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Ulysses

James Joyce

3.73 · Rating details · 114,987 ratings · 7,124 reviews

Loosely based on the Odyssey, this landmark of modern literature follows ordinary Dubliners in 1904. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. Captivating experimental techniqu ...more

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Paperback, 816 pages

Published 2013 by Vintage (first published February 2nd 1922)

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Average rating 3.73 ·

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· 114,987 ratings · 7,124 reviews

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Sep 25, 2007 Paul Bryant rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, joyce

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 ...more

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May 08, 2011 Petra-X wishes the world would return to normal rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, reviewed

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 ...more

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Apr 07, 2008 Jimmy rated it did not like it · review of another edition

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.
...more

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Jul 18, 2008 Ike rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Life is too short to read Ulysses.

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Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: irish-20th-c, classics, novels, fiction, favorites

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 ...more

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Aug 17, 2008 Mir rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: celtic

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 that
ketchupy 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 ...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Emily May added it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 2013

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? ...more

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Sep 14, 2018 Kenny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, favorites, spenky-says-so, author-author, top-11, long-haul-reads, james-joyce, éirinn

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”
Ulysses ~~ James Joyce

I 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 ...more

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Sep 24, 2011 s.penkevich rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Just read it!

Recommended to s.penkevich by: Ben Linus

Shelves: times-100-best, favorites, dear_dirty_dublin

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 ...more

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Dec 27, 2014 Barry Pierce rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2014, read-in-2019, 20th-century

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, ...more

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Dec 31, 2016 Sean Barrs added it · review of another edition

Shelves: modernist-movement

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 ...more

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Mar 28, 2009 Dan rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-philosophical-literature

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 ...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Lyn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 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 wavered some too.

I have looked at Ulysses over the years like it was a high and formidable mountain to climb. I have picked it up several times over the years, weighed it, set it beside the phone book and compared width. I have scanned the pages and noticed with alarm a painful lack of punctuation, and not the Cormac McCarthy kind of simplicity; but run on sentences, stream of consciousness. I have avoided the The Sound and the Fury for the same reason, finally giving up on that. Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? was a morass of nonsense that I slogged through to the end, but it was a relatively short book.

And then there is the length. Formidable. I read through War and Peace, in awe of its epic stature, and I finished Atlas Shrugged out of sheer inertia and also out of a morbid curiosity to see it through. Ulysses was long and in stream of consciousness prose.

And so the years went by and I could not bring myself to begin the climb, did not feel up to sloshing through the swamp of adjectives and relentless narration.

When I did finally begin, I was pleasantly surprised.

The stream of consciousness technique was not overwhelming, was not the nonsensical morass of Mailer nor the cacophony of thought from Faulkner. Joyce’s language is rich and engaging, his storytelling modern and experimental but still approachable. There were moments that I was in love with the book, believing this was the greatest novel I had ever read, I was convinced of Joyce’s brilliance and inspired by his genius. It is funny, profane, irreverent, even shocking. The references to classic literature, especially the parallels with Homer makes it worthy of a greater review than I can come up with. Molly Bloom's lengthy soliloquy at the end is a gem of vulgarity and human observation. Other times I was simply reading to get through, keeping a runner’s pace through the long back miles and steep hills of a marathon.

Ultimately, this is a masterpiece, a great work in the English language or of any language, literature of the highest order. But it can be difficult, in its length and its narration, and Joyce asks a lot of his reader, his prose is steeped in his own erudition and he makes little attempt to step it down. But for the reader who makes it to the top, it is a great view from the summit.

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...more

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Jan 14, 2008 Matt rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Mar 24, 2011 William2 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 20-ce, ireland, fiction

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 ...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: joyce, joyce-and-related

Reviewed in August 2012

This 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 Reviewed in August 2012

This 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 been invented specifically to describe it. Everything about it is novel, from the structure to the use of language, from the characterisation to the treatment of history.
But by ‘novel’, I don’t mean experimental in an obscure or inaccessible way, as its reputation seems to imply: I found Flan O’Brian’s At Swim-Two-Birds quite difficult to follow in a way that Ulysses is definitely not, and I’m finding Samuel Beckett’s Molloy, which I’m currently reading, much more difficult to get involved with. Ulysses was pure pleasure in comparison.

