Yeah. So after 20 years dusting away on the shelf, i finally grabbed Ulysses and this time finished it.

Now, obviously, i wanna talk about it. Because i did quite enjoy parts of the book; others... not so much.

Looking at reviews in trying to find if others have similar opinions and maybe further insight into the book is a tad frustratring, as there solely seem to be 2 camps regarding Ulysses (apart from the obvious third camp, who haven't bothered to read it): either the book is the holy grail of literature, topped in allusional density only by finnegans wake by same author or completely pretentious horseshit.

I don't think Ulysses is either.

Let's start with the stuff I liked:

First of, the language can be sublime, I'll give JJ that. Then I really dug how intimately you get to know the three main-ish characters, more than any other fictional character and possibly more than most of your fellow humans. How the story/backstory of said characters (the death of rudy, the absent sex life of the Blooms, the suicide of Blooms father, the poverty and downfall of the Dedalus family, Stephens breaking with the faith etc) is unraveled en passant, like almost accidentally (which of course it isn't) is something quite genius. How this seemingly mundane day, is a transformative point for both Stephen and Bloom. In Cyclops there is some over the top humour, which literally had me laughing out loud. There is some humour in the rest of the book too, but never as pronounced. Or maybe I just didn't get it. The 3 starting chapters from Stephens perspective i actually didn't mind. Not that I entirely get Proteus, but i just tell myself that that is the point of the chapter. I was 16 when I first started reading Ulysses, so naturally it was much easier identifying with Stephen than with Bloom. That surely has changed. The first 2 chapters with Bloom are a kind of breezy fun, after the heavy lifting of Proteus. The one on the beach was interesting and in Circe finally there is some stuff happening (if mostly psychological). Imo Circe is one (if not THE) high points of the book. Ithaca is awesome mainly for introducing something to the novel much needed: linguistic restraint. And then of course Penelope to end everything with the female counterpoint to Bloom and Stephen.

The stuff I didn't like as much:

It's a tad pretentious, innit? Of course it is, and I don't mind pretentiousness that much, but sometimes he's really killin it. Joyces erudition is something to marvel at, but it does get old pretty quickly. That the author and by proxy the book cares about events and people i have just vaguely heard about comes with the territory, I guess. With the book taking place over a hundred years past, and me not being Irish, not even english or at least a native english speaker. the most politicians and events of the time are akin to ancient history for me. I am open to being educated nevertheless, but i don't need to know every exact street adress of every corner shop in dublin. As soon as the first marvel wears off, it leaves you with an ocean of useless facts you don't care about. In other words unnecessary fluff, which (and this is the worst part) gets in the way of the actually good parts, like story orwhatyouwannacallit. Aelous? A lot of hot air. Hades and Oxen of the Sun? Yes, death and birth had to be in the book of course, but I don't need to know the price of the ferry ticket so to speak. Lestrygonians is kinda funny, like a long snickers commercial, with all the food themed thoughts invading the stream of consciousness. Half of it would be even funnier. The random sidestories or riddles/chiffres: who is the guy in the Macintosh? What is UP? Simply, I don't give a damn and please someone tell me, why I should. Earnestly! To me it seems, JJ was LOSTing (after the tv series) it: just throwin in random idiosyncracies without any further relevance to appear smarter or deeper or more profound or whatever.

I have, like the commendable reader I am, supplemented the reading of Ulysses with some guides to further my insight: UlyssesGuide.com beforehand, the Bloomsday Book by Blamires afterwards, and i even made it halfway through Ulysses Annotated by Gifford. Some connections i can get, others seem like the kind of confirmation bias one gets after drinking way too much coffee and looking at network static until pictures start to emerge. One interesting insight however are the parallels of Joyces Life to the happenings in the book. Like, both Joyce and Stephen lived in the Martello Tower, Buck Mulligan is supposedly a caricature of Oliver St John Gogarty etc. Truth be told, I think Buck Mulligan is the way more likable fellow of the Martello Tower Dwellergang. (When Haines and Mulligan are later in the book talking about Stephen being on a kind of mental episode, I'd second them). The whole episode with the keys to the Martello Tower as well as the Library Scene feel like JJ is out to settle a score, to write his own alternative history of events where he comes out as the one on top.

