized the relationship between this work and the Odyssey. On the last days of the book, he gave his friend Stuart Gilbert a table of Ulysses-Odyssey parallels to help him understand Ulysses. This table, which is known today as the Gilbert schema, can be found on the Internet, and I think it will be useful to read the book based on this table. Nevzat Erkmen's Ulysses dictionary will be very helpful to you if it is under your hand during the first reading. After all, if you know English, the ocean of literature teaches you the so-called incomprehensible things by force.

When Joyce places Homer's Odyssey as the background to this first and greatest "epic" of modern literature, which takes place in Dublin on June 16, 1904 (the date of his first date with his wife Nora), his problem is, of course, neither to show respect to Homer nor to his great gods. When Joyce turns Homer's gods and the royal figures who are his great problems (Odysseus-Telemachus-Penelope) into Bloom-Stephen Dedalus-Molly, what he sanctifies and epicizes is the ordinary daily lives of ordinary people. Ulysses is a book that is so immersed in the problems and pleasures of daily life that it will overwhelm the dull and serious reader (Joyce is even worried that someone will praise this book as very boring). One of the problems in terms of meaning is this, I think. Yes, the ordinary person is not being told for the first time in literature, but for the first time, his ordinary problems, dreams, monotonies, and what he thinks are being told together. In this regard, it seems as if Joyce wants to tell the reader who is waiting for meaning that there is no meaning outside and above the daily routine that he sanctifies, and that it is not meaningless, but the meaning itself and what it makes one think. One of the main functions of national epics is to give that nation an identity, a personality, a moral way, and in Joyce, it is the problem of telling something to the simple people of Ireland, which serves two masters (the Catholic Church and the English monarchy), in his unique, inimitable style. The fact that the main characters of this book, which is an Irish epic, Bloom and Molly, are not Irish, and even Bloom's Jewish identity that causes him trouble (in the eyes of his compatriot Abe, he is cunning, an insincere merchant, a middleman, and the secret founder of the Fein Sinn) says a lot about racism.

Joyce is right when he says in an expansion somewhere, "I don't know why the communists don't like me, but I have always told about the little people." He tells about the little people of Ireland with their little problems on the street, in the tavern, at the funeral, in the church, in the stable, in the newspaper offices, libraries, and hospitals, while doing things and thinking a lot, all in one day. One of the difficulties of the book is this one day of Ireland. To understand the book, it will be useful to know this day, its conflicts, and Joyce's position. Dublin on June 16, 1904, is a society divided into two politically (independence supporters and English haters), economically (poor peasants and those who are oppressed by the aristocracy and the lower-middle class), and religiously (Catholic-Protestant). Joyce grew up in a politically independent environment, but when Parnell, the leader of the independence movement, was betrayed, his interest in politics turned into anger. The Dublin streets where Ulysses takes place were shaken by the Easter Rising led by Connolly in 1916 and were bathed in blood by the English. The effect of this intense atmosphere is felt in every part of the book, and the English are also ridiculed with the egotistical Celt myth. A little bit of information about this period will make the text more understandable. Of course, we don't have to understand every allusion or every conversation, and you can enjoy reading it without them. It is enough that you approach the work without fear in your eyes and without surrendering to the situation created by those thick-headed idiots.

Joyce, with the narrative techniques he used, his style, leaving out the omniscient narrator, making the narrator ambiguous, and even overlapping and intertwining, and with the structure he built, he pushed the limits of the novel form to the end and, by doing so, revealed the ordinariness in the monotony of the daily routine that flows in front of our eyes. Although our lives are not a novel, we could be a secondary character in Ulysses, for example. Just for this reason, I love this novel. Ulysses, which tells about the value in our simple lives and embraces life with all its mistakes with Molly's "Yes, I will, yes," must be read and reread today, after and during millions of poor deaths, two world wars, and hundreds of regional wars, when mass judgments reduce everything to numbers, to tell the faces of those who look down on us and our lives from the land of the great, the sublime, and the gods that we are here and we are valuable.

Also, thanks to popular culture and pulp literature magazines, the Turkish reader who has gone crazy for Oğuz Atay looks at a Ulysses for the narrative style, the paragraph without dots or commas, and many other things that he saw in Tutunamayanlar. The Ulysses and Nabokov's Pale Fire that most influenced Oğuz Atay and whose effects are most obvious in his book, let the one who doesn't read them not wander around saying, "I love Oğuz Atay," or let him wander, what does it matter to me!

Kao da sam se popeo na vrh planine. Pentrao sam se, zastajkivao, umarao, radovao se i, na kraju, postao obogaćen samim putem, ne vidikovcem.

Da je drukčije, ne bi valjalo. Jer, Uliks je, pre i posle svega, život sam. On je, na više načina i telesno iskustvo, golemo i očaravajuće, a ne zbirka zagonetki za teoretičare književnosti.

Kada se priguši istraživačka znatiželja i kada se čitalac prepusti tekstu i pristane da ne zna sve, da bude zbunjen, izgubljen, preplavljen, dobiće priliku za preobražujuće snažan doživljaj.

Nakon kojeg se gleda i na život i na pisanje i na svet drukčije. Magija alhemije trivijalnog razbokorava se do mitskih razmera, a onda se mit vraća u ono od čega se iskoračilo.

Džojs, kroz pokazivanje različitih pripovednih postupaka i dometa (toka) svesti, trijumfuje u obuhvatanju oslobađanja raskoši sveta. Idealna nesanica ne postoji – tu su samo tračci, koji treba da se dožive kao divan dar.