So why has this book developed such a fearsome reputation? Perhaps because we mistakenly think that to enjoy it, we need to have a thorough knowledge of the classics, including Shakespeare and Homer. The fact that I know very little about The Odyssey except that it recounts a long journey home made by Odysseus/Ulysses didn’t take from my enjoyment in the least. I’m not an expert on Hamlet either, but the little I know, and which most people probably know, was sufficient to allow me to follow the sections which refer to it. There are a few Old English phrases near the beginning that I googled but I soon decided to just let myself sink into the world of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus without further interruption.
Being able to read this without disruption is probably part of the reason I enjoyed the experience so much. When I bought my copy some fifteen years ago, I read about a third of it with great pleasure but as I had young children at the time and limited free moments, I had to give up when the reading experience became more challenging. And yes, it does become challenging in some parts, but never for very long, as if Joyce knew exactly how far he could try our patience.
As to deciphering those challenging sections, I think that one reader’s guess is as good as another’s. A big part of the pleasure for me was the puzzle element because I had plenty of time to reflect on what I was reading, time to figure out a meaning that satisfied me and also made sense of the bigger picture. And that’s what my reading without notes proved to me: there is a perfectly logical trajectory behind it all, even behind the more phantasmagorical elements. During the course of one day, Joyce reveals more and more facets of his main character, Leopold Bloom, and of the world he lived in. The characterisation of Bloom is so well done that by the end, he represents everyman, and every woman too, as well as messiahs and prophets, kings and emperors, in short all of humanity, complete with all of its goodness, and yes, some of its failings.
Of course, my interpretation may not be accurate and there may be acres of symbolism that I missed, but since I had such a satisfying read, how can that matter?
My satisfaction may have depended to some extent on the fact that I have an Irish background, but to what degree it helped me, I cannot tell. It is true that some of the material was familiar from history lessons and from general culture but at the same time, the Dublin of 1904 was a complete revelation to me. And the themes covered move quickly from the local to the universal so that a lack of knowledge of Irish life and culture shouldn’t be an impossible barrier, just a challenging one.
If you prefer exciting, stimulating, rewarding reading experiences, Ulysses might be the perfect book for you.
...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, irish, classics, literature, 20th-century, modern

Ulysses, James Joyce

Ulysses 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 ...more

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Jun 28, 2014 Kalliope rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, fiction-english, ireland, 2014, joycean

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 ...more

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Aug 12, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: voluminous, worshipped, pogue-mahone, novels

First, about the haste. This book is a page-turner. Forget Stephen King. Joyce is the man you read in bed, furiously tongue-fingering the pages to see what seminal modernist technique he invents, masters, inverts, spins on its head like a circus freak with a whirligig in his bonce. The first five episodes set the pace perfectly, setting the reader up for the all-singing all-dancing feats of outrageous showboating that follow in the remaining thirteen chapters, each adding a few Jenga blocks to t ...more

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Feb 16, 2015 Seemita rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mammoth, for_legacy, conversations, favorites, sharp_sword, ireland, alpha-meta-dig-a, cult, fiction

Some works are not written; they are lived. The authors write not with ink, but with breaths. Every breath that finds its way in, sucks in a piece of the world and releases it into the author’s being, letting it permeate, gauge, prod, absorb and contemplate, and packages it like a farewell gift onto the back of the breath being puffed out. And since the saga of this breath-taking game continues for a few years till the red starts blinking, we get a work that resembles distilled crystals, found a ...more

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May 07, 2013 Alex rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: farters and fartees

Shelves: books-about-hamlet, top-100, 2014, dick-lit, books-about-odysseus, rth-lifetime

You shouldn't read this. Almost no one should read this. People get mad when I say that. (Some people. Almost no one actually.) They think I'm dissing the book and I'm not, or at least not at that moment, although I don't particularly like it and I'm going to dis it soon. I'm not saying it's not a brilliant book though. If nothing else, it's definitely a brilliant book. I'm just saying almost no one should read it.

The reason is that it's the most difficult book in the canon: it's the K2 of lite ...more

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Oct 25, 2012 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: There's a tricky question

Shelves: older-men-younger-women, parody-homage, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, why-not-call-it-poetry, transcendent-experiences, life-is-joyce, not-the-whole-truth, mentions-twilight, well-i-think-its-funny, if-research-were-romance

(Geneva, late 2012. Plainpalais market, a riotous display of phallic vegetables, ill-smelling cheese and trash literature. THE REVIEWER and his GIRLFRIEND walk through the stalls hand in hand. Polyglot conversations around them.)

