Ulysses by James Joyce

I like it.

Clean and well kept book to read Joyce’s great novel

It has always been one of my favorite books. Never get tired of rereading it.

I was embroiled in the text on my train to work. I parsed every phrase and followed each footnote. I bounced with Dedalus from thought to thought as he walked along the beach. Thoughts of change and decay crashed on the sandy shores and ebbed away quickly into ruminations about philosophers, snippets of text from obscure works of literary criticism, fragmentary nods to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is exhausting, enthralling, extraordinary that a writer can capture such breadth and variation in short, staccato phrases. It’s stream of consciousness like I have never read before. Joyce doesn’t take the time to explain how and why thoughts arise. Nor does he belabor the transitions, contradictions, tangents. He doesn’t translate the five or more languages in Dedalus’ mind, nor does he take pains to make the actions and movements of his characters clear. A scene of urination is described from Stephen’s point of view thusly: “Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.” It wasn’t until I left my train—a stop too late as I was lost in trying to decipher the thoughts of Stephen Dedalus and I failed to decipher the signs that it was time to stop reading—that I gained a real appreciation for what Joyce was accomplishing in this devilishly difficult text. He presents the inner life of a character as closely as possible to the chaos and order of real life. I observed my thoughts as I walked to work. They bounced from this book to others I’ve read to my day ahead to my ongoing conflict with a diva coworker. I’d tune into the podcast playing in my ears then tune out as I stepped through the steam rising from a manhole cover trying to avoid inhaling any of the mysterious exhaust. I was awash in my customized mélange of internal machinations. It was a train of thought only I could ride catered as it was to my life experience, my context, my senses and sensibilities. It was on this walk to work that the power of Joyce’s prose truly struck home. He is writing a fiction to provide the closest possible facsimile to a person’s actual internal life. To do so requires an extraordinary ability to inhabit a character and to understand one’s own thinking. The fact that Stephen Dedalus is considered largely autobiographical does not dilute the potency of Joyce’s accomplishments. Observer your own thoughts and sensations as you walk down a familiar street. Could you capture all of this in writing? Would it make sense to anyone else or be easy to read? Could you convey meaning without explaining context? Capturing a whirring mind on paper is an impossible task, but Joyce does so in a way that feels plausible and entirely unique.When the character serving as the focus of the narrative switches to Leopold Bloom, Joyce's accomplishments reach new heights. He presents the same style of prose but it is now fueled by the internal life of a newspaper advertising salesperson with a high school education, a wife with whom he has lost connection, a son who died in infancy, a wide stream of popular songs and folklore floating through his mind, and an active and lustful imagination with a bent toward machoism. The prose is familiar but entirely different. Gone are the learned philosophical musings in multiple languages. They are replaced with inaccurately recalled quotes from popular English language texts, not-quite-right scientific explanations, and derisive guffaws at poorly written advertisements. You, as a reader, are in the mind of an entirely different person yet experiencing the same day in the same city with many of the same events or even conversations. The text is still difficult to read, though you can now recognize this is a product of Joyce’s commitment to stream of conscious writing rather than any sort of willful inscrutability.However, Joyce is not content to stick with his masterful stream of consciousness style for the several hundred pages of remaining story. Throughout the book he experiments with a wide variety of narrative modalities. There are more straightforward (not entirely straightforward, mind you, just more so) sections of first- or third-person narration. Particularly readable episodes include Cyclops and Nausicaa—likely the most readable section of the entire book and, interestingly (perhaps consequently) the one which led to censorship and charges of obscenity. In Oxen in the Sun, portions of the text are nearly indecipherable as Joyce’s point is buried under layers of antiquated style, willful abstraction, and specialized (or entirely invented) vocabulary. In this episode, Joyce cycles through a sampling of historical forms of written expression. The topic, when it can be glimpsed under the stylization, is birth, development, growth and thus Joyce’s stylistic progression is purposeful and not merely self-indulgent. From ad copy to nursery rhyme to satire to aping of specific authors—Joyce experiments but the narrative still maintains its essential feel (difficult, cryptic, symbolic, shaded by the internal lives of the characters rather than the outside circumstances, chaotic and intentional). The chaos reaches a fever pitch in Circe. As if things weren’t difficult enough for the reader, now hallucinations are thrown into the mix. I’ll admit to getting a bit overwhelmed at this point. So far I had stalwartly plodded slowly through the text as I sought to understand. At this point I had to let some of the visions and profusion of characters (real and imagined and inanimate) wash over me. I settled for the general sense: these characters have some deep, dark, inscrutable places in their internal lives which are largely incomprehensible and rest on tiny ledges and grooves worn through of trauma, personality, proclivity, and idiosyncratically interpreted life experiences. It’s a subtle point expressed in a brutally difficult to understand section of writing.The start of the next section, Eumaeus, felt to me very similar to when Odysseus returns to Ithaca and meets his loyal goatherd named Eumaeus. In The Odyssey it’s a relief to know that Odysseus is home, that he has an