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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
The third of my three favorites ever. Wanna reread this in 2026 but yes this changed my life. James Joyce you’re the man
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Reads as it is: a damn good bit of work. The former overwhelms.
This book is masterful, don't attempt if you don't have the will to see it through.
challenging
funny
inspiring
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Note: these are more personal ongoing reflections of the novel than a formal public review.
What a novel. What a journey. Through language. Through the human soul. Through one long day in Dublin. I would happily take in 3 pints with Buck Mulligan and proceed to talk shit about Shakespeare.
It has always been the case that I have found stream-of-consciousness writing to be a warning sign: never in my life have I experienced a wandering of such disjointed thoughts and haphazard half-associations as regularly appears in S-o-C writing, and I would positively fear any man whose inner mind exists in such disarray.
The success of this novel comes from its multilayered symbolism and parallel lives: Bloom and the infidelity of his wife; Shakespeare and the infidelity of his wife; Odysseus and the pertinent doubts of Penelope's faithfulness until his return home.
Perhaps ironically, the most lucid and poignant moments in the book, when Joyce is most focused, are when he speaks of blindness; either Stephen imagining himself blind, or Bloom assisting a blind young man. In these moments his attention is narrowly focused on his own fears about his own vision, and not distracted.
The middle section of the narrative (albeit within the first third) is where I struggled the most. Aeolus (in the Newspaper), Wandering Rocks, and Sirens were all a labour which I took little away from. I fared better in Scylla and Charybdis, but the content there is so dense that it will take a re-read and in-depth analysis to better grasp.
Long passages within the episode Sirens seems senseless to me, even after reading it, then reading a summary, then watching a chapter breakdown, then re-reading the episode alongside an audio performance. I had already remarked that many passages of prose had a lyrical, musical quality to them, and then within this chapter devoted to a musical theme it is nearly absent. In its place are disjointed, meandering and meaningless words. Even on the JoyceProject website, these long stretches contain no links to explanatory references. They're just a vomitus of syllables. It's not that it's hard work, there's barely any decipherment to be done. I understand what is happening, it's just all rather unimpressive.
However, after Sirens, the book (for me) picks up significantly.
Cyclops is as much poetry as comedy. Lyrical, witty, on-topic. 10/10. I have rarely laughed so hard as at the unnamed narrator's commentary and flights of whimsy. Easily my favourite chapter in the entire book.
Nausicae begins with some of the most grounded, beautiful, kind and fulfilling prose of the novel, and I'm marking it's first few pages as some to return to on gentle summer evenings. It therefore somewhat disappoints me that Joyce was apparently satirising an existing romanticism style.
The Oxen of the Sun episode (hospital) is another triumphant highlight: it is telling that I vastly prefer the rambling pregrammatical verbiage of Latin Vulgate to Bloom's stilted stream of consciousness. The mimicry of alliterative Anglo-Saxon verse is some of the most fun I've had reading aloud, ever. I won't pretend like I haven't struggled on some chapters (Sirens, ugh). But damn this is some creative writing. As the section progresses it resembles late Middle (Chaucer), then Early Modern (Shakespeare), until Jacobean and then modern, and then (gasp), post-modern! Where the episode ends in a pidgin mishmash of Gaelic slang. If I'm not reading too much into this, it feels like Joyce is saying "Ha! See here! The entire gestation of your English language has culminated in this! How does it make you feel?"
The Catechism chapter of Ithaca is vastly enhanced by the audio performance, granting the distinct voices and formal vocal posturing typical in catechism recitation, making it all the more a hilarious mockery. Mockery turns to existential introspection: the "apathy of the stars", to self-flagellation and then apathy of one's own situation. A reflection of his own failings and tacit acceptance of infidelity, I close this chapter with the belief that Molly seeks other men not to spite Leopold, but to desperately fill the hole *he* left gaping in the wake of their son's death. I look forward to:
Penelope. The Paradox of Audiobooks for Ergodic literature. The finale Penelope was written not only in stream-of-consciousness, but also without grammar or punctuation. No full stops, commas, or capitalisations. Stephen and Bloom's S-o-C was challenging enough, now Joyce demands the reader create their own intuition of pacing and sentences.
