Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
After more than a year since I started this book, I finished reading it. I read the first chapter about 10 times and then I found a few more companion books and lectures that helped me progress. I tried to finish reading it by Bloom's day 2022 and finally finished reading the book 8 days later.
This is a hard book to read, even with the 3 sources that I followed, I am sure I didn't understand even half of it, and there are a couple of chapters that I just heard, and I need to read them many more times to understand what the words were saying :) but I should say that I really enjoyed reading this book and following Bloom through his day and finishing the day/night in Molly's head. But I should say that Joyce is showing off in this book, a bit too much. Yes, he is a genius, we get it from chapter 1, but he keeps trying to show that he is even smarter. Still, it is a joy to read although painful at times!
It will take you a long time to read this book but, in my opinion, it is worth every minute you spend cracking Joyce's code!
This is a hard book to read, even with the 3 sources that I followed, I am sure I didn't understand even half of it, and there are a couple of chapters that I just heard, and I need to read them many more times to understand what the words were saying :) but I should say that I really enjoyed reading this book and following Bloom through his day and finishing the day/night in Molly's head. But I should say that Joyce is showing off in this book, a bit too much. Yes, he is a genius, we get it from chapter 1, but he keeps trying to show that he is even smarter. Still, it is a joy to read although painful at times!
It will take you a long time to read this book but, in my opinion, it is worth every minute you spend cracking Joyce's code!
Stephen Dedalus is a literate Irish aristocrat having an existential crisis, whose background and adventures parellell that of Hamlet. Leopold Bloom is a middle-class man from a Jewish family who has lapsed in his religious practice and is having a marriage crisis—his wife is having an affair—his adventures parallel those of Ulysses.
The two men walk about the city of Dublin, meeting a variety of characters, often corssing paths, and throughout the various episodes topics ranging from Irish Nationalism, literature, birth control, religion, anti-semitism, and prostitution are discussed.
Many chapters are adaptations of episodes from the Odyssey, while also demonstrating a wide variety of literary styles. One chapter is written as a play; another chapter changes styles many times approximating the growth of English from Old English to contemporary, mimicking and sometimes parodying specific authors.
It is a difficult read and took me a long time, putting it down for long periods in between episodes.
Much of it I found dull or needlessly obscure. I particularly liked the final episode, which gave us Leopold's wife Molly's internal monologue, and thus the last word, in several very long sentences with no punctuation.
The two men walk about the city of Dublin, meeting a variety of characters, often corssing paths, and throughout the various episodes topics ranging from Irish Nationalism, literature, birth control, religion, anti-semitism, and prostitution are discussed.
Many chapters are adaptations of episodes from the Odyssey, while also demonstrating a wide variety of literary styles. One chapter is written as a play; another chapter changes styles many times approximating the growth of English from Old English to contemporary, mimicking and sometimes parodying specific authors.
It is a difficult read and took me a long time, putting it down for long periods in between episodes.
Much of it I found dull or needlessly obscure. I particularly liked the final episode, which gave us Leopold's wife Molly's internal monologue, and thus the last word, in several very long sentences with no punctuation.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
I will admit that so much of this was lost on me (specifically after episode 13). It became a slog. I powered through, accepting that I would need to reread some day. I couldn’t catch everything and probably never will. I doubt anyone can.
But, it is an obvious work of genius. It’s conceit is simple enough: a modern Irish allegory of The Odyssey, and Joyce is rather steadfast and committed to that structure throughout. But the layers of that structure and how they’re all fully realized is what’s truly overwhelming about the experience of this book. There is Bloom’s odyssey, of course. But then there is the odyssey of Ireland as subject to England (foreshadowed early by Haines’ conversation with Stephen), subject to Catholicism, and in some cheeky moments, subject to its vices. More minutely the experience of the "other" in Ireland is its own odyssey, personified in bloom.