THE REVIEWER: Now here's a significant quote.
"My methods are new and are causing surprise
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes."

STANISLAW LEM: Mogę to rozwinąć.
MICHAEL KANDEL: I can give you more details on that.

SWEDISH SHOPPER: Hej! Jag kommer ifrån Bollestad ...more

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Jul 28, 2020 Greta rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, best-reviews

A novel to “keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant”- James Joyce.

In „Ulysses“ we follow one day, from morning to evening, in the life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin,1904. Parallel Stephen Dedalus is introduced, whom Bloom encounters several times over the course of the day, until they ultimately find together.

Leopold Bloom

Leopold Bloom (Milo O'Shea) in the 1967's movie of Ulysses

Leopold Bloom is the protagonist of the story and the Irish everyman, a thirty-eight-year-old Je ...more

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Mar 17, 2014 Renato rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-stars, 100-best-books-world-library, joyce, the-novel-100, 2014, reviewed, 1001

Like Odysseus was aided by his fellow men and gods on his quest to return to Ithaca after twenty years of absence, I, who feared so much tackling Ulysses all by myself, for its complexity amounted a reputation as big and powerful as the Trojan horse, I received great help from my fellow companionship from the Odysseus to Ulysses reading group, who contributed with information, different interpretations and perspectives - which without I might have failed at finishing - and that undoubtedly pushe ...more

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Aug 15, 2017 Mark André rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: novels-i

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

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Jan 20, 2010 Bram rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, 2010

I wanted to start out discussing the baggage that comes with reading this book and the challenge of attempting to reach a verdict on its quality in out-of-5-star form, let alone that of trying to write a coherent response. But unfortunately, I’ve already covered that intro ground with another review. But where I succeeded in not becoming a slobbering fanboy or prickish contrarian on that occasion, I have here, much to my own surprise, failed. During the early episodes of the book I felt like I ...more

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Aug 19, 2018 Manuel Antão rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1995

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Leopold Bloom, A Man For All Time: "Ulysses" by James Joyce

I started off thinking Ulysses was a pile of incoherent drivel, even though I'd never got past the first page. At 20 I would sit in the uni bar getting pissed and slagging off literary types and lecturers who mentioned it (some of them were pretentious posers; some of them weren't). At 30 I decided to put up or shut up by actually reading it so that I could explain why it was i ...more

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Jun 18, 2016 Amalia Gkavea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: european-literature, 20th-century, classics, european-culture, irish-culture, dublin, european-heritage, ireland, irish-literature

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”

16 June 1904. Leopold Bloom wanders the streets and places of Dublin. Around him, everything becomes a dream, a menace, an opportunity, a disappointment, a wrath. His mind filled with thoughts of Molly Bloom, his own (very different) Penelope. His path crosses with the ‘’heroes’’ of his own Irish Odyssey. I “Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”

16 June 1904. Leopold Bloom wanders the streets and places of Dublin. Around him, everything becomes a dream, a menace, an opportunity, a disappointment, a wrath. His mind filled with thoughts of Molly Bloom, his own (very different) Penelope. His path crosses with the ‘’heroes’’ of his own Irish Odyssey. Is he willing to escape the Lestrygonians and the Wandering Rocks? The Sirens and the Cyclops? The traps of Aeolus? The seductive hallucinations of Circe? The playful innocence of Nausicaa?

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

In the course of one day, from Sandycove to Howth Head, Leopold traces Dublin Bay, at the side of the demons in his head. In a novel that has become a symbol, a shrine of Modernism and the finest Experimental example, Joyce gives us the city adventures of a troubled soul, the interactions of the bourgeois man and the bohemian student. The outsider within the boundaries of a metropolis. The sights, the smells, the sounds of Dublin as Bloom walks on and on, the body of a man in close proximity and struggle within the body of the city that nurtures and swallows its residents. The monologues of desperation and dissolution (or are his illusions fed even more?) give food for the legends that now accompany Bloom’s wanderings. Every building, every local spot becomes a story within the story, a station and a port for Leopold’s withered ship. An Odyssey of Dublin from its pubs and houses to its hospitals and graveyards with rhapsodies of sex, fellowship, trust and betrayal in an era that changes.