ally, that he’s not going to have his ship struck by lightning again or find himself in danger of being gobbled up by a monster. He just has to sort out things on the home front, kick out the suitors, and all will be restored. However, Bloom’s homecoming won’t entail the bloody bout of ass-kicking and vengeance meted out by Odysseus. Instead, the long bouts of conversation in this chapter take place in a late-night cabman’s shelter much like Odysseus and Eumaeus’ conversation in the goatherd’s shack. The text is still confusing and difficult to read, but it’s nothing like the hallucinations of the preceding section. I found Ithica, the next and penultimate chapter, to be the most readable and enjoyable chapter since Cyclops. It is presented as a series of questions and answers supposedly meant to mimic or parody the format of a catechism. The predominant voice is one we have become accustomed to at this point: one of scientific evaluation without deep scientific knowledge. At times the questions and answers are inane and at times more direct than anything else in the book. We see Bloom—finally! After a day that lasted for hundreds of pages—crawl into bed and come to some semblance of peace with his place in his marriage which has been a topic of fraught rumination all day: “Bloom's acts? He deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed his remaining articles of clothing, took from beneath the bolster at the head of the bed a folded long white nightshirt, inserted his head and arms into the proper apertures of the nightshirt, removed a pillow from the head to the foot of the bed, prepared the bedlinen accordingly and entered the bed. How? With circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode (his own or not his own): with solicitude, the snakespiral springs of the mattress being old, the brass quoits and pendent viper radii loose and tremulous under stress and strain: prudently, as entering a lair or ambush of lust or adders: lightly, the less to disturb: reverently, the bed of conception and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of breach of marriage, of sleep and of death... If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.”Love, compassion, and forbearance end up shining through as Bloom’s most heroic traits, though the hero’s journey ends with a whimper and just a glimmer of triumph granted by Molly’s perspective in the final chapter, Penelope. I largely disliked this chapter. Not just because it is pages-long, punctuation-less paragraphs chronicling Molly’s perspective on the many suitors we have been introduced through Bloom’s cuckolded perspective over the course of the day, but also because it seems a to do a weak job of accomplishing its goal and felt like it minimized Molly’s mindset to being almost exclusively focused on her sexual history. Though I realize we receive only a slice of her thoughts, it remains the only slice we are given. At the end of this long day as her thoughts drift and careen and wander toward sleep, the book closes with a mild but comforting affirmation that she is content. An echoing chorus of Yes adds the final punctuation to an extraordinary, ordinary day. June 16, 1904.The text is undeniably long and wandering. The characters walk miles along the streets of Dublin and we walk much farther along the fragmented paths of their internal machinations. The book is tied incredibly closely to its historical context. June 16, 1904. Dublin, Ireland. Over the course of the novel one is introduced to thousands of time and place specific references. Walking directions and addresses are precise. The sights one sees as Joyce’s characters walk the streets are the sights Joyce himself viewed as he strolled. The businesses, newspapers, current events, elected officials, people on the street—all of it is as closely aligned with real life as fiction will allow. It’s incredible to think that Joyce wrote this novel while living abroad; it must have involved a prodigious amount of research and correspondence with active Dublin residents. Joyce often has something other than simple verisimilitude in mind in his specificity. For example, in a chapter in which Bloom is wandering about aimlessly, his mind adrift (echoing the way Odysseus was set adrift and blown off course in the corresponding section of the Odyssey) he ends up walking along the streets of Dublin in the shape of a question mark. These sorts of carefully hidden details run throughout the text.The breadth of this book is stunning. Not only does it touch on issues of philosophy, religion, literature, and politics, Joyce also dwell on and develops themes related to music, sexuality, Irish history, use of language, identity—the list goes on and on. Some sections feel particularly thematic. For example, in the section popularly called Sirens and related to Odysseus’ encounter with the songs of these tempting, ruinous creatures, the action takes place in a pub and dining room. Over the course of the chapter music becomes a primary focus. Not only is there piano playing and singing, but the world of the pub is brought to life in all its sonic complexity. As the music plays, the narrative hops without transition or indication from one person's consciousness to the next. Continuing the stream of consciousness prose, Joyce examines the way music can stir emotions, memories, dreams, fears, passions. Emotions are described as though singing their own harmonies, thoughts resonate like sounds and reverberate like bells, a touch booms like a timpani, a glance sets off trumpet blasts. In this focus, Joyce shines light on the fact that even his expert stream of consciousness prose displayed up to this point cannot capture the full human experience. It’s by focusing on sound and music that he brings another layer of depth: sensory input. We constantly experience sounds and noises which in turn push our thoughts from the abstract to the tangible.Vision, unsurprisingly, takes a more primary role in the next chapter commonly dubbed Cyclops. This chapter marks yet another significant change: the first person. The chapter is narrated, at least in parts, by an unknown character who often focuses on a brash, argumentative, heavy-drinking bar patron known only as The