Dan | The Ancient Reader's Reviews > Ulysses

What a way to start the new year... well done!

Thanks, but I'm not so sure I'd be tackling this right now without some group support here on GR.

wow I have just started it too, look forward to hearing what you think as I decide myself...

I can see what you mean, I love Virginia Woolf, especially books like the Waves, where each character in her novel is relating stream of conscience over many years of several lives, and each fragment of a thought whether large or small, is significant. I prefer her and Pynchon too, but am intrigued with Joyce just at how moving and influential he supposedly is to a great number of readers, men in particular. I just wonder how many truly are mad about him or just picking up on a general kitschiness!

I have the utmost respect for you! I tried to read Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man but gave up after I was not absorbing anything from the book! I fear Joyce-I truly do!

That was an interesting review. I loved Woolf's To The Lighthouse because it was different but it sure wasn't one of my favorite books. Are you going to be able to stick with it to the end? I would be interested to find out how you feel when you are done reading the book.

Well said!

It really helped me to read the Sparknotes before tackling the actual text. This helped me when I was studying the text for my Graduate work. The thing with Joyce is that each book of the text picks up on some theme or point. Once you know what the theme for that book is, it becomes easier to draw connections. I have some awesome notes from when I took the Ulysses seminar in undergrad. Perhaps I should post them on here? I've been thinking of typing up my old Ulysses/Gravity Rainbow notes just to have...

Did you read this by itself or with a guide? I found that the guide made it immensely more satisfying.

Sarah,

I read it on my own. I love sharing recommendations and opinions with other readers but when it comes to the actual reading I have a really big independent/stubborn streak. Guides and commentaries always make me feel like I'm being told what I should think and how I should react and respond to a book. They feel too much like having to read something for a class. There are books that there's just too much to them to get in a single read and Ulysses is most likely one of those but, for me, Joyce makes it too unpleasant to try to get everything that's there.

Loved this review!

Amen!

I love your reviews!

Good review. Love the first paragraph :)

I think Ulysses is one of those books that I may attempt to read ... sometime, but I really enjoyed your review. Glad I'm not the only one whose brain started to fry whilst reading Faulkner. Stream of consciousness can be a very interesting literary technique, but I prefer it in small doses, like espresso.

See i find this funny, because I absolutely loved this book, and A Portrait as well. But everyone has their own preferences and likings. I did admitedly read the summaries for each chapter in cliffsnotes after each one to get what just happened. But I am looking forward to reading it again any day now.

I tried reading it three times over the years and I always ended up being more confused. I never understood the point. I don't even think my college professor understood it!

So glad to hear others have the same reaction to Joyce. Great review Dan!

I had the same reaction to a college production play of Ulysses many years ago. It made no sense either, so it must have been right on target with the book. I was frustrated and annoyed throughout, but at least it was only for one evening. Reading the book would obviously be much more of a commitment. Good for you, Dan.

Had to study this at university. Found it the most frustrating book I ever read.

Have you tried Finnegan's Wake ? It's even worse! Comparatively I actually liked Ulysses

I loved Virgina Woolf's stories and I didn't mind some of Joyce's other works, like the Portrait of an Artist for example, but I'm not keen on the stream of consciousness technique. Don't have the patience.

dan the man he got it wrong to read this book mister joyce he laugh intoxicated mirth at all sedulous baboon struggle with mumbo of his jumbo and fry brain to boredom and beyond trick haha joke mister joyce real writing here much better
http://loveletters.tribe.net/thread/f...

Normally I fret when I come across a review of this sort, but since this is a review of Ulysses, I can understand why you wouldnt enjoy it. Ulysses is not a book for everyone being that it is so strange. You have to give joyce credit tho, he encompasses every literary style imaginable and through painstaking use of portmanteau words, he creates scenes which subconsciously describe sets of allusions. A great example of this is the sirens chapter that when reading underneath the text, one can see descriptions of an orchestra tuning.

Andrew- one would think based on your other eloquent reviews that you could come up with some respectful and appropriate way to disagree with Dan... just read another comment from you on someone else who disagrees... I now suspect a violent mental illness.. dude, get some meds...

Holly wrote: "Andrew- one would think based on your other eloquent reviews that you could come up with some respectful and appropriate way to disagree with Dan... just read another comment from you on someone el..."

I know Holly right? Geez....