Banned in the USA and other countries on the grounds of obscenity, Ulysses remains a mystery even today. In our modern era when scenes are reenacted on Bloomsday, James Joyce's masterpiece still troubles, hypnotizes and fascinates us.

“Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.word... ...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: masochists

Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by: sadists

Shelves: beach-reads, read-in-2012, you-should-read-this, own, brits, gr-group-coreads, my-reviews-that-dont-suck

Are you ready for it? Are you sure? Okay, well here it is!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuULcV...

I finished Ulysses! It took Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay 7 weeks to climb to the top of Mt. Everest. It took me 5 weeks to conquer Mt. Ulysses. After I finished, I threw the book on the table, ran out the door, down Kelly Drive, through the art museum circle, ran up the stairs, started punching at the air and raised my fists in victory!! And the world reJoyced!

Okay, so I didn’t really do ...more

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Oct 01, 2019 Matthew rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-list-2006-ed, lit-irish, 20th-century, favourites, read-2019

Now, I have a lot to say. Firstly, my reading of this book has been a secret. I say secret like anyone cared anyway. I didn’t take it out with me, I didn’t put it on Goodreads and I told none of my reader friends. I read it in bed late into the night and early in the morning.

I actually started Ulysses to get over heartbreak. I read in a book once about a man who had his heart broken so he translated the whole of Don Quixote to take his mind off things. As a four year relationship of mine ended a Now, I have a lot to say. Firstly, my reading of this book has been a secret. I say secret like anyone cared anyway. I didn’t take it out with me, I didn’t put it on Goodreads and I told none of my reader friends. I read it in bed late into the night and early in the morning.

I actually started Ulysses to get over heartbreak. I read in a book once about a man who had his heart broken so he translated the whole of Don Quixote to take his mind off things. As a four year relationship of mine ended and I suddenly felt like I was floating in a limbo with all this free time and sudden loneliness. So, on the 31st August, I picked up the hardest and most intimidating thing on my bookcase simply to occupy me, like translating Don Quixote. I had no intention or idea that I would ever finish it – especially not a month later, today, on the 1st October. It’s a shame September doesn’t have 31 days so it could have been the 31st to the 31st of the following month but 31st to the 1st still has a nice ring, I guess.

Before I talk about the book itself, I want to say one more thing. During my time at University, I, partly jokingly and partly not, hated on James Joyce. I read Dubliners and didn’t get along with it. My housemate started Ulysses so it became a joke between us to hate on it, and Joyce. It was the usual. God, he’s so arrogant! Who would even read it! It’s not even a novel! You can imagine us, in our early twenties, bumming around our student home, talking badly about Joyce. It’s where Martin Amis went wrong, being too young and talking badly about some literary greats. Some people hold their beliefs about Joyce though, there are some horribly negative (funnily so) reviews on Goodreads for this book. I’ve read them many times, before even reading the first page. We all know the most famous one: Life’s just too damn short to read Ulysses.

You can imagine my surprise then, as the pages were disappearing behind me and I wasn’t despising the book, not at all, I was enjoying it. There was a time near the beginning when I considered dropping it. There’s so many other things I want to read, what’s the point in sticking to this? I only picked it up in an emotional low, I didn’t really mean it. But then I thought, no, I’ve picked it up. Let’s see where this goes. Halfway through I was thinking, I want to try and get it done before Christmas. And then the pages kept flashing by. I began enjoying it more and more. Until, I read over one hundred pages yesterday and finished it in bed this morning.

My first thought on finishing? I want to go back and read the whole thing again. On reflection, all the most wildest images and scenes are returning to me? It’s like coming out of a stupor; it’s strange reading about one day in Dublin over a whole month of your life. So much happened to me and the characters were reflecting on things I read two weeks ago, but it was only their morning. I bring back the image of Buck Mulligan shaving in the beginning, or picking noses on the beach, or masturbating on the beach, or fireworks, lame legs, men becoming women and giving birth to eight children, dead mothers bursting in manifestation, Stephen getting knocked out in the street, the wandering rocks, the citizen, the phonetic sounds in the beginning of the Sirens… In other words, utter madness. But in all that madness (and me researching alongside the madness to check I’ve understood the madness) the strangest clarity. The strangest sense of understanding without possibly, truly understanding.