On the grander scale, there is the odyssey of language and literature as a whole. Oxen of the Sun (the most impénétrable of all the episodes for me) explores this concept with the most focus, but it’s sprinkled with genius through the whole novel. Joyce weaves between simple literary devices of basic rhyming poetry and alliteration and deftly complex uses of allusion, entendres and varying structures of narrative, dialogue and prose. All of this encompasses at least an attempt at reflecting and understanding the ways in which the human experience (and all that goes with it, considered in this novel: identity (national and personal), sexuality, relationships, history) is both expressed and understood by the mind through art.
There’s nothing like it and never could be. My favorite episodes for what it’s worth:
Episode 12, Cyclops
Episode 18, Penelope
Episode 4, Calypso
Episode 6, Hades
Episode 15, Circe
But, it is an obvious work of genius. It’s conceit is simple enough: a modern Irish allegory of The Odyssey, and Joyce is rather steadfast and committed to that structure throughout. But the layers of that structure and how they’re all fully realized is what’s truly overwhelming about the experience of this book. There is Bloom’s odyssey, of course. But then there is the odyssey of Ireland as subject to England (foreshadowed early by Haines’ conversation with Stephen), subject to Catholicism, and in some cheeky moments, subject to its vices. More minutely the experience of the "other" in Ireland is its own odyssey, personified in bloom.
On the grander scale, there is the odyssey of language and literature as a whole. Oxen of the Sun (the most impénétrable of all the episodes for me) explores this concept with the most focus, but it’s sprinkled with genius through the whole novel. Joyce weaves between simple literary devices of basic rhyming poetry and alliteration and deftly complex uses of allusion, entendres and varying structures of narrative, dialogue and prose. All of this encompasses at least an attempt at reflecting and understanding the ways in which the human experience (and all that goes with it, considered in this novel: identity (national and personal), sexuality, relationships, history) is both expressed and understood by the mind through art.
There’s nothing like it and never could be. My favorite episodes for what it’s worth:
Episode 12, Cyclops
Episode 18, Penelope
Episode 4, Calypso
Episode 6, Hades
Episode 15, Circe
DNF it’s awful. I have a friend who’s Masters thesis is on the book and it’s still awful. James Joyce is a bitch
I've had a go at this TWICE, and both times lost it somewhere in the second to last chapter. It wasn't meant to be.
Do not try to read this book in under a month.
So full and rich text.
So full and rich text.
The best thing I can say about Ulysses is "I finished it!" This was the most difficult, indecipherable book I've ever attempted to read. Early in the book there was a quote I loved that summed up how I felt throughout the entire book: "I am almosting it." I wouldn't have even come close to 'almosting' it if not for Shmoop explaining to me what I was reading! I did enjoy the prose (most of the time) the play on words and the playful language (when I knew what Joyce was talking about) and the stream-of-consciousness style. The last page is simply genius (and not because I was finishing the book!) 5 weeks of my life slogging through this book--Hallejuh, I'm finished!
I first tried to read Ulysses during that golden summer of 1976 when we had the drought. I soon gave up and went back to Lord of the Rings or whatever I was capable of reading as a 15 year-old. Ulysses was way out of my league then. I returned to it in 1982 as an English Lit undergraduate and it was beginning to make a bit more sense by then. Just a bit. One of our lecturers had written a book analysing the novel line by line, and that helped.
My copy from those days is in a box in a storage unit in South London so I bought the current Penguin Classics edition to read for the hundredth anniversary of the novel’s publication. This edition has a lengthy but illuminating introduction by Irish scholar Declan Kiberd who apparently was born in Eccles Street, Dublin, the street where the novel’s anti-hero Leopold Bloom lives with his wife Molly.
I know Ulysses is difficult and you could go mad trying to identify all the literary allusions and looking up the meanings of all the long words. Plenty of scholars who have tried to make sense of it have been carried off by the men/women in white coats, gnashing their teeth and foaming at the mouth. My advice is, if you don’t recognise an allusion (but think you do) or if you don’t know the meaning of hebdomadary or septentrional, just move on. Don’t bother to look them up. You won’t miss anything. Essentially, this is a novel about a son in search of a father and a father in search of a son. Stephen, the other antihero, has a father but not much of one. Leopold Bloom was a father for eleven days but then his son died, several years before the action of the novel takes place. It’s now Thursday, June 16th 1904 and the novel follows Stephen and Mr Bloom as they wander around Dublin trying to find some meaning in their lives. What shocked the authorities – and many of the novel’s readers – when the novel was first published were the dreadful things that Leopold Bloom does, like go to the toilet and give himself hand relief while sitting on a beach (these two events are several hours and several miles apart). In between he does some ordinary things like make his wife breakfast, go to a funeral and have a cheese sandwich for lunch. This is the stuff that epic literature is made from.
