Reading Ulysses

oh, haven't heard of that movie...'ll look into it if I get the chance.
thanks for all the tips :-)

I've had conversation
with Sean Walsh
he is
naturally enough
on the Ulysses list server . . .

which alas is past its prime
on it's third time through the book
also having done
read- throughs
of Portrait and Dubliners

sadly last year
the most articulately magnificent
contributor
the riverend sterling
succumbed to
esophageal cancer

he was also a brillant contributor
to readings of the Wake

Perhaps 'not enjoying' was a little strong. There are passages I find gorgeous. Phrases that are perfect. Conversely there are phrases and passages that baffle and frustrate. Sparknotes and some Robot Wisdom are helping me remove some of that frustration. As a reader I am fascinated with what Joyce has done and the way he did it. I don't like going through a book and not understanding what's going on but I am determined to understand Ulysses, at least partially. I don't mind having to work at a book, in fact I enjoy a work that is a challenge. Although that said, I am just starting to read more challenging authors and Ulysses will easily be the most difficult book I have ever attempted.

I'm now approaching Ulysses with an analogy. It's a literary-archeological dig as much, if not more, as it is a read. Establish the perimeter of the read by defining the styles and sometimes esoteric delivery. The stream of conciousness, the evolution of language in episode fourteen, etcetera. The stakes are hammered in. We need a spade to shovel away the bullshit Joyce uses to confound and a delicate brush to reveal the nuances in the relationship between Stephen and Leopold. Other tools one needs to dig deep into Ulysses, knowing Hamlet, and some historical knowledge of Shakespeare would be good too, being familiar with The Odyssey, being familiar with the political context of the book and again, etcetera, all help to reveal artifacts.

This is not a book I can pick up and read in the traditional way. Yet. Either I do not have the capacity, the education or a combination of the two. Perhaps I'm being too serious? I've read some people say that the book is too tongue-in-cheek to be taken overly seriously. Considering the depth and layers in it how can it not be taken seriously? Maybe my second read won't be taken so seriously.

you should remember
that the poarallels with the first
odyssey/Ulysses
are made much more of but people
othjer than joyce himself

also Ellman's biography of Joyce
and Brenda Maddox' of Nora
are helpful adjunctive readings

and of course
the infamous "dirty" letters
he wrote to her
while he was back in Dublin

he was a bundle of contra/dictions
and it's good to know something about his life

so many people get into the autobiographical hang-up
between Stephen and Jimmy

even though Joyce said he was sick and tired of Stephen
as he was writing Ulysses

much preferred Bloom . . .

Oh my.

I've borrowed The New Bloomsday Book by Harry Blamires from the library. I'm doing more support reading than actual reading of Ulysses at this rate.

I finished Ulysses. Easily the most challenging read I've ever had and not always in a good way. I don't know how to properly rate it or review it so I won't. At least right now I can't/won't. Perhaps after a bit of fermentation I'll come back to this. If the book stays with me, and right now I'm not sure it will or won't, I'll give it a reread one day. I'm glad I read it, glad I stuck it out to the end. I did almost quit a couple times.

I agree with you there WTman. I often fell like I'm being tricked by Joyce and his high Modernism. Sometimes he seems like a bit of a craftsman, glueing together endless allusions and complicated linguistic patterns. The premeditation gets me, and the idea of William Carlos Williams et al sitting in Paris helping Joyce with the research for a book calculated to stymie the critics for as long as possible--as he said himself, Finnegans Wake was written for a critic with severe insomia. I guess I'm blaspheming a bit though. Yes it's all very wonderful writing and important; still, give me Beckett most days.

I liken him to Loki

I could tell you
such stories about Joyceans
and what they think of him
and of what he wrote

some
(a very few)
totally believe he is the Messiah . . .

Ijuststartedit.Ifindmyselfgettingmoreoutofreadingaboutitthenflippingthroughitspages.Ihave the time, so what's the big deal, right? I've been a Burroughs freak for over a year, an obsessive communist before that. Cracking an opus takes patience, not intelligence. People are all the same. Joyce was no exception. But he knew patience. He planned. I could say with honesty that I don't have to read Joyce, but I want to. His prose makes me sleep, but it gives me interesting things to dream and think about. It's a long trip. I'm the only rider.

If it's your first read, be prepared for the last eight chapters. They tend to catch some folks a little off guard.

I'm 150 pages into it, loving every bit of it. I feel transported not only to Dublin but also into the mind of Leopold Bloom. Very cozy place in there, too. Lot better than Dedalus's, which is rather cold and uninviting (probably why I'm enjoying Ulysses so much more than I enjoyed Portrait).

Although reading Ulysses has lessened my enjoyment of Woolf's The Waves. It's like Joyce took the same stream-of-consciousness style and then ran with it, leaving poor Virginia standing all alone with her primitive and one-dimensional novel. Still a good read, just not as fun and compelling as Ulysses.

And Ms. Woolf was so nasty to James, too.

Might that be a tinge of jealousy though?

I remember reading that Woolf called ULYSSES an "illiterate" book, but really they were both doing similar things very brilliantly at around the same time, so one can expect those sorts of feelings (did Joyce ever have anything to say about Woolf?).

That they died about the same time seems almost oddly appropriate, the two greatest modernist authors of the early 20th century, IMO.

So this was my post eh? Ugh. Good thing we can evolve as readers! It only took me almost 3 years!Ulysses has never left my mind for long and while I have not yet reread it cover to cover I have gone back to it many times for bits and pieces and loved doing so. I will be rereading Ulysses, along with most of his other works but not Wake, this coming school year for a course on Joyce that I am greatly looking forward to.

I took a break about a month long from Ulysses, but a few days ago I dove right back in the water's great. I just started the 200 page, drunken-hallucinatory play/chapter at the end of part 2. No one ever told me how funny Ulysses was...

Thinking of revisiting Ulysses myself over the winter break actually, but there are other lengthy books as well I've been meaning to read, like Rabelais. Too many books, too little time, as the popular refrain goes.

Having done so once, I don't think I'll ever read Ulysses through ever again-- I'd rather revisit it by the chapter.

I doubt I'll ever read it
straight through
again

random passages
and passages where I'm seeking something
I love having the full text of everything joycean
on my hard drive
I can search any old way
and that always yields treasures.

the wake
I doubt I'll ever be finished
with reading it
ihn one way or another

Just wanted to "register" that I'm having another go at the thing after an aborted attempt a couple years back. So far I'm through the first four episodes and enjoying it much more than last time. I do have the aid of the annotations, as well as Gilbert's book and one of a walking tour of Dublin (primarily for the pictures), but I'm trying not to rely too heavily on the training wheels. So far, so good, and I shall keep everyone abreast of my progress.