TL;DR:

I think Ulysses is quite a fine book, if badly in need of an editor. (Forgive me, I know it's a bit of a cliche, but I honestly believe that cutting almost half of the book, would make it better). And I almost forgot but among all the linguistic and structural marvel there is actually some quite insightful gold to be found here. What it means to be an outsider, being ostracized, how this is kind of everyday life for jews, how every nation seems to need its jew (or some other minority) as public scapegoat. Some quite progressive views on christian religion etc.

Sorry for the rant. Interested in your opinions nonetheless!

Sorry if I'm totally wrong and confused, I was just learning about metrical feet and thought about something. I've not expanded on this at all, and I have absolutely no idea. Dactylic hexameter consists of a pattern of one long followed by two short syllables. Two short syllables in a metric foot is called a Pyrrhic. This is called the arsis, while the first long syllable is called the thesis, apparently. Would the second chapter, where Pyrrhus is mentioned repeatedly, throughout much of the chapter, be considered a sort of arsis? I also have not though about this in relation to anything else in the book, so keep that in mind.

It’s subtracted in another typo when the list of attendees at Dignam’s funeral include L. Boom instead of Bloom. Even typos find their doppelgängers in Joyce’s work and even themselves out in the end.

A man’s disrupted attempt to read Ulysses before the end of the world. This time, I am going to succeed! ‘What’s that? Oh for Fucks sake!’

I wanted to make this post mostly to enter it into the body of Google history for people looking to get into the book. I bounced off of Ulysses 7-8 times, always around Hades. I had searched around looking for advice on how to read it, and the consistent byline was not to worry about understanding every reference, and just to read through for what you can get. This didn't work for me at all. With that strategy, long sections of the book just turn into meaningless subvocalization, sounding out words that don't signify anything, which is incredibly boring.

I just finished the book, and the strategy I instead adopted for my successful runthrough was to make maximal use of secondary sources. I read the book on Joyce Project dot com, and every time there was a hyperlink embedded in the text I clicked it and read it. I eventually even started reading these articles completely the first time I encountered them, rather than trying to avoid spoilers about later parts of the book. I also read Potrait to get a good handle on Stephen Dedalus, as well as Joyce's wiki page and a bunch of random blog posts. I skipped Dubliners, which I regret, and I will go back to read it before I reread Ulysses.

This approach transformed my relationship to Ulysses. Previously I had been picking up maybe 30% of the obvious meaning of each chapter, sometimes much less or more. After making use of secondary sources I feel I've gotten 90%+ of the substance of the book. I just read Nabokov's lecture on it as a coda, and he didn't drop anything detail-wise that surprised me.

Reading Ulysses properly– e.g. understanding the racial undertones of the soap advertisement that Bloom has stuck in his head throughout Calypso and later on in Circe– is basically like taking a college class. It took me about 4 months, though it was spaced out by the fact that I always read chapters in 1 or 2 sittings of 6-8 hours, except for Circe which is a monster of a chapter. I feel like I learned as much from this period as I did from the best classes I took in college, about a huge array of subjects. In my opinion, doing it this way is absolutely worthwhile, because the book has a huge amount to teach us; I've even been thinking about it frequently with respect to issues in my real life. Reading it shallowly, on the other hand, sounds to me like an exercise in frustration, mouthing out sounds and skipping over whole paragraphs because the references are too dense to parse at 100 years' remove.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts in the matter. Like I said, I wrote this post because I got the opposite advice when I went looking for it over the past few years, and would have read the book a long time ago if I had found a post like this one.

First timer who wants to tackle Ulysses. What do I need to be successful?

The Text: What edition is best for understanding what is going on?

Companions: I am overwhelmed by the volume of companion guides. What do I actually need to understand the book?

-ulyssesguide.com -The New Bloomsday Book by Blamires -Ulysses Annotated by Gifford -joyceproject.com/ -Reading Ulysses podcast -others?

Pre-Reading: Do I need to read the Odyssey or Portrait of an Artist first?

Happy bloomsday. If anyone has any fun adventures for the day I’d love to hear em.

