Ulysses

Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.

Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus

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Amazon Recommends I: James Joyce's Ulysses, 2008-11-02
Hello from this particular corner of the abstract retail market.

What a delight to have Amazon recommend the novel I've made practically a point in life to get around to reading! It provided just the necessary final incentive needed to throw all the "wait 'til a good time" aside and actually just read it, which of course is ultimately how it needs to be read.

"Ulysses" is famous for being "impenetrable" and "unreadable", but is far from either. Just like other formal experiments in writing, like Beat era writing, Thomas Pynchon novels, and more recently novels by such authors as David Foster Wallace (may he rest in peace) and Mark Z. Danielewsky, it's not a matter so much of understanding everything and getting the plot as it is of letting the book take you along on its own terms. In the case of "Ulysses" specifically, each chapter is it's own new formal experiment, and it is of my humble opinion that you are allowed to like some parts better than others. Those who have a problem with it are those who go into the reading with their own expectations or demands informing their analysis. "Ulysses" is an experience, and one that I think most people should at least try to have to see if it's for them or not (just like skydiving or eating unfamiliar food in a foreign country).

And like most media, the things that make it controversial are quite often beyond the point, and anybody who actually read the text finds that out quickly. This novel is about a lot of things, love, language, intertextuality, Shakespeare, Greek myth, Dublin (it does, after all, fall between the proto-neorealistic writing of "Dubliners" and the intense brooding of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"), humour, and life, and there are other repeated themes, allusions, motifs, and forms to give any critical reader much to play with and brood over, but it certainly is not difficult reading and it definitely isn't smut. Go figure.

In conclusion, this was a great way to start actually following Amazon's recommendation system, and I'm very proud of myself for finally getting around to doing something I really wanted to do after putting it off needlessly for so long.

--PolarisDiB


0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Warning " look inside book" option is out of date , 2008-10-30
Ulysses (Everyman's Library, 100) When I ordered this book,(oct 08) the "look inside book" option showed the copy with blue covers, title on cover. But I received one with red covers, title on spine,the dust jackets are identical. Other reviews praise the blue covered volume, now out of date. If this matters to you, now you know you will receive the red covered volume.With my return, amazon may update the "look inside" book to show current red covers so you get what you ordered.


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Ten Reasons to Re-read Ulysses, 2008-10-11
1. When you tried it in college, it was a task, a challenge, an intellectual mountain to climb, a test of your literary mettle. Perhaps if you read it apart from any course, as I did, you felt you failed.

2. In the intervening time you've read perhaps hundreds of Modernist and post-modernist novels by Joyce's acknowledged progeny, those whose numbers are legion: from William Faulkner to Beckett to Barth to Perec to Eggers to Coover to Calvino to Kundera, from "Wittgenstein's Mistress" to "Wittgenstein's Nephew," from Jeanette Winterson to Louis Paul Boon and Gilbert Sorrentino to Peter Handke. These you have relished and enjoyed tremendously. Why, then, not tackle their progenitor, the master himself, again?

3. A book is no longer in any way a notch in your belt; you read for enjoyment, enlightenment, enrichment, a sense of connectedness, all the right reasons and some that aren't.

3. You can start with your old paperback, and if Ulysses again proves too difficult, you can toss it aside, no harm done.

4. If the old paperback falls apart and you find you're still reading, you can buy a new copy.

5. You're not in such an all-fired hurry any more. You have the sense to adapt to Joyce's demands and slow down your reading speed, recognizing that this is like a prose poem. Take five minutes on one given page, what's the rush? The writing is finely tooled enough to deserve it.

5. Your maturity allows you to see beyond the Masterpiece Syndrome and the Scholar's Paradise that Ulysses became to enjoy what a romp it is. This is fun! for God's sake. Joyce is forty different kinds of comedian, veering from irony to black comedy to sly humor to sheer buffoonery.

6. Each section being in a different style is itself royally entertaining, and Joyce is masterly in all of them. This is a buffet prepared by a virtuoso chef, and if you hang onto your hat, it's exhilarating as all get out.

7. The unexpected effect of all this variety is that the three main characters, Stephen Dedalus, Leopold and Molly Bloom are more vivid and real than they could possibly be otherwise. Various sections familiarize us with their intimate habits, personal effects, private thoughts, and the way others see them; and by regarding them through different stylistic lenses, Joyce effects unusual familiarity and allows these fictional entities to assume the palpability of real people.

