okibrownie's review against another edition
Got four chapters in and decided I’d only be further lost until I actually familiarized myself with Oddyssey, which I’ve never parsed or even simply thumbed through.
heathcliff_burton's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
bookzilla's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
felagund_'s review against another edition
One day I will try again. To read this, I need to do more research first.
david_rhee's review against another edition
5.0
30 April 2019 to 8 June 2019. This seems to be a year of reading failures...or just failures in general. After bungling through Gravity's Rainbow the absolute wrong way, I thought I'd go huddle in the arms of a book I've read three times before only to realize that I'm doing it totally wrong once again. I wish I could consider myself somewhat familiar with Ulysses but I couldn't help wondering at how much I forgot about the book. I forgot how funny it is, how blasphemous it is, how challenging it is. It is just as bewildering to me as it was before for long stretches. This is partially a reflection of my choice of approach for tour number four. I partnered my read with The Bloomsday Book for an almost exclusively macro-view of the book. I kept the Gifford on the shelf even though I retained virtually none of it. What resulted was a lot of head scratches but an overall better grasp of the general direction of the novel. And hey, maybe this is what a failing dwindling brain should be looking for anyway.
This is difficult to explain but I discovered during the course of my undisciplined read that a considerable share of Ulysses' merit resides in the fact that it is not totally literary. That is, it is not merely a tale decorated with a flourish, but it is so near to life itself. The imperfect is almost what reigns in that June 16th, 1904 in Dublin. A misunderstanding of Bloom regarding a horserace follows the cast throughout the day. A typo in a letter lingers in the mind of its recipient. Tragic pasts toy with the future through refracted time. Yet, though it all, the oddities and the silliness, we witness the bumbling tread of the unlikely conqueror. What I learned (besides the need to get serious about my next approach) is that Ulysses is still amazing if and especially when you yourself are far from it.
Oh, and it's only a week away so.. Happy Bloomsday, everyone!
5 May 2018 to 26 May 2018. The first two times I went on this voyage I hired guides and packed plenty of luggage. This time I went alone and brought nothing with me. Just Ulysses and I. You wouldn't believe how much good this can do. To resist snapping photos and thumbing through handbooks but to just walk along and take it all in or let it whiz right over your head at times...it was refreshing even though it was tempting to look something up here and there. That can wait, and besides, we already did all that.
Discarding the painstaking approach of needling through every obscure reference and craning my poor neck to find the right footnote in the Gifford, I took in an encompassing look at a day in the life of Dublin. Amazing things began to happen. "Proteus," an episode I dreaded before, became a beautiful rhythmic stroll of thoughts tumbling over each other like rippling waves. "Lotus Eaters" became more fragrant and hypnotic. "Circe" became even more bizarre but more throttling at its conclusion. "Eumaeus" and "Ithaca" more sobering. "Sirens" more rowdy and snappy. "Scylla and Chabybdis" was like, well, still Scylla and Charybdis. I made my best effort to look beyond the parts to grope at the elusive sum, and it is exhilarating to see the tributaries (the Blooms' marriage, Leopold's quest after Stephen) flow from a core of tragedy (Rudy's death).
My third tour took 3 weeks instead of a couple months as it did before. I'm thoroughly glad I've progressed to the point where I can enjoy this favorite at much more ease thereby growing the hope that I can get to know this masterpiece at a swifter pace. Examining and combing through Bloomsday, though this serves an important purpose, can take a back seat to the unrivalled experience of living through and feeling Bloomsday.
19 July 2016 to 24 Sept 2016. Less than a year after a thorough beating, there I was back for more, bright-eyed and eager. After getting mangled and humbled like I've never, what makes me ask for round two, smiling? Do I hate myself? Or do I love my tormentor? Probably both. There are certainly present the suspiciously self-loathing qualities in myself, but Ulysses can captivate like no other. As difficult as my first read was, I became obsessed with the book, with the language used in it, with its cast, and with 1904 Dublin.
The differences between the second read and the first were shocking and immediately evident. Second reads usually are this way, but with this unique novel the gap of separation widens and the advantages of the repeat reader are greatly augmented. I spent my first read as a monkish copyist would. Immodestly hunched over (my back and neck will never be the same), I was glued to footnotes and overrun by all of the contextual minutiae to be learned. While I am in no way ready to say goodbye to Gifford's notes, I was able to take a step back and take in the novel with a broader scope. First of all, let me tell you, the much-mentioned stream of consciousness technique is not reserved for describing the character of isolated passages. The work as a whole resembles a singular stream of consciousness where seemingly insignificant remarks and scenes reemerge later in the day much like our day's experiences pop up in our dreams, or in the case of Ulysses, hallucinations and visions. I was shocked at the unity of a work so diverse in nature.
While I do love Ulysses, there are parts that bring out the worst in me, e.g. anytime Stephen Dedalus opens his mouth. Stephen can't seem to say five words without spawning a dozen footnotes. For details, see "Proteus" and "Scylla and Charybdis." I find myself identifying more and more with Leopold Bloom. I don't know if that's a good thing. Maybe even with my deep love for classical literary pursuits, I am at heart a sublunary fellow.
