When asked to explain Ulysses James Joyce humbly replied: “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.”But I meekly dare to believe Ulysses wasn’t created simply to intimidate and torture philologists for there is a clever thought or two in the book after all.The preparation of breakfast (burnt offering): intestinal congestion and premeditative defecation (holy of hol...

I did it. I finished it. And it was everything everyone said it would be: difficult, infuriating, brilliant, insane, genius, painful, etc. You get the idea, I'm sure. I can't even rate it. How do you rate a book that left you wide-eyed with awe at the author's brilliance, yet simultaneously made you want to bring him back to life just so you could kill him?

as a bloke with an english degree, i guess i'm supposed to extol all thing joycian and gladly turn myself self over to the church of joye. after all, that's what english grads do, right? we revel in our snobbery and gloat about having read 'gravity's rainbow' and 'ulysses' start to finish.well, i may be in the minority when i say i didn't care for this book at all. i get that it's a complex book with innumerable references to greek mythology, heavy allegories, dense poetry wacky structures, and

Silly little kalliope, the spirally-kalliope, who had thought about entering the Labyrinth in the past but just stood outside looking at its entrance. For years. Luckily for her, the real Kalliope, the Grand, the Muse, springing out of GR where she has been dwelling in the recent past, took pity on her and after visiting the gods of literature and seeking their acceptance, decided to assist the spirally and guide her through the imposing Labyrinth.As the Grand Kalliope-the-Muse thought that Spir...

Life is too short to read Ulysses.

I have left this book unrated because I simply cannot rate it. I cannot review it either or try to criticise it. Instead, I’ve decided to share my experience with something I cannot define. But first, here’s what James Joyce had to say about it: 'I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.’ The accuracy of this statement balances out the sheer arrogance of Joyce’s

I have read Ulysses at least three or four times (and once with Gilbert Stuart's authorised translation) and always found unsounded depths that I had not suspected. Every chapter introduces new narrative techniques, new perspectives and characters, and new voices. This is a book that definitely requires some homework to fully appreciate. I would recommend the aforementioned Gilbert Stuart commentary and biography, the Frank Budgen criticism, and especially the classic Richard Ellman biography. T...

The singer asked the crowd - "how many of your have read James Joyce?" He had just sang Whiskey in the Jar and was queuing up to sing Finnegan's Wake, he was setting the stage for his next song. A few hands went up, mine among them. We were in The Merry Ploughman's Pub in South Dublin and the crowd was having a good time, singing and drinking Guiness from pint glasses. "Now, how many understood what you read?" The crowd laughed and half as many hands stayed up and I realized my extended arm wave...

Each chapter is rated out of ten for difficulty, obscenity, general mindblowing brilliance and beauty of language.Note : if you're after my short course bluffer's guide to ulysses, here it is :http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...But now... the real thing. ******************* 1. Telemachus. Difficulty : 0 Obscenity: 0 General mindblowing brilliance : 8 Beauty of language : 7 Stephen the morose ex-student isn't enjoying life. Lots of brittle dialogue, mainly from motormouth blasphemer Buck Mul...

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”Ulysses ~~ James JoyceI have never had so many starts, false starts, and restarts with a novel in my entire life. But it was worth every effort made to read this amazing book.My Goodreads friend, zxvasdf, once said to me, "You'll always be far from finishing, even when you finish it. I don't think anyone can really appreciate Joyce's work in its entirety if they're not Joyce...

Ulysses, James JoyceUlysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and then published in its entirety in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's 40th birthday. It is considered to be one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of f...

I Can't do it, It fell in my toilet and didn't dry well, and I'm accepting it as an act of god. I decided against burning it, and just threw it out.Yes, I am a horrible person.

Often considered one of the ‘greatest novel of the 20th century’, James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, is both a feat and feast of sheer literary brilliance. Reimagining Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey as the travels and trials of an everyday man through the crowded streets and pubs of Dublin, Joyce weaves strikingly versatile prose styles and varying perspectives to encompass the whole of life within the hours of a single standard day, June 16th, 1904. This day, dubbed Bloomsday, is celebrated wit...

NOTES:1. Reading this so late, so long after its lessons have been absorbed and modified and abandoned and resurrected (see Will Self's Umbrella), I can't imagine what it was like for a first-time reader in 1922-23. For those who both loved and hated it, it must have been a hydrogen bomb of a book. The classicists must have been fit for tying. The hubris of rewriting Homer. The classicists must have been apoplectic!2. In the Hades/Graveyard section (6), Leopold Bloom considers the enormity of de...

Reviewed in August 2012This review is my attempt to reclaim Ulysses from the Joyce specialists and prove that it can have universal reader appeal. My edition was a simple paperback without notes or glossary but containing a preface which I intend to read after I've written my review. I'll probably look at other reviews too as, frankly, I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms from the world of this novel. The word 'novel' seems inappropriate to describe Ulysses but at the same time, the word might have...

5 stars because it's a work of genius, so everyone says.4 stars because it has so many deep literary and classical references that to say one understood the book, is like saying one is very well educated.3 stars because the words, strung together in a stream-of-consciousness mellifluous, onomatopoeic way, read just beautifully.2 stars because it was boring as hell. I just couldn't care less about the characters, I just wanted them to get on with whatever they were doing and have Joyce interfere

Sometimes reading a Great Work of Literature is like drinking fine French wine, say an aged Burgundy or Mersault. Everyone tells you how amazing it is, and on an intellectual level you can appreciate the brilliance, the subtlety, the refinement. But really it is too refined. It is unapproachable, it is aloof, it doesn't go with thatketchupy burger you're having for dinner. You're not enjoying it.But then you read the label more closely and realize that although it tastes just like a fine burgund...

How do you read Ulysses? Well you begin on page one and you read all the words until it's finished.Or, you can just be Irish.I think that's the secret. I've just finished Ulysses for the second time and I cannot recall any other book that's just as fun as Ulysses is. People will often call the novel difficult and challenging but that's a reading I just cannot abide by. I don't find Ulysses to be a particularly difficult novel to read. I actually struggle a lot more with other modernist writers,

Good books should participate in a "conversation" with each other, and with us when we read them. I made the mistake of inviting Joyce - via Ulysses - to join my literary conversation. He's not much of a conversationalist. He mostly just sat in a corner mumbling incoherently to himself. 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.Buried within Joyce's verbosity is something similar to a pl...

The best book I have ever read. Complex. Sophisticated. Fun!