I did it!

Although reading this novel cannot be considered a feat, because I didn't force myself to continue, but really enjoyed every word of this book. And Joyce is not at all as scary as they told me.

Truly, for the first time, I was able to appreciate only a part of the stylistics of this work and catch certain nuances or irony, but I plan to read it more than once, so I hope that its meaning will be revealed to me sooner or later.

I found the reading experience to be quite engaging. The language used by Joyce is rich and complex, yet it has a certain charm that keeps pulling you in.

Even though I may not have fully understood everything on the first go, I am determined to keep coming back to this novel and explore its depths further.

I believe that with each reading, I will discover new aspects and gain a deeper understanding of the story and its themes.

Overall, I am glad that I took the plunge and read this book, and I look forward to many more readings in the future.

Ulysses is a truly remarkable and, at times, confounding work. It is a hypnotic blend of books, history, and the minutiae of just about everything the writer could have conceived at the time. The narrative alternates between the protagonist's bowel movements and concludes with a multipage so-called'swirl of thoughts of Molly'.

It could potentially replace those 'develop your brain for 10-min a day games'. In that sense, it's perfect, with all its unwieldy references and various allusions to at least a quarter of the curriculum of classical sources.

However, as a book, it has its flaws. While the author managed to compile what is essentially an encyclopedia in the form of a novel, is this really preferable to a regular encyclopedia for the reader? The answer is no. It is less informative, and everything is merely mentioned in passing or in a sketchy manner. Is the novel more compelling? In an OCD kind of way, perhaps, as it can be quite fun to trace all the allusions. But for the average reader, not so much.

Overall, it can be seen as a hoax, albeit a wildly cross-referenced one. It is interesting to see what people manage to glean from it or even understand, as one would have to be able to make connections to numerous completely tangential things. It's a cool read for brushing up one's knowledge and thinking quirks, equivalent to a good workout for the brain.

Still, nothing about this changes the fact that this 'enigma' of a novel is, in many ways, a hoax. I'm not convinced that the writer is the genius he is lauded to be. For one thing, the allusions are fairly standard for someone with a classical education. And while it's impressive that he references over 1000 varied sources on each page of his scribbles, where exactly is the genius in that?

PS. Another aspect that I found too pretentious was the sentences of several thousand words. I don't particularly like writers who think they're too clever to split the content that spills from their minds not just onto paper but into coherent sentences. It seemed to me that the writer simply ran out of time and rushed to wrap it all up.

The plot can be summarized in a rather convoluted way. For example, questions like "Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?" are answered with a long list including music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman, prostitution, diet, and many other things. This just goes to show that when one tries to cover everything at once, a giant mess ensues, and not one subject is investigated deeply enough to make much sense.

Similarly, other questions and answers follow a similar pattern, with detailed and often rather absurd responses. It's as if the author is trying to cram as much as possible into the narrative, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

Structure-wise, the book is divided into three parts: The Telemachiad (Episodes 1 – 3), The Odyssey (Episodes 4 - 15), and The Nostos (Episodes 16 – 18). Each episode has its own unique characteristics and contributes to the overall complexity of the story.

PS: For more information and discussions about Ulysses, you can visit https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

So I've just completed the Odyssey along with Joyce's Ulysses. After spending a significant amount of time being carried along by the author's stream of consciousness, I still feel a bit unsteady.

Although I have safely finished this literary journey and reached the end of the book, the question lingers: was it worth reading? By all means, yes!

The text is filled with profound and thought-provoking passages.

For example, "Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart." This line beautifully captures the complex emotions that can consume us.

Or "Look at the sea. What does it care about offences?" which makes us reflect on the insignificance of our human concerns in the face of nature's vastness.

The descriptions of the sea and the waves are also vivid and enchanting.

"Airs romped around him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan."

It's as if we can feel the wind and see the powerful waves approaching.

Moreover, the exploration of themes such as love, art, and the passage of time adds depth and richness to the narrative.

"Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring."

This makes us consider the true nature and purpose of art.

Overall, reading Joyce's Ulysses is a challenging yet rewarding experience that offers a unique perspective on the human condition.

It forces us to grapple with complex ideas and emotions, and leaves us with a sense of wonder and admiration for the author's literary genius.

This book is far bulkier than Ulysses itself, and I have no liking for it whatsoever. I firmly believe that the authors were well aware that I wouldn't take to it. In their preface, they state:

"The notes may appear to labor an abundance of the obvious in order to render a few grains of the subtle and suggestive."

And also:

"This book is designed to be laid open beside the novel and to be read in tandem with it. Tandem reading, however, has its disadvantages."

I couldn't agree more. Especially when the front rider on the tandem is pedaling manically into the dangerous transcendent extreme edge of language itself, while the back rider is steering towards a bric-a-brac shop he just spotted.