But for every "Proteus," there is a "Nausicaa." Beauty abounds in all of its red-faced honesty which is the best part of it all. This beauty is only a refracted image of the true form for one who has read it only once or twice, I believe. The rewards of layers yet to be unearthed still tease from afar. Yes, that is high-flown language, but this is absolutely one of those few books which deserve that level of praise.
18 Aug 2015 to 6 Nov 2015. I needed 80 days for my first tour through the "world without end." Part of me is relieved by the illusory belief that it's over. The other part of me knew very well that I only just began. Many reviewers, I see, refer to Ulysses as some kind of literary Mount Everest. I didn't feel any sense of personal achievement for it was too much of a humbling experience. Ulysses is no Everest; it is much more like Jacob's Peniel. You will not conquer and subdue it. You will struggle and be broken. This was especially true in my case for I'm not a gifted reader when it comes to comprehension. My first time through was devoted mostly to learning context and understanding Joyce's many confounding references by poring over Gifford's annotations. The whole time, however, I can honestly say I genuinely enjoyed it no matter how little outside observers believed me when I told them that.
But think about it...if one would read a novel as long as Ulysses in such an exhausting manner willingly and knowing all the while that this first time through the book is merely groundwork for future readings, that right there indicates this is a rare book. I don't remember being in the middle of reading a book while planning out my approach for the second and the third time I will read the same book (the only exception for me being the Bible). The thoughts are whirring along in my head and I'm actually getting excited about it...second read with the Gifford nearby parallel with the Stuart Gilbert study...third time with the Gifford nearby and alongside Blamires' Bloomsday Book...the fourth time, finally unarmed and alone.
Impressions? Opinions? Mouth agape. No, let's not. Be my teacher and my guide. Eighteen episodes unfurl, EACH with a different style...didn't expect that, so I just watched as Joyce made the English language his [female dog] and had his way with it. There are episodes which require copious amounts of exertion on the reader's part. Exhibit A: "Proteus." You are trapped in Stephen Dedalus' brain. "Let me out of here!" you will beg. One might understandably grow worried because it's not exactly ideal progress to have already tapped one's reserve tank in the third chapter. Enter Leopold Bloom. And you are well on your way once again!
Other notables..."Sirens" plays like a symphony complete with instruments tuning at the opening, quite a treat. I would guess most readers' favorite is the hallucinatory romp through the redlight district in "Circe" (what gives? I guess booze was stronger in those days...well, there was some absinthe involved, I think) which is then beautifully contrasted against the self-reflective Q & A of Ithaca which closely follows.
But look, I know these are highly general observations which just as expected are to come from a guy who read Ulysses the way I read it, painstakingly collecting precious minute particles of context and history thereby erecting a sure barrier to true reading enjoyment and limiting myself to largely superficial impressions. I feel like, and rightfully so, I don't know squat about this book. What I do know is that I love Ulysses and that it will become a part of my life again and again...and this includes filling up on Guinness on Bloomsday. I'll pass on the pork kidney.
This is difficult to explain but I discovered during the course of my undisciplined read that a considerable share of Ulysses' merit resides in the fact that it is not totally literary. That is, it is not merely a tale decorated with a flourish, but it is so near to life itself. The imperfect is almost what reigns in that June 16th, 1904 in Dublin. A misunderstanding of Bloom regarding a horserace follows the cast throughout the day. A typo in a letter lingers in the mind of its recipient. Tragic pasts toy with the future through refracted time. Yet, though it all, the oddities and the silliness, we witness the bumbling tread of the unlikely conqueror. What I learned (besides the need to get serious about my next approach) is that Ulysses is still amazing if and especially when you yourself are far from it.
Oh, and it's only a week away so.. Happy Bloomsday, everyone!
5 May 2018 to 26 May 2018. The first two times I went on this voyage I hired guides and packed plenty of luggage. This time I went alone and brought nothing with me. Just Ulysses and I. You wouldn't believe how much good this can do. To resist snapping photos and thumbing through handbooks but to just walk along and take it all in or let it whiz right over your head at times...it was refreshing even though it was tempting to look something up here and there. That can wait, and besides, we already did all that.
Discarding the painstaking approach of needling through every obscure reference and craning my poor neck to find the right footnote in the Gifford, I took in an encompassing look at a day in the life of Dublin. Amazing things began to happen. "Proteus," an episode I dreaded before, became a beautiful rhythmic stroll of thoughts tumbling over each other like rippling waves. "Lotus Eaters" became more fragrant and hypnotic. "Circe" became even more bizarre but more throttling at its conclusion. "Eumaeus" and "Ithaca" more sobering. "Sirens" more rowdy and snappy. "Scylla and Chabybdis" was like, well, still Scylla and Charybdis. I made my best effort to look beyond the parts to grope at the elusive sum, and it is exhilarating to see the tributaries (the Blooms' marriage, Leopold's quest after Stephen) flow from a core of tragedy (Rudy's death).
My third tour took 3 weeks instead of a couple months as it did before. I'm thoroughly glad I've progressed to the point where I can enjoy this favorite at much more ease thereby growing the hope that I can get to know this masterpiece at a swifter pace. Examining and combing through Bloomsday, though this serves an important purpose, can take a back seat to the unrivalled experience of living through and feeling Bloomsday.
