Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
I just finished Ulysses but I feel like “survived” is more apt. I don’t deny the genius but it felt like being stuck at a dinner party for hours on end next to a drunk professor who rambles and throws out reference after reference to prove how cultured he is. Took me 5 months because I had to take breaks and read other novels in between that had plots and characters I could relate to. More power to people smart enough to “get” James Joyce.
I found about 15% of it to be 5* - really good, funny, deep, poetic, conceptually stimulating etc, but it’s difficult to pluck the story out from whatever the majority of the book is. He apparently wasn’t elitist but even in the introduction it quoted Joyce saying ‘I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.’ Probably tongue in cheek but acknowledging a genuine aim it seems. The style of expression is purposefully chaotic, the links abstract and obscure. It does work well, for the first hundred pages or two, it’s fascinating and interesting, I mean wow! Everything thrown at you. I don’t doubt the ‘genius’. But there are lists and paragraphs of nonsense, made up words, for effect. I totally lost the plot and needed to read the introduction half way through. Clearly there are lots of allusions, references, metaphors that went right over my head. At the beginning all the sentences were short, full stops in weird places and. They got longer. at the end it was a ‘chapter’ that didn’t even have commas let alone full stops. It was bonkers, here and there bits come at you that make sense but what an effort. I had to lie down after I finished it. Worth reading for the literary experience and to know what is possible, to throw out the boundaries as it were, and it definitely has something magical that will stay with me, although perhaps that is just saucy Molly! Shockingly ‘modern,’ and must have been much more so in its time. Part of me wants to try again (but I won’t there are too many good and accessible books!), it would be fun perhaps in a book club, to have someone who understood it explain would be interesting, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. It was like a crime story where there is no way you are going to solve it because it has been written in a way such that it is impossible, unless you’re a ‘genius’ yourself.
Who am I to say anything about such a masterpiece? I read it with a study- guide at my side (pre-internet and MOOCs) and pretended to be attending a class of great literature. Not my first enounter with stream of consciousness but surely the most disorienting. Startling and memorable (of course) an adventure on a patriarchal template, men interpreting women (some aspects I could identify with), whimsy and bittersweet dripping from the pages. It was one of the first DAUNTING books I had decided to read as a challenge to the fear inculcated feeding my ignorance. James Joyce's other material was a "cake walk" afterwards. In total contrast with "The Dubliners". I read it and survived. I am the richer for it. I learned how patient books are, how they wait for you, and chide you not for having a rough moment. I see Ulysses spine some where ANY where and I nod my head, tip my alpine hat, remembering that rarified air, that babbling brook, the wet and colors, the meanderings of the mind and marvel at how little time had passed within the narrative from opening page to closing page, while so much endless time had passed for me as I waded through the flow of issues. What a cunundrum. I know I can read, and have read, ANY book I dare want to. Perelman and Tytecha's New Rhetoric in Italian?!!!! SURE! I have been dipped in Ulysses
Questo libro è stato particolare, l'ho letto senza capirlo, lasciavo che le parole mi scorressero sopra e per una volta la trama mi è assolutamente oscura, o meglio l'ho letta su wikipedia.
All'inizio non è stato facile, sembrava di leggere in una lingua sconosciuta, i pezzi non andavano a posto e quando ci andavano non erano chiari, poi ho deciso, complice anche il g.d.l., di tentare l'approccio "vai comunque avanti" e in qualche modo la musicalità di alcune frasi mi ha permesso di finirlo. Sicuramente non è il modo migliore per leggerlo, ma per quanto i riguarda è stato l'unico per finirlo.
All'inizio non è stato facile, sembrava di leggere in una lingua sconosciuta, i pezzi non andavano a posto e quando ci andavano non erano chiari, poi ho deciso, complice anche il g.d.l., di tentare l'approccio "vai comunque avanti" e in qualche modo la musicalità di alcune frasi mi ha permesso di finirlo. Sicuramente non è il modo migliore per leggerlo, ma per quanto i riguarda è stato l'unico per finirlo.
The things I didn't like about this book I attribute less to the book's failure and more to the failure of my own intelligence. That said, it all becomes worthwhile at Penelope. Brilliant.
This book is like Citizen Kane. Amazing and brilliant, and you're glad you read it, but not the "best" book you've ever read. Joyce's control of the language is unbelievable.
I HATED THIS BOOK. Paragraphs were pages upon pages long. Sentences went on for a full page. Ugh! Drove me insane! Couldn't read no more than 10 pages at a time because it gave me such a headache.
I suspect Ulysses may have been considered "experimental" at the time, and maybe even now.
I found it richly detailed, satirical, funny, profane, unintelligible (in places), honest (probably to a fault for some tastes), and can understand why some would have found it pornographic. The Metaphysical poets (as Sam Johnson named them) considered any subject fit for poetry, and Joyce apparently believed the same thing about the novel. Some might argue that he elevates the mundane by focusing on the principle character's enthusiasm for life's small pleasures.
Listening certainly made it less intimidating. Jim Norton (and Marcella Riordan in the last two chapters), do an excellent job of making the text (mostly) understandable.
Recommended for those who want to take on the challenge.
I found it richly detailed, satirical, funny, profane, unintelligible (in places), honest (probably to a fault for some tastes), and can understand why some would have found it pornographic. The Metaphysical poets (as Sam Johnson named them) considered any subject fit for poetry, and Joyce apparently believed the same thing about the novel. Some might argue that he elevates the mundane by focusing on the principle character's enthusiasm for life's small pleasures.
Listening certainly made it less intimidating. Jim Norton (and Marcella Riordan in the last two chapters), do an excellent job of making the text (mostly) understandable.
Recommended for those who want to take on the challenge.