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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was not my cup of tea but I understand its great importance to literature.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It's great and boring and funny and strange. I couldn't do any of this book without Blamires' Bloomsday Book.
“Grant me, Lord, the courage and the joy / I need to scale the summit of this day”, wrote Jorge Luis Borges of Ulysses.[1] Both are needed, courage and joy, since the most challenging works of literature should be enjoyable in their difficulty. When it comes to Joyce’s great work, a colossus among the colossi, it’s quite impossible to write about the reading experience succinctly, to the point, and well. I’m trying, though.
In the words of Jeri Johnson in her excellent Introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Ulysses, “Joyce’s Book has so colonized twentieth-century Anglophone culture that we can never now enter it for the first time,” [2] also that “Jennifer Levine suggests imagining that this book is called Hamlet to ‘regain a sense of it as a text brought into deliberate collision with a powerful predecessor’.” [3]
Indeed, it’s rather impossible to just rush into the work headlong without the foreboding sensation that one is about to embark on a journey that’s difficult and full of so many intertextual riddles that there are several volumes that simply trace all the references. But this is not how I’ve enjoyed reading Joyce. I think the need to find out specific meanings and references will come later, but for me the best way to exprience the work has been to discard all theories, annotations and commentaries. Their turn will come later, if at all. At some points I wholly forgot the Greek Ulysses aspect of it altogether, not a bad thing at the slightest. Because, truth be told, this is a massively entertaining book. Funny and witty. Yes, at times quite challenging, but isn’t all of literature? It’s our investment that makes things the way they are, most of the time.
So, without delving too deeply into the abyss of literary criticism, I can only say that reading Joyce without any commentary than one’s own is extremely gratifying. I have the beautiful Orchises edition – it’s a facsimile edition of the first edition, and it’s among the most beautiful books I own. It’s nice to read, and unobtrusive.
Is it a difficult novel, then? I think we will all be better off when we realize that such questions, ultimately, serve no great purpose. If the answer is “yes”, does it really dilute one’s yearning to read it? Does it strengthen it? And should it? If the answer is “no”, what difference does it make? For me, parts of it are more demanding than others, yet when I eventually revisit it, they might not be. “See for yourself” is my friendly advice, and, above all, decide for yourself. But if there is anything I’m more certain of saying in terms of Joyce’s work, it is to echo the wonderful and oft-quoted sentiment by Jorge Luis Borges that it is “rereading, not reading” what counts. Let’s forget for a moment the hype and the fixation on difficulty, and instead try to read books like they were great friends: not only worthy of attention but so close to us that they know us better than we might think.
I like reading Ulysses, but equally I love listening to it. There is something about Joyce’s language and his way of expressing things that lends beautifully to oral performance. His words float, soar and swerve, and I think we are incredibly lucky to have an audiobook of the work that is without equal. The version I refer to is the one released by Naxos in 2008. Narrated by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan, it is an unabridged recording (27 hours and 21 minutes) that has not only been expertly read, it’s actually recorded and mixed wonderfully, and it’s amongst the best audiobooks I’ve ever encountered.
Also, the [b:Complete Poems and Selected Letters|75493|Complete Poems and Selected Letters|Hart Crane|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309200646l/75493._SY75_.jpg|24498213] of Hart Crane's complete poetry and selected letters has, in his correspondence with a friend, a fascinating contemporary perspective on the Ulysses ban in the United States, and how the book was ultimately successfully smuggled from Paris.
Endnotes:
[1] Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce in In Praise of Darkness (1969), collected in The Sonnets (Penguin Books, 2010), p. 125.
[2] Jeri Johnson, Introduction, in James Joyce: Ulysses (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. x.
[3] ibid., xi. Johnson quotes from Levine’s essay Ulysses, in Derek Attridge, ed., The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 131–32.
23 February,
2o14
In the words of Jeri Johnson in her excellent Introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Ulysses, “Joyce’s Book has so colonized twentieth-century Anglophone culture that we can never now enter it for the first time,” [2] also that “Jennifer Levine suggests imagining that this book is called Hamlet to ‘regain a sense of it as a text brought into deliberate collision with a powerful predecessor’.” [3]
Indeed, it’s rather impossible to just rush into the work headlong without the foreboding sensation that one is about to embark on a journey that’s difficult and full of so many intertextual riddles that there are several volumes that simply trace all the references. But this is not how I’ve enjoyed reading Joyce. I think the need to find out specific meanings and references will come later, but for me the best way to exprience the work has been to discard all theories, annotations and commentaries. Their turn will come later, if at all. At some points I wholly forgot the Greek Ulysses aspect of it altogether, not a bad thing at the slightest. Because, truth be told, this is a massively entertaining book. Funny and witty. Yes, at times quite challenging, but isn’t all of literature? It’s our investment that makes things the way they are, most of the time.
So, without delving too deeply into the abyss of literary criticism, I can only say that reading Joyce without any commentary than one’s own is extremely gratifying. I have the beautiful Orchises edition – it’s a facsimile edition of the first edition, and it’s among the most beautiful books I own. It’s nice to read, and unobtrusive.