19 July 2016 to 24 Sept 2016. Less than a year after a thorough beating, there I was back for more, bright-eyed and eager. After getting mangled and humbled like I've never, what makes me ask for round two, smiling? Do I hate myself? Or do I love my tormentor? Probably both. There are certainly present the suspiciously self-loathing qualities in myself, but Ulysses can captivate like no other. As difficult as my first read was, I became obsessed with the book, with the language used in it, with its cast, and with 1904 Dublin.
The differences between the second read and the first were shocking and immediately evident. Second reads usually are this way, but with this unique novel the gap of separation widens and the advantages of the repeat reader are greatly augmented. I spent my first read as a monkish copyist would. Immodestly hunched over (my back and neck will never be the same), I was glued to footnotes and overrun by all of the contextual minutiae to be learned. While I am in no way ready to say goodbye to Gifford's notes, I was able to take a step back and take in the novel with a broader scope. First of all, let me tell you, the much-mentioned stream of consciousness technique is not reserved for describing the character of isolated passages. The work as a whole resembles a singular stream of consciousness where seemingly insignificant remarks and scenes reemerge later in the day much like our day's experiences pop up in our dreams, or in the case of Ulysses, hallucinations and visions. I was shocked at the unity of a work so diverse in nature.
While I do love Ulysses, there are parts that bring out the worst in me, e.g. anytime Stephen Dedalus opens his mouth. Stephen can't seem to say five words without spawning a dozen footnotes. For details, see "Proteus" and "Scylla and Charybdis." I find myself identifying more and more with Leopold Bloom. I don't know if that's a good thing. Maybe even with my deep love for classical literary pursuits, I am at heart a sublunary fellow.
But for every "Proteus," there is a "Nausicaa." Beauty abounds in all of its red-faced honesty which is the best part of it all. This beauty is only a refracted image of the true form for one who has read it only once or twice, I believe. The rewards of layers yet to be unearthed still tease from afar. Yes, that is high-flown language, but this is absolutely one of those few books which deserve that level of praise.
18 Aug 2015 to 6 Nov 2015. I needed 80 days for my first tour through the "world without end." Part of me is relieved by the illusory belief that it's over. The other part of me knew very well that I only just began. Many reviewers, I see, refer to Ulysses as some kind of literary Mount Everest. I didn't feel any sense of personal achievement for it was too much of a humbling experience. Ulysses is no Everest; it is much more like Jacob's Peniel. You will not conquer and subdue it. You will struggle and be broken. This was especially true in my case for I'm not a gifted reader when it comes to comprehension. My first time through was devoted mostly to learning context and understanding Joyce's many confounding references by poring over Gifford's annotations. The whole time, however, I can honestly say I genuinely enjoyed it no matter how little outside observers believed me when I told them that.
But think about it...if one would read a novel as long as Ulysses in such an exhausting manner willingly and knowing all the while that this first time through the book is merely groundwork for future readings, that right there indicates this is a rare book. I don't remember being in the middle of reading a book while planning out my approach for the second and the third time I will read the same book (the only exception for me being the Bible). The thoughts are whirring along in my head and I'm actually getting excited about it...second read with the Gifford nearby parallel with the Stuart Gilbert study...third time with the Gifford nearby and alongside Blamires' Bloomsday Book...the fourth time, finally unarmed and alone.
Impressions? Opinions? Mouth agape. No, let's not. Be my teacher and my guide. Eighteen episodes unfurl, EACH with a different style...didn't expect that, so I just watched as Joyce made the English language his [female dog] and had his way with it. There are episodes which require copious amounts of exertion on the reader's part. Exhibit A: "Proteus." You are trapped in Stephen Dedalus' brain. "Let me out of here!" you will beg. One might understandably grow worried because it's not exactly ideal progress to have already tapped one's reserve tank in the third chapter. Enter Leopold Bloom. And you are well on your way once again!
Other notables..."Sirens" plays like a symphony complete with instruments tuning at the opening, quite a treat. I would guess most readers' favorite is the hallucinatory romp through the redlight district in "Circe" (what gives? I guess booze was stronger in those days...well, there was some absinthe involved, I think) which is then beautifully contrasted against the self-reflective Q & A of Ithaca which closely follows.
But look, I know these are highly general observations which just as expected are to come from a guy who read Ulysses the way I read it, painstakingly collecting precious minute particles of context and history thereby erecting a sure barrier to true reading enjoyment and limiting myself to largely superficial impressions. I feel like, and rightfully so, I don't know squat about this book. What I do know is that I love Ulysses and that it will become a part of my life again and again...and this includes filling up on Guinness on Bloomsday. I'll pass on the pork kidney.