"He's not much of a conversationalist. He mostly just sat in a corner mumbling incoherenly to himself." I find it funny that Virginia Woolf actually wrote a review of Ulysses similar to what you've stated. I'm a huge stream of consciousness fan, especially when present in Woolf's works, but I also admire Joyce, not necessarily for his literary genius, but solely for his ability to trap the reader into the book's universe. Giving the reader little possibility of reflection towards the novel is a also skill, that in order to have the desired effect expects empathy from the reader, and complete and utter dedication to his work from the writer. But that is just one way to look at it. I've read Ulysses twice: I didn't like it the first time, but when I reread it I looked for symbols, Homeric parallels, literary schemes and whatnot and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Despite Andrew's lack of tact and his wanton vulgarity, I can't help but concur with his refutation of the review in question.
Joyce does make sense. You're mistaken to think that something doesn't make sense just because you can't comprehend its meaning.
This book is nothing short of brilliant. I can't say the same for Finnegan's Wake, so don't be too quick to label me a militant Joyce fan. If your tastes are antithetic to the book, then perhaps you are just trying too hard to come across as a thinks-outside-the-box contrarian.
Yes, I am only 18, but I am not being naive. I will justify myself if need be, but be prepared to read a decent wall of text.

One of the worst books I ever read. Completely agree with your original comment.

Why does a book need a point to be a work of great literature? It is rather like waves and peeling the onion: gradually the core will be revealed. Furthermore, one must appreciate Joyce for his distinctive, if somewhat confusing, voice. The voice of the author propels the work forward, and carries a certain weight. In defense of Joyce, an author should not be, in my opinion, in a dialogue with the reader, but rather in an intense dialogue with himself, reflecting on the what is, in a more philosophical context. Lastly, I think that such a work can give voice to the common man, if only he can wrestle with this voice of Joyce.

I really like this: "Every once in a while he'd quote - or try to ridicule - something he'd read somewhere, but that's not really conversation is it? More like namedropping."

Though I am not yet finished Ulysses I note that you are reading In Search of Lost Time. I read the latter novel two years before Ulysses and became familiar with Woolf's The Waves several months into reading Ulysses. Though it appears that Joyce is trying to manipulate the reader into accepting verbose and often stream of consciousness patterns, the truth is very different.

As Woolf and Proust approached the end of their novel-writing careers they became less sound yet somewhat more honest. Considering the scene in the cat house with Bloom and Daedalus is so comparable with Proust wheezing out lamentations or Mrs. Dalloway being incapable of holding her passions inside any longer, the strangest thing occurs.

Though Woolf and Proust attempt to filter and clarify their experiences, they cannot help but begin to passionately plea for yet more colourful, more impassioned life, and it is as though Joyce's call to be like a prism, taking one event and refracting all of its possibilities with the merging of daydream and real life, and it is this heart felt understanding that permeates this novel.

What I find is that people whilst reading like to maintain a level of control which is uncanny in everyday life. The daydreams that take place in between events are the actual events, the real moments of enrichment, and Joyce shares these, as the characters in the Waves of In Search of Lost Time do.

There is a breadth of colour and possibilities and yet we scorn it. Joyce understood that these in between moments were far more important than the very clearly defined, much like Newton could not believe what was before him was all.

Even if Ulysses is riddled with obscurities it is at the very least for a good reason. Just like anyone with a good idea, it comes out in a series of sketches, which become very important to understanding the painting itself.

Read The Vivisector by Patrick White, the works of Roberto Bolano perhaps. It is here that we find the resources to deal with accepting other people's inner realities, otherwise without these we will plummet, freefall when finally woken to the sheer volume of daydream, reverie, and chaos in what people see around us.

I wish you well with Proust. Perhaps that will make to enjoy Joyce more.

Kieran - I think you hit on an important issue here. Those inner thoughts are key. But an important tool to help someone understand them is at least a little structure. It is impossible to comprehend the prismed dream moments unless you are the one having them. OR if you can do a good job of explaining the context and backstory it is possible to bring someone into these worlds. Nicholas Baker does a good job of making insanity appealing to read. The most elementary example of this would be Lewis Carroll. I can respect the fact that James Joyce must be able to do this for many readers. Just not me ~

I assure you that Joyce is not mumbling incoherently in a corner. You want to fit him in to your literary conversation, but it is not possible. Joyce draws from a well too deep and too broad. I recommend trying to join his conversation.

I was going to suggest you retry Ulysses with one of the many companion books to help guide you along, but then I sifted through your other reviews. Two stars for Catcher In The Rye? Three for Heart of Darkness, The Great Gatsby, and The Federalist Papers? None of Jane Austen lives up to your standards?