Citizen. He, in a way somewhat reminiscent of Polyphemus in the Odyssey, holds his audience captive in the cave-like bar and devours them with his oversized personality, opinions, racism, antisemitism, and violence.Indeed, vision or perspective is a central theme for the entire book. Bloom introduces the notion of parallax—an astronomical term referencing the process by which the proximity of a point in space may be determined by observing it from multiple vantage points. Well, he doesn’t just introduce the notion, he dwells upon it, brings it up repeatedly, wedges it into little gaps. It’s a concept that may not come up to a typical person in the course of an average day, but it occurs to Joyce’s characters again and again. He’s inviting the reader to remember parallax in this story of people living out their average lives. Perspective must be kaleidoscopic if is to have any hope of approaching accuracy. It is only through multiple perspectives that a measure of a man, an event, a thought, an observation might be understood. And indeed, the need for these multiple perspectives reminds us that no single perspective or person can sufficiently encompass the truth of an event, a concept, a philosophy, an argument. This doesn’t quite add up to relativism but instead a reminder of the true complexity of reality both external, and more important to this text, internal.The search for paternity is another central theme as Stephen seems to be searching for a father or a sense of acceptance as a son while Bloom is seeking to understand fatherhood while grappling with the loss of his only son. While the novel slowly traces the wayward paths of these men as they wander through the day, when the paths finally intersect, it is something of an anticlimax. There are no epiphanies or satisfying resolutions. Instead, the longing of each man, his hurt, his gnawing uncertainty or dissatisfaction, is highlighted by the presence of the other who could possibly, but also can’t possibly, bring a semblance of peace to the other. Joyce’s subtlety of craft subverts a common expectation for conclusion and nicely packaged stories. Instead, he brings a conclusion which is so familiar to actual human experience. Unfinished, ongoing, in process, pending, changed in some ways and in others unmoved. A roar of a book ends with a whimper of a conclusion and it leaves a perfect unsatisfying ringing in the reader’s ears.While Joyce’s alacrity shines through brilliantly in this novel, there’s also a fair bit of indecipherable nonsense. I realize this is part of the point. Cryptic sections of odd word soup aren’t meant to have a clear path to interpretation. A huge onus of interpretation is placed upon the reader with little effort given on Joyce’s part to clarifying the “why” behind the gibberish. If I were reading this without any sort of outside explanation there’s no chance I would have made it through, nor would I have appreciated the way themes were developed and a profusion of allusions and symbols woven together. While consulting some of the more prominent annotations of the text from Thornton, Gifford, and Slote, I also relied extensively on the work of John Hunt at joyceproject.com. This incredible, open source of information and interpretation about Ulysses is incredibly user-friendly and helpful. While the project remains unfinished, it is a great resource for a first-time reader like myself.Overall, it’s difficult to gauge my feelings about this book. It feels like a great achievement to have made it through and struggled to decipher whatever meaning I could from this cryptic text. That feeling is not the same as enjoyment. It’s like having survived a long, grueling exam and feeling alright about the results. Some sort of satisfaction and accomplishment and relief and anticlimax. I did not enjoy much of the reading. It was a heavier task than ordinary reading requiring heightened concentration and lot of turning backward through the text to try to piece together what was going on. There were certainly moments of awe and appreciation when Joyce put forward a beautifully lyric or poetic phrase or when I could make a lucid connection to a well-developed theme. There were also moments of pure drudgery and confusion. Many moments. Throughout, almost always, it felt clear that I was reading a great work of literature by a creative genius and incredible craftsman. Again, this isn’t quite enjoyment. It’s appreciation and awe and head-shaking-wonder about how someone could write something like this and get it published, appreciated, and immortalized as a great work of literature. This book is an example of an author with a vision who is focused on writing what he sees fit to write. The book does nothing to capture a particular audience, satisfy typical literary conventions, pursue readability. The book is a chaotic vision of life, the mind, and the heart expressed in a language spoken fluently by the author alone but compelling enough to we who can understand only bits and pieces. In a way, the idiosyncratic writing feeds perfectly into the point of the novel: perspective is imperfect, often confused or mistaken, myopic, and yet the whole of our reality. As I write this paragraph, I think I’m starting to see part of the greatness of this book. I just can’t figure it. Right when I’m ready to write it off as pretensions overly stylized nonsense I see some deeper layer of meaning or some purpose in the pointlessness. The book could be studied from a thousand angles. None would offer an unobstructed path to meaning or clarity, but each facet provides enough light to see something interesting or beautiful or worthwhile. This is a text that can’t be written off or dismissed for being difficult. It’s a work of genius. A maddening masterpiece. I don’t think I'll ever quite be finished reviewing it. There will always be something more to say, some lingering question whose answer might suddenly slip into place. I didn’t love reading this book, but I love that it exists. I won’t recommend it to others but will be eager to discuss with anyone who’s in the club. I’ll always think of June 16 (tomorrow for me, coincidentally, as I write this) with a wry smile and an overwhelmed shake of the head. What a strange day.A-