Except...when a narrated performance has already determined them, and I'm just reading along with it. It reduces the form of the finale from a challenging stream to wade through, to merely a rambling monologue. The continuation of an audio narration means that even if I find something challenging, the pace continues anyway, at one second per second.
The flip side is that I can fully comprehend everything in this chapter, and the emotional intent of it. From Aeolus and Wandering Rocks, I know my eye tends to just roam over the words when I can't understand them. To paraphrase Paarthunax, which is better? To read a finale without fully understanding it, or to have it read to you for full comprehension?
I made an excuse for Ithaca because the reading would be simple enough and the technic benefitted from two voices trading questions and answers. My remedy is that the first half of the chapter, about 1 hour, is read to me, to get the rhythm. But I read alone the last hour of the novel, so that final completion could be on my merit alone.
And that finale, being read aloud by me, is indeed powerful, the emphatic YES punctuating the end is both cathartic but also suspiciously orgasmic.
Overall, this is a novel which is impossible to fully grasp in one reading, in 7 days, without interruption for in depth study. My appreciation of it is high, my enjoyment sporadic but regular, but my next read will be Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway", which - being one day in London in mid June - is something is a response to the overblown "bore" which she found in Ulysses.
What a novel. What a journey. Through language. Through the human soul. Through one long day in Dublin. I would happily take in 3 pints with Buck Mulligan and proceed to talk shit about Shakespeare.
It has always been the case that I have found stream-of-consciousness writing to be a warning sign: never in my life have I experienced a wandering of such disjointed thoughts and haphazard half-associations as regularly appears in S-o-C writing, and I would positively fear any man whose inner mind exists in such disarray.
The success of this novel comes from its multilayered symbolism and parallel lives: Bloom and the infidelity of his wife; Shakespeare and the infidelity of his wife; Odysseus and the pertinent doubts of Penelope's faithfulness until his return home.
Perhaps ironically, the most lucid and poignant moments in the book, when Joyce is most focused, are when he speaks of blindness; either Stephen imagining himself blind, or Bloom assisting a blind young man. In these moments his attention is narrowly focused on his own fears about his own vision, and not distracted.
The middle section of the narrative (albeit within the first third) is where I struggled the most. Aeolus (in the Newspaper), Wandering Rocks, and Sirens were all a labour which I took little away from. I fared better in Scylla and Charybdis, but the content there is so dense that it will take a re-read and in-depth analysis to better grasp.
Long passages within the episode Sirens seems senseless to me, even after reading it, then reading a summary, then watching a chapter breakdown, then re-reading the episode alongside an audio performance. I had already remarked that many passages of prose had a lyrical, musical quality to them, and then within this chapter devoted to a musical theme it is nearly absent. In its place are disjointed, meandering and meaningless words. Even on the JoyceProject website, these long stretches contain no links to explanatory references. They're just a vomitus of syllables. It's not that it's hard work, there's barely any decipherment to be done. I understand what is happening, it's just all rather unimpressive.
However, after Sirens, the book (for me) picks up significantly.
Cyclops is as much poetry as comedy. Lyrical, witty, on-topic. 10/10. I have rarely laughed so hard as at the unnamed narrator's commentary and flights of whimsy. Easily my favourite chapter in the entire book.
Nausicae begins with some of the most grounded, beautiful, kind and fulfilling prose of the novel, and I'm marking it's first few pages as some to return to on gentle summer evenings. It therefore somewhat disappoints me that Joyce was apparently satirising an existing romanticism style.
The Oxen of the Sun episode (hospital) is another triumphant highlight: it is telling that I vastly prefer the rambling pregrammatical verbiage of Latin Vulgate to Bloom's stilted stream of consciousness. The mimicry of alliterative Anglo-Saxon verse is some of the most fun I've had reading aloud, ever. I won't pretend like I haven't struggled on some chapters (Sirens, ugh). But damn this is some creative writing. As the section progresses it resembles late Middle (Chaucer), then Early Modern (Shakespeare), until Jacobean and then modern, and then (gasp), post-modern! Where the episode ends in a pidgin mishmash of Gaelic slang. If I'm not reading too much into this, it feels like Joyce is saying "Ha! See here! The entire gestation of your English language has culminated in this! How does it make you feel?"