naokamiya's review against another edition
5.0
Much like I was with “Moby Dick”, I am once again tasked with the unenviable baggage of reviewing a work of art that has totally changed the course of its respective medium’s history, and am left scrambling for words to articulate what the author has said well enough within the monumental nature of the work itself. I am a measly twenty-something lit geek with minimal life experience, attempting to review a book of this scope and influence - it’s kind of inherently an egotistical act, when put that way, right? But I think I and anyone else is qualified to review this book, because in no circumstances is Joyce’s ego not significantly bigger than mine, by wide margins in fact. And I tell you what - thank whatever god[s] there are for that a thousand times over. Because without Joyce’s ego, his absolute confidence in jumping headfirst into the construction of this game-changing leviathan of a work, then not only would this inarticulable masterpiece not exist, but the rest of literary history in the 20th century and beyond might as well be thrown out with it. I may not know how to articulate the entire scope of this monster [who could, save Joyce himself?], but what I do know with certainty is that I can finally say that I have read “Ulysses”. And to that I say - big fucking whoop. There is so fucking much to unpack in this novel that this is a vortex you will have to look into many times to unravel its secrets, and even then I can imagine nobody could possibly get everything here, even the most seasoned Joyce scholars. It occupies the one space in art that I cherish maybe above all others, that of the Primal, it is something that feels like it has always existed and does not have to be Understood as much as Felt, and I feel this deep in my soul and I know I’m not the only one because of how wide ranging and unavoidable the influence of the novel is. I guess what I’m saying is, I see why this is considered among peak works of modern art across mediums, because like, there’s really no way it couldn’t be. It is the human experience in print, a sheer distillation of each and every one of our lives on this spinning space rock in the middle of nowhere, all of it examined from every angle you can think of by means of the most specific particulars possible. How many books can you say that of?
And for as much as I devalue my own ability to understand and compartmentalize this entire thing vs. feel it [and I’m always much better at the latter, not just with this kind of book], I have to be nice and give myself some credit here. I first opened “Ulysses” at a library when I had just finished high school about half a decade ago now, and got pretty much immediately filtered by “Telemachus”, thinking “there’s no way I can finish this thing in two weeks”. I was just getting back into books then, or trying to, which is sort of like trying to get seriously into music by jumping straight into Stravinsky or something. Ever since then, “Ulysses” has been on my personal Mount Rushmore of books to conquer in my lifetime, a sort of ominous distant threat like the opening boss of a game that you’re supposed to die to that you can finally face again halfway through with better equipment and stats. But while I didn’t “conquer” this upon finishing it, obviously, it’s still an experience I feel accomplished for, and one that’s even more exciting because I know this book is now forever waiting for me to return to it as many times as both of us want, and that’s a feeling that keeps me so invested in “difficult” works like this.
That brings me to the elephant in the room - “Ulysses” is as difficult as people say it is, without a doubt. It’s probably the hardest book I’ve read front to back, significantly tougher than “Gravity’s Rainbow”, which I’d put on a similar wavelength of erudition and abstraction, but where the difficulty of Pynchon’s masterpiece lies in his labyrinthine composition, the difficulty of Joyce’s lies in the fragmentation employed here. That’s not to say “Ulysses” isn’t vast in its scope - in some ways it’s even more wide-ranging than “Rainbow” - but it’s a different kind of massive, less of a maze to be traversed and more of a collection of separate-but-equal moving parts zipping along at varyingly different speeds, and Joyce just trusts that you’re going to have to keep up with it all. Joyce uses style as the pillars that uphold all these moving parts - the book explodes in a phantasmagoria of different styles, pastiches and compositional frameworks, to the point where you will never know what to expect being hit with on any given page, especially in episode nine and beyond. This makes “Ulysses” feel distinctly chaotic in its extensive reach, and it really does feel urban - the way Dublin is portrayed feels almost symphonic, a starburst of sights and sounds and tastes and smells and feelings and just everything in an overwhelming expanse, and it’s felt even when we’re looking deep into Bloom and Stephen’s brains.
So, yeah, it’s not an easy read. And - I’m not going to say it’s fun, necessarily, because not all of it is, and there are certainly some moments that don’t stimulate my brain faculties as much as others [and those moments are inevitable, as the story really is mundane at its core] - but it is enjoyable and funny the whole way through, and Joyce’s playfulness and confidence not only in the unprecedented structuring of the novel but also in his ability to depict the chaos of thoughts that run through our heads daily, it all adds up to a book where there’s never a dull moment if you can just read between the lines and place yourself on the wavelength of what J.J. is doing here. The near infinity of Stuff contained here means that there’s something different for literally anyone to hold on to, and furthermore Bloom, Stephen and Molly are just wonderfully lovable, distinct characters whose existences are probably the closest to living, breathing people you could conceivably get.
Vit’s review said it so much better in a much less convoluted fashion than my ramblings but it’s just so interesting how this book really elevates an average day in an average life to an Epic scale by just showing every angle such a quotidian thing could be approached, while also lowering the concept of the Mythic Epic to a much more human and relatable standard, essentially demystifying the latter while inundating the former with cosmic magic. And that’s a big thing I got out of this novel in general - a recontextualization of narratives we’ve taken for granted, be it that of both Story [such as Homer’s Odyssey] or Life [the totally run-of-the-mill day of a working class Jew in Ireland in 1904]. Lives aren’t stories, but stories also inform our lives, and all stories, even the most fantastical and grandiose, are informed by our lives. James Joyce was, I’m not going to say he was totally average because of his genius and life trajectory, but he was a person, he had all the fears, hopes, anxieties, and thoughts that anyone else does, and here he is writing a story of this immensity and universality - to a point, this very novel almost feels like a statement that anyone with the wherewithal could make their own “Ulysses”, because if one can tackle their take on the totality of the human experience then literally anyone else with thoughts could. This is getting on some New Age-y rambling, so I’m just going to move on from this paragraph, but yeah - there’s a really moving Meta Statement that I got out of this, that we’re all from different walks of life but all capable of our own daily Odysseys and every single day is one chapter in our own personal epics, and whose to say we couldn’t ourselves contain this in our own art?