They propose a plan: an "interrupted" reading of a chapter (i.e., checking every annotation) followed by an uninterrupted reading. Or even better:

"Skim a sequence of notes, then read the annotated sequence in the novel with interruptions for consideration of those notes that seem crucial, then follow with an uninterrupted reading."

Yes, I think that's the best approach. But only if you have no family, no pets, and a private income.

The annotators are acutely aware that they are actually undermining a major aspect of JJ's work, which was to showcase the significance of the trivial. (Bloom finally meets Stephen, but they part and don't become friends. That's it, no big drama, folks, nothing to see.) However, by pounding every triviality with a large note, this book transforms the trivial into the significant through the very act of annotation.

Nevertheless, it's a useful book as it attempts to explain everything in Ulysses that is no longer common knowledge.

But what exactly is this thing called common knowledge nowadays? I was having a conversation with an elderly female relative the other day (no names, please), and it became evident that in her long life, she had never heard of the idea that there might have been a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Meanwhile, I work in an office with a group of kids just out of university, and I'd bet a crisp tenner that half of them wouldn't know who JFK was. This means that almost everything in Ulysses isn't common knowledge anymore.

But my main objection to this probably inevitable and essential book, the reason I don't like it at all, is that it gives you, the reader of Ulysses (at least I hope you are), the impression that you should understand every single bit of Ulysses, every blasted reference to Italian opera, Irish slang, Fenian history, the Latin mass, how much a Dublin hooker paid in rent, and so on and so forth. And really – take a deep breath – you don't need to, you just don't, at all. JJ inserts all that glorious detail as the warp and weft and multicolored pantaloons of his vividly real picture of dear dirty Dublin. So, you know, just soak it all in, and as in your own real life, accept that there are about a thousand odds and ends of conversations, half-heard remarks, things that pass by too quickly on the TV, and all the onslaught of frantic internet splurge and the blurt of sound in the day-to-day hustle and bustle that you won't quite grasp. And that's just the way it is.

But this book thinks you can get everything. It's simply wrong.

How do you read Ulysses? Well, you begin on page one and you read all the words until it's finished.

Or, you can just be Irish.

I think that's the secret.

I've just finished Ulysses for the second time and I cannot recall any other book that's just as fun as Ulysses is. People often call the novel difficult and challenging, but that's a reading I just cannot abide by. I don't find Ulysses to be a particularly difficult novel to read. In fact, I struggle a lot more with other modernist writers, specifically Woolf and Lawrence. The two times I've read Ulysses, I've done it quicker than it took me to get through Lady Chatterley's Lover.

So I began questioning myself as to why this is. And I think the answer lies within who I actually am. I'm Irish.

Joyce once said that if Dublin were to one day suddenly disappear from the Earth, it could be entirely reconstructed from his book. And it is true that Joyce takes great pleasure in describing almost every step that Bloom takes. But then I think how, if you don't have a fairly solid familiarity with the streets of Dublin, not many of Bloom's journeys make sense.

So, say that Bloom walks along Grafton Street from the Trinity side and goes left along Duke St., onto Dawson St., goes up to Molesworth St. and finds himself outside the Dail on Kildare St. To Joyce, and myself, that journey makes perfect sense in our heads and we can easily follow it because we both have walked that exact route many times. However, to someone who doesn't know Dublin, literally none of that made any sense. All of Ulysses is like this.

Another example would be one of the many moments in the novel that made me audibly laugh. It's during the Circe episode which is this massive hallucination sequence that's written in play form. At one point the sound of a waterfall is heard and Joyce records its noise like this:

The waterfall: Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

Get it? What? You mean you don't have a knowledge of the waterfalls of Ireland? Once again, all of Ulysses is like this.

So why do I get all the references? Why do I find this novel so funny? Why didn't I want it to end and will likely read it again and again for my whole life? Am I so intellectually above all of you that only I, the great Barry, could understand all of Ulysses? No. It's cos I'm Irish.

If you flick through an annotated edition of Ulysses, you'll notice all the footnotes are simply just explaining the references. They're full of little explainers of who Michael Davitt was or Arthur Griffith or Charles Stewart Parnell. What a crubeen is and what's double X. What the Phoenix Park murders were and who the croppy boy is. Notes of which I need none, because I know all this, because I'm Irish.

Ulysses is an Irish novel written by an Irish man for Irish people. Joyce steeped the whole thing in such Irishness that many of the dialects, the turns of phrase, the references, and the places make little sense to non-Irish people. The non-Irish in turn have to purchase massive annotated editions and reference guides in order to slowly trudge their way through the pages that Irish people wouldn't even have to pause on. It's from these non-Irish that we always hear that Ulysses is the most difficult novel.