If I could speak to James Joyce, I would borrow and apply a quote from an Oscar snubbed 1995 movie: "Mr. Joyce, what you have just said (written) is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard (read). At no point in your rambling, incoherent response (novel) were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room (who read it) is now dumber for having listened (read) to it. I award you no points, and my God have mercy on your soul.".If I a) understood Latin, b) understood French, c) understood the geography of 1904 Dublin, and d) understood early 20th century Irish slang, I could have possibly understood 1/3 of this book. To say this book was difficult to read is an understatement. My advice to future potential readers is to avoid this book like the plague. If anyone says they enjoyed reading this book, they are to never be trusted on any topic EVER again.I have lived 44 years on this Earth and until this point I been able to honestly say I have no regrets. However, whether I die today or in 40 years, whenever that moment comes and I am on my death bed and I look back over the course of my life, my one regret will be wasting approximately 17 hours reading this book.Okay, I may have exaggerated a little, but this is a very difficult book to read without the pre-requisite knowledge mentioned in the second paragraph above. A dictionary would also be helpful as Mr. Joyce using words not commonly used, at least not in the U.S.

The book I received was printed 3 days before it was delivered to me, with no chain of reference to the source of the text; so I don’t know if it’s an accurate transcription.

I have not yet read this book, but when it arrived I immediately checked it out and it is quite abnormal. First, it has no introduction by an editor, and it has no publisher, which means that quite literally anyone might have put these pages together. Since I've never read the book, I have no idea whether it is the correct version, or whether there are typos, etc., but the fact that this book is without a publisher or editor is pretty suspicious and give way to the possibility that there are mistakes. It is also long and wide in size, and the pages are really large, not very portable, although if you like bigger editions of books, that would not be a problem. Anyways, I give it two stars because I was expecting something at least official and not something that could have been put together by James Joyces' great grand nephew in his mother's basement.

Very hard to read--the font is small and the line length is much too long. Also, NO copyright page, NO publisher listed. I don't know what the heck this book is. Did someone just make their own edition and sells it on Amazon. DO NOT BUY!