8. We feel great affection for these characters, and Joyce achieves this while depicting them not as highly exceptional, heroic souls but rather average, idiosyncratic and unremarkable people. Even the highly intelligent, poetic Stephen is a typically self-dramatizing, youthful romantic. And yes, though the novel is rife with comic turns, there is poignancy, great and generous humanity.

9. The novel is a sensuous feast, the words chosen always with an ear for sound in the reciprocal service of memorable, ultravivid images. You can dog-ear a dictionary (to many disappointments, considering Joyce's flamboyant taste for arcana and neologisms) or not; your workable vocabulary will suffice for much, if not most, of the glorious language. In this regard Joyce is a wizard, a magician unsurpassed by any poet in memory.

10. As another reviewer here noted, you will have the urge, once you've come to the last line, to immediately begin again. Keep your new copy handy. This is such a kaleidoscope, a ride of a book, that you'll want to read it a third time, soon enough.



0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Mount Everest for Readers, 2008-08-19
I can offer little in the way of literary criticism that has not been expounded by scholars about Joyce's masterpiece. What I can offer is the viewpoint of an 'average' reader.

My edition was the 1922 text, and it was prefaced by the original publisher with a simple disclaimer: "The publisher asks the reader's indulgence for typographical errors unavoidable in the exceptional circumstances." And it certainly is understandable and necessary: the text is rife with punctuation, spelling and word issues - but it is nearly impossible to tell which are deliberate and which came courtesy of the type setter.

The structure itself is almost more of a literary experiment than a novel. It switches presentations, from interior monologue to grandiose play to question and answers to stream of consciousness. At least that happens in sections, so the reader has some chance of keeping within the structure presented.

I read that Joyce wanted someone to be able to recreate Dublin from the text of this book - that's probably a good way to describe the essence of it. While not every street is named, the character of the city through its inhabitants comes through (often more clearly than what the event does that he is writing about).

It was a struggle to get through this book on my own, and I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it if read as part of a class or discussion group, particularly if there were participants with knowledge of Irish history and specifically Joyce's background. The failings however are more my own versus the text itself.



1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

A helping hand with Ulysses, 2008-07-22
Many others have written in more words than I care to think about concerning the tremendous effort that it takes to read Ulysses, the worth of this expenditure of your time, and of their almost universal admiration for it. There are a few detractors to be sure and Joyce would be ecstatic that his artfulness has indeed led to his "immortality" since he is quoted as saying as much.

I wish to add what seems to be left out almost universally in the many reviews and recommendations. Everywhere you are told to accompany Ulysses by annotations, discussion/interpretation books but almost nowhere are you told to accompany Ulysses by the words Joyce wrote himself. One of the protagonists, Stephen Dedalus, as well as his father Simon, are not first introduced to us in Ulysses. They are introduced in great detail in "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". Simon's fall from prosperity to poverty and the impact it has on Stephen/Joyce is crucial background. Understanding that "A Portrait ..." is autobiographical in nature, reveals much about both Joyce and the characters. You are better prepared to meet Stephen with his superior intellect, education, and his feeling of separation from his countrymen and his behavior if you first read "A Portrait ...".

Many of the characters in Ulysses are introduced to us first in the collection of short stories "Dubliners". Easily two dozen characters from the Ulysses, some mentioned only in passing, are much better developed in short stories in Dubliners.

The milieu of Ulysses, as well as the many characters (all meanings intended) Bloom and Dedalus interact with in their meanderings, are better taken in with these two wonderful works helping to embolden you to tackle Ulysses. Both of them are wonderfully approachable, easily read, and are extremely entertaining, full of the wit and wisdom of Joyce. You are certainly more intimately involved with the evolution of Joyce as he proceeds towards Ulysses with these arrows in your quiver.

The structure and basic timeline of the book are dictated by Homer's Odyssey. It is certainly easier to understand why Stephen is Telemachus, Bloom is Odysseus, and Molly is Penelope if you have actually read the Odyssey!

The reviewer goes to Symphony Space on Broadway almost every year for Bloomsday (June 16). Find a similar event near you. Ulysses is a monster "play". It is meant to be enjoyed with others and is much more accessible when experienced aloud. Take the time to understand why people believe this to be the best novel of the 20th century. It will be my favorite forever I am sure.

Lastly, I do not recommend Gabler. It is clearly marked by Amazon and other booksellers as by Joyce and Gabler. Be forewarned that there is much scholarship which seriously detracts from Gabler's additions, subtractions, and modifications as not intended by Joyce. That said, I am absolutely certain that Joyce would have enjoyed the controversy tremendously. Read Ulysses in whatever form you can get it but prepare yourself first with the words and experiences Joyce wanted you to have first.

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