So if you aren't Irish and you tried to conquer Ulysses and you couldn't, don't feel bad, the book wasn't written for you. However, for us Irish, for whom Ulysses is our plaything, we'll keep holding it to our hearts forever.

TEASES US OUT OF THOUGHT






Milo O’Shea/Leopold Bloom e Geoffrey Golden in “Ulysses” di Joseph Strick, 1967, liberamente ispirato al romanzo di Joyce.



"Teases us out of thought," Keats said. This is exactly the case with Joyce. His works lead us out of our ordinary thinking, taking us to a point where the intellect seems insufficient. It is other organs that are solicited by his writing, other neurons are at work. We are invited to abandon ourselves, not to understand completely, to understand partially, to misunderstand, to listen to the incessant buzz of the language, and to follow its caprices.






Il bel bianco e nero del film.



We can almost taste the kidneys frying in the butter on the pan. And we hear those strange sounds like "And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you?"






Milo O’Shea/Leopold Bloom.

For me and a group of my friends, the preparations for Ulysses lasted for a 5-month period.

During this time, we did a lot of reading and learned a great deal. While there is a sense of relief in finishing a book that we prepared for so much, on the other hand, I also feel a bit empty.

I don't know if I'm a good reviewer. Joyce's mind works in a very different way. I'm not even sure what I fully understood. We wandered around the streets of Dublin for 24 hours...

I think I made some wrong choices in the translation, but maybe one day I will read it again.

You are amazing, Joyce. Another journey has ended...

Ulises is a monumental work, a tour de force full of knowledge and scattered narrations, intervened by the decadence and celebration of language in all its forms. It is a slow and convulsive degradation towards the various components that surround us and the latent internal chaos of the being. Ulises is not just pure literature; it is also a unique experience.

Just as no one can ignore the importance of Ulises in literature, no one can deny the influence this book has had on its writers. William Gaddis once said that, having only read the interior monologue of Molly Bloom, he referred to Joyce as an influence beyond the practical, almost metaphysical or religious, of letters.

The complexity and depth of Ulises make it a work that continues to be studied and analyzed by scholars and literature enthusiasts alike. Its exploration of human nature, language, and society is as relevant today as it was when it was first published. The novel challenges readers to think deeply about the world around them and their place in it. It is a work that demands attention and rewards those who are willing to engage with it on its own terms.

Like Odysseus, who received assistance from his comrades and the gods on his arduous journey back to Ithaca after a twenty-year absence, I, too, was in need of help when it came to reading "Ulysses" by James Joyce. The complexity of this novel had earned it a reputation as formidable as the Trojan horse, and I was daunted by the prospect of tackling it alone.

Fortunately, I found great support in the "Odysseus to Ulysses" reading group. My fellow members provided valuable information, diverse interpretations, and unique perspectives that undoubtedly contributed to my ability to finish the book. Without their help, I might have given up along the way.

However, even with all this assistance, I still faced challenges in concentrating and focusing while reading. Joyce's writing style, particularly his use of stream of consciousness, was both fascinating and demanding. As I delved into the characters' thoughts, my own mind would often wander, and I would have to go back several pages to regain my focus.

Despite these difficulties, I was captivated by Joyce's portrayal of Leopold Bloom, the modern-day Odysseus. Bloom's timidity and lack of courage initially frustrated me, but as I came to understand his character better, I began to empathize with him. His recognition of Stephen Dedalus as a surrogate for his dead son Rudy was a particularly poignant moment.

Joyce's use of language and style was also remarkable. Each episode of "Ulysses" was written in a distinct way, creating a sense of新鲜感 and挑战 for the reader. From the fast-paced vignettes of "Wandering Rocks" to the surrealist play of "Circe" and the interior monologue of "Penelope," Joyce's versatility was on full display.

At the heart of the novel, beneath all the parallels and contrasts, lies a simple yet powerful plot. Joyce's characters engage in ordinary, mundane tasks, yet he manages to make their stories engaging and thought-provoking. This raises the question of how to involve the reader in a seemingly unremarkable narrative.

Reading "Ulysses" was a difficult but ultimately rewarding experience. It challenged me to think deeply about literature, language, and the human condition. While I may not have understood every reference or nuance, I gained a greater appreciation for Joyce's genius and his contribution to the world of literature.

I look forward to re-reading "Ulysses" in its original English version and continuing my exploration of Joyce's works. In the meantime, I will continue to recommend this novel to others, despite its reputation for being challenging. Because, as I have discovered, the rewards of reading "Ulysses" are well worth the effort.

Eh? This simple exclamation can convey a variety of emotions and meanings. It could express surprise, confusion, or even a hint of doubt.

