A review by godyssey
Ulysses by James Joyce

5.0

But how to summarise Ulysses? The easy answer is the “life” summation, it’s a novel about reality in its every aspect; or it’s a novel about being a novel, about being not a novel, about being intangible art and illiterate literature; maybe a self-portrait continued, the second, open-ended side of a fractal-bounded analysis of Joyce himself, or of writers, or of humans, or of cities of people and of words and of mundane viscera. The spiritual against the corporeal, the political antagonised by the artistic, stormy pages of pure imperfection. It’s a day and a journey, 18 ‘hours’ like facets of a single gem shone through with a paper white beam split into a rainbow of colours. It’s weighty and vast and complex and extratextual, and it refuses to be compressed to anything less

Read it, it’s Ulysses


[live thread of more detailed thoughts on the individual chapters: https://x.com/g0dyssey/status/1872701260786483699?s=46&t=nf3NG5j0iIWd2ygnjJOEXQ]