The Catechism chapter of Ithaca is vastly enhanced by the audio performance, granting the distinct voices and formal vocal posturing typical in catechism recitation, making it all the more a hilarious mockery. Mockery turns to existential introspection: the "apathy of the stars", to self-flagellation and then apathy of one's own situation. A reflection of his own failings and tacit acceptance of infidelity, I close this chapter with the belief that Molly seeks other men not to spite Leopold, but to desperately fill the hole *he* left gaping in the wake of their son's death. I look forward to:
Penelope. The Paradox of Audiobooks for Ergodic literature. The finale Penelope was written not only in stream-of-consciousness, but also without grammar or punctuation. No full stops, commas, or capitalisations. Stephen and Bloom's S-o-C was challenging enough, now Joyce demands the reader create their own intuition of pacing and sentences.
Except...when a narrated performance has already determined them, and I'm just reading along with it. It reduces the form of the finale from a challenging stream to wade through, to merely a rambling monologue. The continuation of an audio narration means that even if I find something challenging, the pace continues anyway, at one second per second.
The flip side is that I can fully comprehend everything in this chapter, and the emotional intent of it. From Aeolus and Wandering Rocks, I know my eye tends to just roam over the words when I can't understand them. To paraphrase Paarthunax, which is better? To read a finale without fully understanding it, or to have it read to you for full comprehension?
I made an excuse for Ithaca because the reading would be simple enough and the technic benefitted from two voices trading questions and answers. My remedy is that the first half of the chapter, about 1 hour, is read to me, to get the rhythm. But I read alone the last hour of the novel, so that final completion could be on my merit alone.
And that finale, being read aloud by me, is indeed powerful, the emphatic YES punctuating the end is both cathartic but also suspiciously orgasmic.
Overall, this is a novel which is impossible to fully grasp in one reading, in 7 days, without interruption for in depth study. My appreciation of it is high, my enjoyment sporadic but regular, but my next read will be Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway", which - being one day in London in mid June - is something is a response to the overblown "bore" which she found in Ulysses.
I read this one for a class in university, and I'm so glad I did, because it would never have happened otherwise! Each episode feels like an entire life lived, which is just gorgeous, because the entire book spans a day. I personally loved Sirens, and the one with all the fart jokes.
3.5 ✨ - first read 07/04/21
Necessary to read (1)Ulysses Annotated and a chapter summary ((2) - I chose Blamires'), along with Johnson's notes within the Oxford edition ((3) - sometimes redundant but helps with retention) , not to mention (4) Homer's Odyssey, to truly understand and appreciate this book.
Pretty stoked about my first go.
Necessary to read (1)Ulysses Annotated and a chapter summary ((2) - I chose Blamires'), along with Johnson's notes within the Oxford edition ((3) - sometimes redundant but helps with retention) , not to mention (4) Homer's Odyssey, to truly understand and appreciate this book.
Pretty stoked about my first go.
This is, of course, the grandaddy of post-modern literature and should be read by every one at least once. And, unless it tickles you in ways unimaginable, once is all you need. Ostensibly about one day in the life of Leopold Bloom as he trounces about Dublin, it really is a breakthrough in what can and should be considered narrative and it really was pushing the boundaries of decorum at the time. That doesn't necessarily make it an enjoyable read. I would break it down as:30% astonishing, 30% meh, we get it, 30% experimental bullshit and 10% put on. I don't need to read it again, but there are certainly passages, particularly the narrative of the young girl Bloom spies on the beach, that are among the most luminous I have read. You just have to slog through a bogful of pretension to get to those moments.
Wow, so much to unpack here. First of all, agree with what Samuel Beckett said about Joyce - that Joyce was not to be read 'it is to be looked at and listened', so super glad I listened to Ulysses as an audio book. Secondly, it's definitely a unique novel, unlike anything else I have ever read. The first 50% of the book sounded a lot like nonsense, until you move on to the second half and kind of understand better what is happening in terms of events and people that are taking part in those events. I really enjoyed the second part of Ulysses although the chapter "Penelope" is not so much to my liking due to describing Molly as quite a shallow character with very basic thoughts.