Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by grb8
Ulysses by James Joyce
5.0
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