There are plenty of books in the literary canon I don't care for either. They're simply not to my taste. Maybe Ulysses is a poor match for you. Fine. I personally wouldn't read Trollope with a gun to my head, but that's about me. Not him.

The great books we don't care for are still great books. Ulysses didn't work for you. Leave it at that. Save your stars for the newer stuff. Those books and authors need your judgment. Joyce doesn't.

Haven't read this, and I think I'll pass because I totally agree with your last paragraph!

Amen! You are absolutely right on target!

Dan, haven't read it doubt I will now because of your excellent review and maybe I'll have pancakes for breakfast that's as far as my stream of consciousnes goes this morning. Thanks for the great review.

I appreciate your reviews, Dan, and your willingness to more critically, from our vantage point in history, examine the literary canon that's been passed down and slay those sacred cows.

In this age when anyone can get published (even if he's publishing himself) it's important to note that in Joyce's day not everyone who might be most worthy of a publishing deal got in front of the people who could get him in print. Joyce, like the rest of us got rejected quite a bit. Dickens, born 60 years earlier, proved himself a "popular" author through having his stories published in serial form in newspapers and earning a fan base making his publication a sure thing for publishers.

More importantly perhaps, Joyce was a member of the avant garde and proud of it. Ulysses was published in 1920, alongside Wharton's Age of Innocence and This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was trying to do something different and yet so much of what today seems rather unappealing about some of Joyce's work, actually fits in very well with other works of the period. In all the arts, people were pushing boundaries (cubism in painting, disharmonies in music).

These days, reading Ulysses takes more effort than the average pleasure reader wants to put in but I'm still very glad to have it around, to read bits and try to get inside the mind and time it was born of.

I think your review is spot-on. I'm not a fan of V. Woolf either, but I felt that Joyce really used no editorial process to write in stream-of-consciousness. His narration was definitely social-misfit-in-the-corner, mumbling to himself as one tries to understand. At least Woolf attempted to engage the reader, and she was at times successful. Great review, Dan!!

Joyce can't talk to you; he's too busy conversing with Homer. That's kind of the point, a parallel novel. The companion guides really break it down. It is masterful.

well said – a conversation. I'm finding that street of my life also, with people. Applying it to books – brilliant!

The Homer conversation is in jest. Academics would love it to be so, but the parrallels are not visible if you approach the novel as a series of epiphanies. Academics are always trying to reach out for the meaning inside the Odyssey but Joyce creates his own meaning. So Buck Mulligan is master of Thebes whilst drinking himself under in an Irish bar. There is no need to idolise for Joyce. The Odyssey is the same as the long walk home after a funeral. Find your own meaning in Joyce, and even if you dislike it, that is really your response. He is obnoxious as he chooses to celebrate himself, and if you are not one to join in the celebration of another then Ulysses is not your novel.

love joining in a celebration, as long as it is not masturbatory– –

I am in total agreement with your review. And I realize I have sweaters in my closet older than many readers on this site, but when I was working on my undergraduate degree in English, using reading guides-Cliff Notes were the only ones available-was highly frowned upon at my particular university. Having been trained in this environment, I feel reading guides should assist in understanding a work-not make a work understandable.

Great review$

So which books have conversations with each other? I'd say your review is the exact definition of 'verbose.'

Good God, you people are pretentious. *Ulysses* is one of the most human and hilarious books of all time, and I think you're trying to take the book heavier than its meant to be taken. Joyce himself said there wasn't a single serious word in it. The infinite allusions and references are not snooty at all. They're just residue from Joyce's exacting Jesuit education. Don't fault the greatest writer of all time because you don't have the focus to understand his prose.

It's considered to be such a great work that I really wanted to experience it. I knew it was difficult and I was prepared to work at it, but in the end it was just out of my league.

"How about that? I can write at least as well as James Joyce.”. Oh lordy... Well, you certainly have a much vaster ego. I'll keep an eye out for your future conversational contributions to world literature. :-). If you need me, I'll be over in the corner with Jim, having a laugh together over a few beers and asking how he ever had the balls to keep going, practically blind, with two young kids, knowing that Finnegans Wake was going to make the literary conversers of the world completely lose their minds, especially when so many people can write just as well. For a paragraph summarizing his written work, at least, after coming up with the brand new phrase 'mumbling incoherently'.