While reading this throughout the past month I couldn’t help but thinking about how this must have felt to read when it came out vs. now, when we have all the historical context and hindsight of its age and its impact on literature. Like, can you imagine just being an average Bloom him/her/theirself reading this a hundred years ago? It was probably totally beyond the scope of anything else being written at the time, it was difficult enough to wrap my mind around even with all the context of literary maximalism, experimentalism and postmodernist excess that our current generation has come to know, so I can’t imagine how much of a mindfuck it must have felt like back when it was first published. And this thing’s DNA really is everywhere - you couldn’t ask me specifically which [I’d have to go through my marginalia and I wrote a LOT], but I noticed tons of stuff here that’s been referenced elsewhere throughout all art mediums since, like there’d just be something and I’d be like “oh hey that’s an album title isn’t it?” So it’s kind of disappointing seeing people say stuff like life is too short to read this book or that the average person shouldn’t read it, because honestly with how vastly this can be applied to both art and our lives and how much of it is informed by its completely non-average Averageness like…I think life’s too short not to read it, and you should read it. If you like art, like at all, you should read this. Or at least attempt it, because even if you won’t understand everything, there’s stuff here that you will undoubtedly get because it is so baked into modern cultural DNA. Joyce wasn’t lying at all when he said he had put enough stuff in here to ensure the novel’s immortality; he’s done so with flying colors, and that it not only still persists, but does so abundantly throughout our culture just means all we can do at this point is give the guy posthumous Ws on all fronts. Thanks for predicting the entirety of modern history James!
That last comment’s a joke, obviously, but only so much honestly. And really, that quote by Joyce I alluded to in the last paragraph, is another thing that makes this novel as immensely interesting to me as it is. There's a profoundly negative approach we tend to take when talking about the process of Creation, especially of art, that we have to suppress our confidence, suppress positivity toward our own efforts, be totally fucking Judgmental and Critical of absolutely everything we make or else we'll never become better, apparently. This is certainly something I struggle with immensely as a writer, too. And while Joyce no doubt probably ran into unbelievable frustration writing this masterwork [how could he not have?], the statement of just making this alone not only implies confidence, but he's outright boastful about it. And why shouldn't he be? This really is a masterpiece, an utterly timeless and universal work, and Joyce knew it, so he has every right to boast. "Our national epic is yet to be written," he winks in episode nine of this novel. Maybe believing in oneself, being confident in one's own Averageness to do something great, create something great, whatever - maybe that's a fucking great thing actually, maybe it's a worthwhile defiance of the capitalist lie we've all been fed that the worse the pain, the more fruitful the result. Joyce certainly knew he could write something great, that the frustration would be worth it, that he was crafting something that would leave a mark on history. And like, sure, most of us will not be at the sheer level of James Joyce but it doesn't fucking matter, we ALL have the capability to do good and create great stuff in our own ways, and the point I'm getting at here is that it's okay to believe in yourself, to have faith in art and yourself to leave an impact, even in the most infinitesimal ways. We are all Bloom and Stephen and Molly and we're all just going through the motions and there's no reason not to be kind to yourself and others because we all make our own marks, no matter how small our lives are. Write your own indulgent epic if you want, because in many ways life is our own indulgent personalized epic as much as it's totally average, and never forget to be kind to yourself. Please. You deserve that, at the very least you do, I promise.
Episode 9 "Scylla and Charybdis": This is the first chapter that totally convinced me I was reading a work of brilliance so I couldn't refrain from placing it in my top five. I know practically zilch about Shakespeare but there's just so many layers of total cleverness and insight to this one, as well as just being somehow fun amidst all of Stephen's neurotic academic jargon - the metatextual parallels between Stephen and Joyce being compared with the proposed meta relationship between Shakespeare and Hamlet, the Anne Hathaway pun, Buck's stupid play, the remark of Bloom checking out the statue of Aphrodite's ass, Joyce's aforementioned boasting; the whole thing is just this amazing metafictional wink at the reader completed with absurd dashes of Joycean humor. Smart and ridiculous as hell at the same time and I totally love it.
Episode 12 "Cyclops": Someone told me this is the chapter supposedly most people hate - what?? This is an utterly madcap vortex through like a dozen mind-bending absurdist pastiches of heroic folk myths of yore and an intrusion upon the text by wildly hilarious flights of supernatural fancy, all in service to a narrative that directly interrogates European nationalism and antisemitism, leading to a conclusion in which our boy Bloom has the clearest emotional victory we see him achieve throughout the entire novel. And Joyce is insane and genius enough to make this entire thing work despite how many apparently disparate moving parts it's comprised of. I feel like this one and "Circe" in particular both predicted postmodernism more than any other chapters, so of course I adore it.