Is it a difficult novel, then? I think we will all be better off when we realize that such questions, ultimately, serve no great purpose. If the answer is “yes”, does it really dilute one’s yearning to read it? Does it strengthen it? And should it? If the answer is “no”, what difference does it make? For me, parts of it are more demanding than others, yet when I eventually revisit it, they might not be. “See for yourself” is my friendly advice, and, above all, decide for yourself. But if there is anything I’m more certain of saying in terms of Joyce’s work, it is to echo the wonderful and oft-quoted sentiment by Jorge Luis Borges that it is “rereading, not reading” what counts. Let’s forget for a moment the hype and the fixation on difficulty, and instead try to read books like they were great friends: not only worthy of attention but so close to us that they know us better than we might think.
I like reading Ulysses, but equally I love listening to it. There is something about Joyce’s language and his way of expressing things that lends beautifully to oral performance. His words float, soar and swerve, and I think we are incredibly lucky to have an audiobook of the work that is without equal. The version I refer to is the one released by Naxos in 2008. Narrated by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan, it is an unabridged recording (27 hours and 21 minutes) that has not only been expertly read, it’s actually recorded and mixed wonderfully, and it’s amongst the best audiobooks I’ve ever encountered.
Also, the [b:Complete Poems and Selected Letters|75493|Complete Poems and Selected Letters|Hart Crane|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309200646l/75493._SY75_.jpg|24498213] of Hart Crane's complete poetry and selected letters has, in his correspondence with a friend, a fascinating contemporary perspective on the Ulysses ban in the United States, and how the book was ultimately successfully smuggled from Paris.
Endnotes:
[1] Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce in In Praise of Darkness (1969), collected in The Sonnets (Penguin Books, 2010), p. 125.
[2] Jeri Johnson, Introduction, in James Joyce: Ulysses (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. x.
[3] ibid., xi. Johnson quotes from Levine’s essay Ulysses, in Derek Attridge, ed., The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 131–32.
23 February,
2o14
What did I think? It's complicated, Goodreads. I can see James Joyce is a brilliant writer who knows a lot and who likes to play with language and narrative structures.
However. It requires a lot of effort from the reader. In my case, that meant reading summaries after each chapter and browsing the Joyce Project to click on all the references I didn't get. Maybe my problem is that I am a I-want-to-know-it all. Luckily I read the Odyssey at school, which helped me get the general idea of the chapters.
Ulysses reminds me of people who send you e-mails full of links and you have to click on all of them to get the general idea. You're like: okay then, cool. It's that kind of feeling I have after reading this book. It's brilliant, but there wasn't that much joy of reading as you need to study before you get it.
What got me through was:
- Anthony Burgess' (or Kenneth Toomey's) Leopold Bloomlike funny description of Jimmy Joyce' in Paris in Earthly Powers.
- Skipping parts (yes, chapter 14, I am talking about you).
- The good chapters of course (hello chapter 13 and 15).
- Complaining to my husband. He is really happy that I finished the book :)
However. It requires a lot of effort from the reader. In my case, that meant reading summaries after each chapter and browsing the Joyce Project to click on all the references I didn't get. Maybe my problem is that I am a I-want-to-know-it all. Luckily I read the Odyssey at school, which helped me get the general idea of the chapters.
Ulysses reminds me of people who send you e-mails full of links and you have to click on all of them to get the general idea. You're like: okay then, cool. It's that kind of feeling I have after reading this book. It's brilliant, but there wasn't that much joy of reading as you need to study before you get it.
What got me through was:
- Anthony Burgess' (or Kenneth Toomey's) Leopold Bloomlike funny description of Jimmy Joyce' in Paris in Earthly Powers.
- Skipping parts (yes, chapter 14, I am talking about you).
- The good chapters of course (hello chapter 13 and 15).
- Complaining to my husband. He is really happy that I finished the book :)
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
There were parts of this book that I wanted to hate. Joyce is just such a damn good writer though. My stream-of-consciousness phase has come and gone (I still love Mrs. Dalloway though), but the way Joyce weaves motifs and plot points into the stream of consciousness of the continually changing narrator gives the narration a fugal feel. So some chapters were a bit of a drag, but the Circe chapter is worth the price of admission alone. I felt like some parts were a little cynical, but also a very funny book overall. To make a jazz analogy, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man : Giant Steps, Ulysses : A Love Supreme, Finnegan's Wake : Impressions.
I’ll often read SparkNotes or Cliff’s Notes when I’m reading a challenging book, or one with references that are out of my league. It can help contextualize the plot and make it more interesting/ insightful/ compelling/ etc.
Reading Ulysses, there was more than one instance in which I needed one of these resources to help me understand the plot in the first place
Reading Ulysses, there was more than one instance in which I needed one of these resources to help me understand the plot in the first place
Like Ulysses needs another review! Haha. After my second reading, can confirm it is still a great work of modern lit, despite being sometimes awful and/or a slog.