I recently had a poetry lecture by a lecturer well loved who comes out with the best lines and explanations, you can’t help but write them down. He said (on poetry):

“No one asks what classical music means, they just let it happen. People seem to think that they need to beat a confession out of a poem and if it doesn’t confess, it’s a bad poem. I would say to that, you’re just a bad torturer, and a bad reader.”

Partly, I think this is applicable to Ulysses. Of course, I’m not saying that if you don’t understand it or don’t read it or dislike it you’re a bad reader. No, never would I say that. But for me, the madness of Ulysses can sometimes be felt or perceived rather than wholly understood. I didn’t understand every single word, far from it, but it didn’t stop me enjoying the book, following the plot and the feelings of the characters. I’ve spent a long time saying many things about Joyce and I take a lot of them back, not all of them, but a lot of them. There’s no denying this novel is one of the greatest things ever written. As an aspiring writer it’s opened a million doorways in one novel about what’s possible. How did this come out of Joyce’s brain? How is this even possible? It seems extraordinary to look at the book now and know what it contains between it’s pages. It’s uncanny. A script within a novel? A question and answer during a novel? Bursting into the dreams and the subconscious of characters, a chapter with no punctuation, and all those made-up words. It is, really, a masterpiece. And if you know me, it’s surprising that I would say that. My favourite two episodes by far were Circe and Ithaca. The book gets considerably both harder and more enjoyable towards the end. Some chapters I didn’t care for as much, but that’s the same with all books, right?

So, I haven’t given it five stars because it’s Ulysses. I’ve given it five stars because it is a feat, whether you like it or not. It’s one of the most ambitious things I’ve ever read and Joyce created this, came up this, made this world, this single day, out of only words. It also shows me the power of words, that literally anything is possible. Maybe, only if you’re as smart as Joyce though.

To those who want to read it, I would say just try. I’m no holy scholar. I’m just a twenty-two year old guy from the south of England. Let your mind open its pores and let Ulysses in. It’s worth it. It's mad and funny and powerful and original and it has changed my writing too. I now understand how Ulysses has changed the world of novels forever. I just want the whole thing to start over from the beginning. And two months ago I could never imagine reading more than ten pages of it. Ulysses is a masterpiece. Joyce, I’m sorry about what I’ve said in the past. I was wrong. And that’s something I never admit to being: wrong. ...more

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About James Joyce

James Joyce

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James Joyce, Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusions James Joyce, Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusions.

James Joyce was born in Dublin, on February 2, 1882, the eldest of ten surviving siblings, two other died of typhoid. His father was John Stanislaus Joyce, an impoverished gentleman, who had failed in a distillery business and tried all kinds of other professions, including politics and tax collecting. Joyce's mother, Mary Jane Murray, was an accomplished pianist, whose life was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. In spite of their poverty, the family struggled to maintain a solid middle-class facade.

From the age of six Joyce, was educated by Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College, at Clane, and then at Belvedere College in Dublin (1893-97). In 1898 he entered the University College, Dublin. Joyce's first publication was an essay on Ibsen's play When We Dead Awaken. It appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1900. At this time he also began writing lyric poems.

After graduation in 1902 the twenty-year-old Joyce went to Paris, where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in other occupations under difficult financial conditions. He spent a year in France, returning when a telegram arrived saying his mother was dying. Not long after her death, Joyce was traveling again. He left Dublin in 1904 with Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid who he married in 1931.

Joyce published Dubliners in 1914, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, a play Exiles in 1918 and Ulysses in 1922. In 1907 Joyce had published a collection of poems, Chamber Music.

At the outset of the First World War, Joyce moved with his family to Zürich. In Zürich Joyce started to develop the early chapters of Ulysses, which was first published in France because of censorship troubles in the Great Britain and the United States, where the book became legally available only in 1933. In March 1923 Joyce started in Paris his second major work, Finnegans Wake, suffering at the same time chronic eye troubles caused by glaucoma. The first segment of the novel appeared in Ford Madox Ford's transatlantic review in April 1924, as part of what Joyce called Work in Progress. The final version was published in 1939.

Some critics considered the work a masterpiece, though many readers found it incomprehensible. After the fall of France in World War II, Joyce returned to Zürich, where he died on January 13, 1941, still disappointed with the reception of Finnegans Wake. ...more