Episode 15 "Circe": This is nothing short of one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with literature all year. Everyone and everything - and I do mean EVERYTHING - in the novel seen beforehand is taken into a literary blender and vomited up in a fucking garish and lewd and hilarious and beautiful and grotesque phantasmagoric nightmare carnival tour of the psychedelic dreamscapes of Bloom and Stephen's absinthe-addled brains as they romp through Dublin's red light district. Absolutely everything is free associative, things morph and shift and blend into one another with absolutely nothing to anchor it to any sort of narrative restraint, Joyce just lets his subconscious go on overdrive and it informs the themes perfectly and ughhhh it's just the best fucking thing ever. So much of this is so transgressively impactful that if you told me this was written in like 2010 I would honestly believe you. The whole novel is obviously forward thinking but I think this chapter in particular is incredibly ahead of its time. Definitely my favorite in the novel.
Episode 17 "Ithaca": A beautiful chapter that's almost inexplicable in it's brilliance; an extremely academic, precise and "cold" omniscient narrative voice watches over Bloom and Stephen's brief time together in a series of ask-and-response passages, immensely detailing the utter minutiae of both characters and dissecting them thoroughly in a way even their inner monologues could not. This is the novel at the height of it's core duality, the peak of it's cosmic scope as well as it's incredibly ordinary one - the balance is awe inspiring and the prose is utterly superlative. Maybe the peak of the book's formal accomplishments, which is saying a lot.
Chapter 18 "Penelope": We finally get a centering of the feminine perspective in this spellbinding capstone, where we finally get a look into Molly's brain as she's half asleep next to a passed out Bloom. Molly's brambly monologue is completely unfiltered and unbroken except for a few indentations, making her voice the ultimate extent of the novel's stream of consciousness techniques, and her rant itself is beautiful, heartbreaking and funny all at once; there's a really deliberate aspect of letting a woman who has til now only been seen through the eyes of men get the last word here, and in these forty some odd pages Molly encapsulates the enormity and beautiful complexity of the human experience and our emotions perhaps even more potently than Bloom and Stephen. The last page is just one of those things that has to be read to believe its absolute perfection; it's an ending that makes all the past 680+ pages of difficulty and struggle extremely worth it and the gorgeous emotional pay off is simply unmatched. Flawless. I'm going to be thinking about this capstone for a very long time.
"His (Bloom's) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing for possible error?
That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators had entered actual present existence."
And for as much as I devalue my own ability to understand and compartmentalize this entire thing vs. feel it [and I’m always much better at the latter, not just with this kind of book], I have to be nice and give myself some credit here. I first opened “Ulysses” at a library when I had just finished high school about half a decade ago now, and got pretty much immediately filtered by “Telemachus”, thinking “there’s no way I can finish this thing in two weeks”. I was just getting back into books then, or trying to, which is sort of like trying to get seriously into music by jumping straight into Stravinsky or something. Ever since then, “Ulysses” has been on my personal Mount Rushmore of books to conquer in my lifetime, a sort of ominous distant threat like the opening boss of a game that you’re supposed to die to that you can finally face again halfway through with better equipment and stats. But while I didn’t “conquer” this upon finishing it, obviously, it’s still an experience I feel accomplished for, and one that’s even more exciting because I know this book is now forever waiting for me to return to it as many times as both of us want, and that’s a feeling that keeps me so invested in “difficult” works like this.
That brings me to the elephant in the room - “Ulysses” is as difficult as people say it is, without a doubt. It’s probably the hardest book I’ve read front to back, significantly tougher than “Gravity’s Rainbow”, which I’d put on a similar wavelength of erudition and abstraction, but where the difficulty of Pynchon’s masterpiece lies in his labyrinthine composition, the difficulty of Joyce’s lies in the fragmentation employed here. That’s not to say “Ulysses” isn’t vast in its scope - in some ways it’s even more wide-ranging than “Rainbow” - but it’s a different kind of massive, less of a maze to be traversed and more of a collection of separate-but-equal moving parts zipping along at varyingly different speeds, and Joyce just trusts that you’re going to have to keep up with it all. Joyce uses style as the pillars that uphold all these moving parts - the book explodes in a phantasmagoria of different styles, pastiches and compositional frameworks, to the point where you will never know what to expect being hit with on any given page, especially in episode nine and beyond. This makes “Ulysses” feel distinctly chaotic in its extensive reach, and it really does feel urban - the way Dublin is portrayed feels almost symphonic, a starburst of sights and sounds and tastes and smells and feelings and just everything in an overwhelming expanse, and it’s felt even when we’re looking deep into Bloom and Stephen’s brains.
So, yeah, it’s not an easy read. And - I’m not going to say it’s fun, necessarily, because not all of it is, and there are certainly some moments that don’t stimulate my brain faculties as much as others [and those moments are inevitable, as the story really is mundane at its core] - but it is enjoyable and funny the whole way through, and Joyce’s playfulness and confidence not only in the unprecedented structuring of the novel but also in his ability to depict the chaos of thoughts that run through our heads daily, it all adds up to a book where there’s never a dull moment if you can just read between the lines and place yourself on the wavelength of what J.J. is doing here. The near infinity of Stuff contained here means that there’s something different for literally anyone to hold on to, and furthermore Bloom, Stephen and Molly are just wonderfully lovable, distinct characters whose existences are probably the closest to living, breathing people you could conceivably get.
