You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
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.
[2.5 stars]
this is a literary masterpiece whose impact and artistry can never be replicated. the only problem is that i really didn't enjoy reading it
this is a literary masterpiece whose impact and artistry can never be replicated. the only problem is that i really didn't enjoy reading it
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Alcohol
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Been a long time since I read this... must read again so I can rate it.
Some amazing, amusing language play. Joyce was a polymath: there's quotes in Spanish, Italian, Greek, Latin, French (thankfully, I was reading a Borrowbox library edition, so I had translations at my fingertips); there's bits about history, geography, plays, politics... and it's all very well done, and those bits are fascinating, but there's a huge, dull lull in the middle of the book, and I couldn't get over my main problem of it being an epically sized book about a day in the life of three people, none of whom I actually liked or wanted to know about.