I’ve made several serious attempts to read Ulysses during the course of my life. Each time I’ve given up, repeatedly being driven to the same conclusion: Ulysses is drivel.
It’s too bad we don’t have Courts enforcing standards of decency anymore. The total hollywood and societal degeneracy run amok is why we’re in the mess we’re in.
I feel like “Ulysses” is one of those pieces of art that snobs feel they have to pretend to have read, understood, and loved but that nobody reads, understands, or loves in real life.
He deconstructed the novel into a POS.
The book was released in Feb 1922 (as this article notes).
June 16, 1904 is when the story is set — chosen by Joyce because it is the day went on his first date with his wife, although that is not the story. He just loved his wife so much he used that date.
Finnegan’s Wake is on my bucket list. I get through a few pages every year or so.
“...All the counselors hate the waiters
And the lake has alligators
And the head coach wants no sissies
So he reads to us from something called ‘Ulysses’...”
I am wavering on whether to order the new Cambridge Centenary Ulysses book with the 1922 text, essays and notes, and read the book for the first time:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/131651594X/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
I will be checking this post to get more input from freepers.
This will not be the first time I’ve had to defend Ulysses on FR. It is one of the best works of fiction I’ve ever read. I read it first when I was twenty and became hooked. I’ve read it again about every decade since, and still see more in it each time. Only Joseph Conrad novels do that for me besides Ulysses. I honestly can’t understand if one fails to see the depth and humor in the novel. There are phrases and thoughts from Ulysses which come to me every day. One of the characters looks up at a threatening sky during Paddy Dingham’s funeral procession, and remarks that it’s as uncertain as a baby’s bottom, and I guess taste in literature is the same.
You can count me in that group. If there is a more boring novel than Ulysses in existence it must be another with the character providing us with his totally incomprehensible “stream of consciousness”.
One of the better things I had to read to graduate high school and there was the forty something page paper that I hd to write. Ulysses was read again in college and was a bit easier to digest.
Only for the Joyce Scholar.
It’s otherwise indecipherable for today’s audience.
The world turns.
The Old World had Joyce to marvel at and argue about.
We have Elon.
i’m glad to be alive in this age of wonders.
Tried several times. Never got even 50 pages into Finnegan’s Wake. Didn’t even try Ulysses.
If I were transported back in time to high school or college and forced to read either of them, the 40 page paper I’d write about them would be 40 pages of random words I’d program my computer to pick out of the dictionary. I figure the professor would have to give me an ‘A’ or face charges of hypocrisy!
Horrible book! One of those “Why is this considered great literature?” books.
I’m sorry but it’s brilliant. I took one semester long course as an undergraduate just on this book. Here’s a key. Other writers tailor beautiful suits, Joyce wove an extraordinary fabric.
It may not seem to have structure but it’s beauty is much simpler than it seems.
To each his own.
Oh, and it’s not dirty in any sense of the word.
Never could read it.
Joyce, like Faulkner and Hemingway, overrated.
Some works of art and literature require careful introduction and sound instruction to appreciate. Joyce for me has been a mixed bag from artful sense to raw consternation.
My first purchase upon joining a book club in 1979 was Ulysses. I can honestly say it did not meet the level of its acclaimed status at the time. What I did not/do not fathom of Joyce, however, I would rather attribute to ignorance on my part than malice on his part, playful or otherwise.
Thanks for the post. As a slow and careful reader I relish English literature and discussions about it, despite myself.
For gratuitous verbiage of the inventive kind there is always Gertrude Stein.
It reminds me of the Mona Lisa. Or a Jackson Pollock. If no one told you it was great art, you’d never suspect.