Vit’s review said it so much better in a much less convoluted fashion than my ramblings but it’s just so interesting how this book really elevates an average day in an average life to an Epic scale by just showing every angle such a quotidian thing could be approached, while also lowering the concept of the Mythic Epic to a much more human and relatable standard, essentially demystifying the latter while inundating the former with cosmic magic. And that’s a big thing I got out of this novel in general - a recontextualization of narratives we’ve taken for granted, be it that of both Story [such as Homer’s Odyssey] or Life [the totally run-of-the-mill day of a working class Jew in Ireland in 1904]. Lives aren’t stories, but stories also inform our lives, and all stories, even the most fantastical and grandiose, are informed by our lives. James Joyce was, I’m not going to say he was totally average because of his genius and life trajectory, but he was a person, he had all the fears, hopes, anxieties, and thoughts that anyone else does, and here he is writing a story of this immensity and universality - to a point, this very novel almost feels like a statement that anyone with the wherewithal could make their own “Ulysses”, because if one can tackle their take on the totality of the human experience then literally anyone else with thoughts could. This is getting on some New Age-y rambling, so I’m just going to move on from this paragraph, but yeah - there’s a really moving Meta Statement that I got out of this, that we’re all from different walks of life but all capable of our own daily Odysseys and every single day is one chapter in our own personal epics, and whose to say we couldn’t ourselves contain this in our own art?
While reading this throughout the past month I couldn’t help but thinking about how this must have felt to read when it came out vs. now, when we have all the historical context and hindsight of its age and its impact on literature. Like, can you imagine just being an average Bloom him/her/theirself reading this a hundred years ago? It was probably totally beyond the scope of anything else being written at the time, it was difficult enough to wrap my mind around even with all the context of literary maximalism, experimentalism and postmodernist excess that our current generation has come to know, so I can’t imagine how much of a mindfuck it must have felt like back when it was first published. And this thing’s DNA really is everywhere - you couldn’t ask me specifically which [I’d have to go through my marginalia and I wrote a LOT], but I noticed tons of stuff here that’s been referenced elsewhere throughout all art mediums since, like there’d just be something and I’d be like “oh hey that’s an album title isn’t it?” So it’s kind of disappointing seeing people say stuff like life is too short to read this book or that the average person shouldn’t read it, because honestly with how vastly this can be applied to both art and our lives and how much of it is informed by its completely non-average Averageness like…I think life’s too short not to read it, and you should read it. If you like art, like at all, you should read this. Or at least attempt it, because even if you won’t understand everything, there’s stuff here that you will undoubtedly get because it is so baked into modern cultural DNA. Joyce wasn’t lying at all when he said he had put enough stuff in here to ensure the novel’s immortality; he’s done so with flying colors, and that it not only still persists, but does so abundantly throughout our culture just means all we can do at this point is give the guy posthumous Ws on all fronts. Thanks for predicting the entirety of modern history James!
That last comment’s a joke, obviously, but only so much honestly. And really, that quote by Joyce I alluded to in the last paragraph, is another thing that makes this novel as immensely interesting to me as it is. There's a profoundly negative approach we tend to take when talking about the process of Creation, especially of art, that we have to suppress our confidence, suppress positivity toward our own efforts, be totally fucking Judgmental and Critical of absolutely everything we make or else we'll never become better, apparently. This is certainly something I struggle with immensely as a writer, too. And while Joyce no doubt probably ran into unbelievable frustration writing this masterwork [how could he not have?], the statement of just making this alone not only implies confidence, but he's outright boastful about it. And why shouldn't he be? This really is a masterpiece, an utterly timeless and universal work, and Joyce knew it, so he has every right to boast. "Our national epic is yet to be written," he winks in episode nine of this novel. Maybe believing in oneself, being confident in one's own Averageness to do something great, create something great, whatever - maybe that's a fucking great thing actually, maybe it's a worthwhile defiance of the capitalist lie we've all been fed that the worse the pain, the more fruitful the result. Joyce certainly knew he could write something great, that the frustration would be worth it, that he was crafting something that would leave a mark on history. And like, sure, most of us will not be at the sheer level of James Joyce but it doesn't fucking matter, we ALL have the capability to do good and create great stuff in our own ways, and the point I'm getting at here is that it's okay to believe in yourself, to have faith in art and yourself to leave an impact, even in the most infinitesimal ways. We are all Bloom and Stephen and Molly and we're all just going through the motions and there's no reason not to be kind to yourself and others because we all make our own marks, no matter how small our lives are. Write your own indulgent epic if you want, because in many ways life is our own indulgent personalized epic as much as it's totally average, and never forget to be kind to yourself. Please. You deserve that, at the very least you do, I promise.
Spoiler
Some non-required reading for J.J. readers below [that is, me-J.J, and James Joyce-J.J.]; since I'm too entrenched in Formal Analysis not to break this down to its constituent parts, I'm going to do a Top 5 Favorite Ulysses Episodes thingy here. The above review gets at why I love the book in its totality but every episode of the book is an entity unto itself, so I'd be remiss if I didn't hone in on some parts I absolutely love. I'd write a blurb for every chapter, but unfortunately Goodreads has a bullshit character limit. Unordered, obviously, because you can't really genuinely rank something like this; it's just the five that left the strongest impressions on me and the ones I can imagine returning the most to on their own terms.Episode 9 "Scylla and Charybdis": This is the first chapter that totally convinced me I was reading a work of brilliance so I couldn't refrain from placing it in my top five. I know practically zilch about Shakespeare but there's just so many layers of total cleverness and insight to this one, as well as just being somehow fun amidst all of Stephen's neurotic academic jargon - the metatextual parallels between Stephen and Joyce being compared with the proposed meta relationship between Shakespeare and Hamlet, the Anne Hathaway pun, Buck's stupid play, the remark of Bloom checking out the statue of Aphrodite's ass, Joyce's aforementioned boasting; the whole thing is just this amazing metafictional wink at the reader completed with absurd dashes of Joycean humor. Smart and ridiculous as hell at the same time and I totally love it.