Njihova uklapanja i preklapanja – praznik. Uliks tako postaje maksimalitičko čudo – to je knjiga koja viškom proizvodi višak, ali koja je i divno bučna.

Ko Uliksu oduzme muziku, taj je sasvim omašio priliku, propustio je priliku za čudo, filovano humorom, ironijom, igrom, iznenađenjima i prepoznavanjima.

Ako je nešto književnost, Uliks je književnost.

Is this seat taken? I’ve only just arrived. No, third time, truly. First was in my early twenties.

Over there I can see my old plate of good intentions piled high, barely touched. On that other table marked Centennial I spy my second visit. A single bite worth fifty pages missing from the entrée; mossy, ten years gone. This time, I'll stay.

Lovers of lit orbit us like satellites of a dark and inscrutable planet. If we lift our gaze to the borders we can see them peering into this celebration. Intimidated. Bored. Frightened. Here goes one now, discarding his half-eaten in a huff towards the exit with an escape velocity towards next. White knuckled reading. Rending of words through the gnashing of teeth. Ferocious hope for elucidation. Will not devour as it is given; an ineluctable modality of the victual.

For unto us a summons given. Tidal pull, life long, recursive:

\\n  You are my guests.

The uninvited

History to blame.

Fabled by mothers of memory.\\n

We arrive with baggage. Hold to the now, the here, through which all futures plunge to the past. We dance and revel in Bacchanalian triumphant swing. Wilde time. Pain is far. Pan is fair.

Around this green are headstones of those who came after. Still with us are those giants of lit with cap tipped. Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry. This is how our world works. Our tombs next to our tomes. We mark our years by the passing of popes.

This last bite? I’m saving it. For Penelope. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve found home. Mine to end. I toast you, fellow reader. Flag on to your gob, lets. Raise them high.

U.p: up.

When I was in my late teens, on the advice of an acquaintance (now long forgotten), I purchased a copy of Ulysses. This acquaintance assured me that it was the pinnacle of literary achievement, the greatest novel ever written. For many years, that copy sat on the shelf, its pages gradually yellowing between pristine covers and an intact spine.

Occasionally, when browsing the shelves, I would retrieve it and examine the cover picture - an incredibly drab monochrome image of some bridges reflected over a river (presumably Dublin). From this, I would attempt to deduce what the novel might be about. The picture evoked old world stagnation, depression, and despair, without a hint of romanticism. I imagined grim-faced men enduring hard times, the bitter stink of stale beer in old pubs, and a general sense of depressing decay and death. I read random snippets of text - I recall there was mention of a funeral, but otherwise, it was mostly confusing passages from which nothing concrete could be gleaned. I simply could not conceive how such a book could sustain itself for over nine hundred pages, let alone be considered the pinnacle of anything. So, each time, the book would be returned to the shelf unread, and I began to doubt the literary credentials of my acquaintance.

However, over the years, the reputation of Ulysses has only been further reinforced. I learned more about the book - its central theme, its structure, and its author. Eventually, I began to avoid it no longer out of indifference but out of intimidation. Could I really read and understand such a great and difficult work? In 2015, I read both Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but did not love either. I later realized that I had made the mistake of reading them too soon. One needs exposure and experience to develop an appreciation. So, I decided to wait another year before reading Ulysses. I'm glad I did.

I won't pretend that I understood even a significant percentage of all the subtle references and stylistic allusions, or that Ulysses was perfectly enthralling all the way through. But it does undoubtedly deserve the high position it enjoys in the literary pantheon. Joyce has taken the concept of the novel, shattered it, and recomposed it in eighteen different ways. Is it incredibly pretentious? Yes! Is it sometimes long-winded or boring? Yes! Does it always work or even make sense? No! But it is, at all times, thoroughly a work of genius, of limitless ambition, written by someone with supreme ability and complete control over his vision. Its influence has been immense - I can see the precursors of Faulkner, McCarthy, Beckett, Eliot, and even Nabokov, refracted in its prism.

What is striking about Ulysses is that, both because of - and despite - its fragmented nature, it manages to depict characters who are at once transcendent, legendary, but also personal, fragile, and yet entirely coherent. These are deeply human characters, and their ugly natures, both in body and mind, are on full display. Joyce doesn't shy away from anything. I was aware that the book had been banned on grounds of profanity, but I was still surprised by how unabashedly dirty it was. It was not simply a prudish overreaction. (For example, there is, hilariously, a character called Cunty Kate!) Having said that, I am amused by the thought of kids toiling through Ulysses in search of the occasional lewd passage. (Teenage boys today will never understand the struggle of previous generations.) Personally, I would be quite happy if random obscenities were retrospectively inserted into all kinds of books, if it would help to get people reading literature again.

Unfortunately, the fact that people are no longer reading literature makes it harder for a novel like Ulysses to endure. The political concerns of 1904 have faded, and the cultural link with classical Western culture has been all but completely severed in the modern world. Ulysses draws references from mythical Greece, through ancient Rome, and various English literary traditions. It contains passages in at least six languages. It is crammed with obscure meanings, and all these connections are impossible for a modern reader to appreciate in any deep or meaningful way. (Even a guide which identifies them cannot replace a reading of the source material.) And so, the barrier to entry for Ulysses will continue to rise. My advice, though, to someone who appreciates great literature but is intimidated by all of this - just dive in. There is more than enough brilliance here to make it worthwhile.