For example, when you hear something unexpected, you might say "Eh?" in a tone of surprise. Or if you don't quite understand what someone is saying, you could use "Eh?" to ask for clarification.

Sometimes, "Eh?" can also be used in a more lighthearted or joking way. It might be a way to show that you're not taking something too seriously or to add a bit of humor to a conversation.

In conclusion, although "Eh?" is a short and simple word, it can have a big impact on how we communicate and express ourselves. So the next time you hear someone say "Eh?", take a moment to think about what they might really mean.

I feel like James Joyce should have seriously questioned himself before penning this work.

For instance, I could conceivably write a 600-page tome entirely in the stream of consciousness style, attempting to mimic realistic thought patterns with random sentences, and perhaps everyone would applaud my supposed genius. But does that truly mean I should? Because in seventy years, some unfortunate English major will have to endure reading this and suffer.

Yes, I'm aware that he seemingly went out of his way to make this as incomprehensible and dense as possible, so that people would praise it for years. And I'll admit, I'm impressed that it worked. But again, just because he could do that, did he really have to?

\\n  

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

\\n

I'm just going to be honest. I don't understand how people have managed to read this multiple times. The main pleasure I got from this book was the knowledge that I could later brag about finishing it. And maybe that's half the appeal for people. Everyone loves to tell others how they completed this work because it makes you seem ~clever~ and ~cultured~ to have read Joyce. But I'm convinced that people are exaggerating how much they enjoyed it by at least seventy percent.

The truth is, there are indeed flashes of brilliance. I really enjoyed the Circe section, and the Scylla and Charybdis section was interesting (Stephen really did serve up some tea on Shakespeare, hoo boy!). But a large portion of this was, frankly, excruciating to read. It's just that I don't think a book that is inherently incomprehensible is good literature, no matter what people say.

If you have to buy three other thick books to explain this one and keep them beside you as you read it just to begin to understand what the heck Joyce was saying, does that make this book more impressive? Or does it just mean that Joyce was a classist jerk who prioritized intellectualism over enjoyment, and everyone just went along with it?

I don't know the answers, by the way! So don't come after me, you classics stan Goodreads users!

Anyway, I don't even know my own thoughts on this book. It's kind of awful, annoying, and painful to read most of the time, but there were some points where I enjoyed it. And look, I admit that I felt like the smartest person in the world every time I recognized one of the many, many allusions and references.

I don't know, it's impossible to rate. It's one of those "One star because it's horrible and five stars because it changed the literature game" books.

I will say that Stephen was by far my favorite character, and in a few years, if (and that's a big if) I have recovered from this book, I may pick up A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for him.

\\n  

“If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.’ Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law. But always meeting ourselves.

\\n

I've just completed my initial reading of Ulysses, and it was truly a transcendent experience. I dedicated two months to this endeavor, taking my time and eagerly anticipating my weekly (and sometimes biweekly) visits to Joyce's Dublin.

I'm not yet prepared to pen a review of Ulysses. I desire to allow the experience to soak in for a while longer before attempting to capture it in words. However, I do wish to mention a few things about the reference texts I utilized: Ulysses Annotated and The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses (which I'll discuss in a separate review).

Gifford's Ulysses Annotated offers a breathtakingly comprehensive, encyclopedic approach to referencing Ulysses, often dissecting it word by word and line by line. Gifford delves into historical, mythological, and religious references and context. He discusses cultural movements in Ireland, provides definitions for slang and lyrics from popular songs, and even scours directories, maps, and other archival records to explain when Joyce was directly drawing from actual people, places, and events in Dublin.

As a historian, I relished having access to this volume while reading Ulysses. It rejuvenated my knowledge of Irish history. I had a great time refreshing my understanding of early-20th-century Irish slang (you never know when it might come in useful). And I even had an unexpected opportunity to learn more about Theosophism.

That being said, I was cautious about allowing Gifford's exhaustive research to divert my attention from Joyce's incandescent, humorous, and exuberant use of language. To avoid this, I didn't read the annotations simultaneously with Ulysses's text. Instead, I would read an episode of Ulysses, sometimes reread it, and then flip through the relevant annotations for that episode. The process was reminiscent of reading encyclopedias or happily paging through the OED. (I know, very nerdy....)

So, if you're a first-time reader, I don't think you should feel compelled to read Gifford as well. You'll understand and appreciate Ulysses more on your own terms, with some guidance from The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses. If you need to understand the significance of every word you read, try to let go of that when reading Ulysses and let the language wash over you.

If you're about to reread Ulysses or if you share my passion for historical references and context, then I highly recommend Gifford - just don't let your perusal of it direct your attention away from what's truly important - Joyce's writing itself.