Episode 12 "Cyclops": Someone told me this is the chapter supposedly most people hate - what?? This is an utterly madcap vortex through like a dozen mind-bending absurdist pastiches of heroic folk myths of yore and an intrusion upon the text by wildly hilarious flights of supernatural fancy, all in service to a narrative that directly interrogates European nationalism and antisemitism, leading to a conclusion in which our boy Bloom has the clearest emotional victory we see him achieve throughout the entire novel. And Joyce is insane and genius enough to make this entire thing work despite how many apparently disparate moving parts it's comprised of. I feel like this one and "Circe" in particular both predicted postmodernism more than any other chapters, so of course I adore it.
Episode 15 "Circe": This is nothing short of one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with literature all year. Everyone and everything - and I do mean EVERYTHING - in the novel seen beforehand is taken into a literary blender and vomited up in a fucking garish and lewd and hilarious and beautiful and grotesque phantasmagoric nightmare carnival tour of the psychedelic dreamscapes of Bloom and Stephen's absinthe-addled brains as they romp through Dublin's red light district. Absolutely everything is free associative, things morph and shift and blend into one another with absolutely nothing to anchor it to any sort of narrative restraint, Joyce just lets his subconscious go on overdrive and it informs the themes perfectly and ughhhh it's just the best fucking thing ever. So much of this is so transgressively impactful that if you told me this was written in like 2010 I would honestly believe you. The whole novel is obviously forward thinking but I think this chapter in particular is incredibly ahead of its time. Definitely my favorite in the novel.
Episode 17 "Ithaca": A beautiful chapter that's almost inexplicable in it's brilliance; an extremely academic, precise and "cold" omniscient narrative voice watches over Bloom and Stephen's brief time together in a series of ask-and-response passages, immensely detailing the utter minutiae of both characters and dissecting them thoroughly in a way even their inner monologues could not. This is the novel at the height of it's core duality, the peak of it's cosmic scope as well as it's incredibly ordinary one - the balance is awe inspiring and the prose is utterly superlative. Maybe the peak of the book's formal accomplishments, which is saying a lot.
Chapter 18 "Penelope": We finally get a centering of the feminine perspective in this spellbinding capstone, where we finally get a look into Molly's brain as she's half asleep next to a passed out Bloom. Molly's brambly monologue is completely unfiltered and unbroken except for a few indentations, making her voice the ultimate extent of the novel's stream of consciousness techniques, and her rant itself is beautiful, heartbreaking and funny all at once; there's a really deliberate aspect of letting a woman who has til now only been seen through the eyes of men get the last word here, and in these forty some odd pages Molly encapsulates the enormity and beautiful complexity of the human experience and our emotions perhaps even more potently than Bloom and Stephen. The last page is just one of those things that has to be read to believe its absolute perfection; it's an ending that makes all the past 680+ pages of difficulty and struggle extremely worth it and the gorgeous emotional pay off is simply unmatched. Flawless. I'm going to be thinking about this capstone for a very long time.
"His (Bloom's) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing for possible error?
That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators had entered actual present existence."
isabelatc's review against another edition
2.0
Why did they ever bother banning this book? It's not like anyone can understand it - frankly, I often contemplated the possibility that I am just reading pages upon pages of gibberish. Plus with all the references, I don't see how anyone could read it before the Internet.
Clearly Joyce has a way with words, and I really enjoyed reading some of the chapters (the ones that weren't written in some completely undecipherable style), but really could he not come up with a more interesting story? Nothing happens in this book!! It's seven hundred pages of people walking around, talking, drinking, taking a piss, chewing their own toenails and being amazed by water. And masturbating in the park while looking at some silly girl's stockings. And having really weird hallucinations that make you wonder what kind of drugs everyone's on but it's just so hard trying to make sense of the world through their eyes that you have to really fight to read through them.
I highly recommend it to lit snobs and people with insomnia. If not for the master thesis I was supposed to be writing I never would have finished it.
Clearly Joyce has a way with words, and I really enjoyed reading some of the chapters (the ones that weren't written in some completely undecipherable style), but really could he not come up with a more interesting story? Nothing happens in this book!! It's seven hundred pages of people walking around, talking, drinking, taking a piss, chewing their own toenails and being amazed by water. And masturbating in the park while looking at some silly girl's stockings. And having really weird hallucinations that make you wonder what kind of drugs everyone's on but it's just so hard trying to make sense of the world through their eyes that you have to really fight to read through them.
I highly recommend it to lit snobs and people with insomnia. If not for the master thesis I was supposed to be writing I never would have finished it.
jennyedwall's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
booccmaster's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5