On that note, the introduction has a useful table showing how episodes in the novel correspond to episodes in Homer’s Odyssey. So, for example, the Odyssey’s Sirens, who lure sailors onto the rocks, are replaced by a couple of barmaids who ply their customers with pints of fine ale. The Cyclops is replaced by “the citizen”, a one-eyed ultra-nationalist anti-semite who explodes when he hears a rumour (totally untrue) that Bloom had five shillings on the winner of the Ascot Gold Cup (which was run at four o’clock that afternoon and won by a 20-1 outsider) and is now too tight to buy his mates a round.
There’s not much of a plot to follow but things do happen, the most important being that Stephen and Mr Bloom eventually meet up and there is the promise of some kind of friendship to follow. The novel ends with the famous – or notorious – stream of consciousness monologue of Molly, which fills 62 pages. I won’t spoil that by telling you what she thinks about. Many readers think it’s about the closest a male novelist has ever got to how a woman (or at least a woman like Molly Bloom) really thinks, but that’s for you to judge.
My copy from those days is in a box in a storage unit in South London so I bought the current Penguin Classics edition to read for the hundredth anniversary of the novel’s publication. This edition has a lengthy but illuminating introduction by Irish scholar Declan Kiberd who apparently was born in Eccles Street, Dublin, the street where the novel’s anti-hero Leopold Bloom lives with his wife Molly.
I know Ulysses is difficult and you could go mad trying to identify all the literary allusions and looking up the meanings of all the long words. Plenty of scholars who have tried to make sense of it have been carried off by the men/women in white coats, gnashing their teeth and foaming at the mouth. My advice is, if you don’t recognise an allusion (but think you do) or if you don’t know the meaning of hebdomadary or septentrional, just move on. Don’t bother to look them up. You won’t miss anything. Essentially, this is a novel about a son in search of a father and a father in search of a son. Stephen, the other antihero, has a father but not much of one. Leopold Bloom was a father for eleven days but then his son died, several years before the action of the novel takes place. It’s now Thursday, June 16th 1904 and the novel follows Stephen and Mr Bloom as they wander around Dublin trying to find some meaning in their lives. What shocked the authorities – and many of the novel’s readers – when the novel was first published were the dreadful things that Leopold Bloom does, like go to the toilet and give himself hand relief while sitting on a beach (these two events are several hours and several miles apart). In between he does some ordinary things like make his wife breakfast, go to a funeral and have a cheese sandwich for lunch. This is the stuff that epic literature is made from.
On that note, the introduction has a useful table showing how episodes in the novel correspond to episodes in Homer’s Odyssey. So, for example, the Odyssey’s Sirens, who lure sailors onto the rocks, are replaced by a couple of barmaids who ply their customers with pints of fine ale. The Cyclops is replaced by “the citizen”, a one-eyed ultra-nationalist anti-semite who explodes when he hears a rumour (totally untrue) that Bloom had five shillings on the winner of the Ascot Gold Cup (which was run at four o’clock that afternoon and won by a 20-1 outsider) and is now too tight to buy his mates a round.
There’s not much of a plot to follow but things do happen, the most important being that Stephen and Mr Bloom eventually meet up and there is the promise of some kind of friendship to follow. The novel ends with the famous – or notorious – stream of consciousness monologue of Molly, which fills 62 pages. I won’t spoil that by telling you what she thinks about. Many readers think it’s about the closest a male novelist has ever got to how a woman (or at least a woman like Molly Bloom) really thinks, but that’s for you to judge.