Hey! I’m currently writing an essay on the humour/comedy of Ulysses and I’m wondering if anyone here has any examples? I just thought to ask here in case if I’m missing anything! Thanks!

I am in the middle of my read through of the this classic. So far it's humbling and pleasant read. The only thing I wish was my copy had the chapter names.

I know that one is supposed to read an introduction before whatever comes after, but am also worried it might spoil an intuitive, or whatsoever access to the book.

Any suggestions or experiences? Should I read it all? Should I read his introduction before or after reading the book?

(I'm referring to Declan Kiberds Introduction in the penguin books edition, 1992/2000)

I have been looking, and I can’t find an answer to how to have page breaks in pdf exports. I mean, I have a book with chapters, and I’d just like to have page breaks after each chapter. Is that possible? This would be easy in Scrivenor, etc.

Hey, all!

I'm running a Ulysses study group this semester with high-school aged students at the homeschooling drop-in center I teach at. It's going to be super informal, I'm mostly prepped but I'm hoping to crowdsource some favorite paired reading for my class.

I'm looking for relevant selections from Dubliners (obviously Two Gallants) and Portrait in particular and where you'd pair them. I have selections from Shakespeare, The Oddyssey, and William Blake. I've heard tell but haven't fully explored the connections to Nietzche and Walt Whitman (I've been informed mostly those fit in more obviously with The Wake which I've yet to read)--what are thoughts on pairing some of those with Ulysses to further explore, and if so where do you suggest?

I tackled Ulysses over the summer for the first time since my 20s and I'm so glad I did.

If you're like me, you've joined the /JamesJoyce Reddit, so this will be redundant. Still, I wanted to post it here as it's literally a Ulysses Walkthrough series.

So... I made a thing. It's a podcast thing. Or a YouTube thing. I don't expect much to come of it, but I enjoyed making it and any views, comments, or feedback are much appreciated.

The goal is to eventually walk through all of Ulysses, so here's the first few episodes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LPvjZyyOmw&list=PLzrAamg8bpeyn3AXVLGQisf__f4ViftuD

Maybe I should mark a Ulysses thing as NSFW? After all, what work or money has Ulysses ever brought me? lol

Another in the series.

https://www.pisgahsite.com/p/leopold-bloom-and-hope

I'm new here and have just made a quick scan of the threads. I do not see any mention of The Joyce Project

A few articles I posted on my substack about Jewish motifs in Ulysses. You can bypass the subscribe button by clicking on "Let me read it first." Feel free to subscribe.

Hi,

Does anyone know the author of the music named "Martha" that Bloom hears in Chapter 11 (Sirens)?

Thanks

Jim's (dirty) letter to Nora https://vocaroo.com/1brfLm8sSU0z

• i like this voice... ( i can believe (imagine) Young Joyce sounding like this )

• there must be parts of FW, where tone and Subj-matter are exactly like this -------------- Where are those parts ???

• "i read your letter" ------ should be past tense.

• "you like to be f..cked Arseways" --- must mean [Doggy style] and

not ........

Hello, i was reading the introduction to the Ulysses in penguin modern classics edition and in some part the person who writes the introduction says:
" If our words are scarcely our own, suggests Joyce, then neither are our plots, which can be borrowed from Homer, who may never have existed. "

Well, i have looked for this quote in Ulysses and couldnt find it, same in A Portrait of a Young Man Artist and Dubliners. Does anyone knows were Joyce suggests something like this? Why this man quotes something that does not exist?

Thank you and i leave some more of the page which im talking about so i can give a little bit more of context.

" Ulysses is, therefore, constructed on the understanding that styles, like persons, are interchangeable. The method, though not quite dadaist, intermittently justifies Joyce's account of himself as 'a scissors and paste man'. Only Joyce could have written Ulysses; and yet it is a book which asks us to give serious consideration to the possibility that anybody could have written it. If our words are scarcely our own, suggests Joyce, then neither are our plots, which can be borrowed from Homer, who may never have existed. He claimed to base much of his material on borrowings from the talkers of Dublin; and took perverse pride in sharing with Shakespeare the boast of never having created a single plot. "