marvelruinedmyspirit 's review for:

Ulysses by James Joyce

1.25

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I am so relieved not to be reading this book anymore. Every day I opened it and wondered what Joyce had invented now to make his novel more unreadable. In theory I understand the experimental nature of it but in practice... what is all this for. Literally what is the point. I am baffled that this is considered a classic. It's not really, you know. Good? Interesting in any way?

Anyway somewhere in this 265k word salad there were quotes that I wrote down, here is one:

“Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.”