House of Ulysses

by Julián Ríos, Nick Caistor (Translator)

Julián Ríos's latest comic extravaganza is at once a serious literary excavation and a lecture as delivered by Groucho Marx on the subject of that great (and often imposing) cornerstone of world literature: James Joyce's Ulysses. Every book is born out of an earlier book (or books), and much as Joyce's novel unraveled Homer scene by scene, Ríos's The House of Ulysses returns the favor, giving us the story of several bickering characters hoping to get to the bottom of Joyce's masterpiece (by force, if necessary) -- their conversation walking the line between a slapstick parody of the Joyce industry and a legitimate guide for the perplexed. Focusing on each of Ulysses's characters, ideas, and references in turn, The House of Ulysses provides a playful, punning, ideal companion for the experienced Joycean and cautious procrastinator alike: one novel dreaming its way through another.

Genres: Spain, Spanish Literature, Novels, Literature

265 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Julián Ríos (born Vigo, Galicia, 1941) is a Spanish writer, most frequently classified as a postmodernist, whom Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes has called "the most inventive and creative" of Spanish-language writers. His first two books were written à deux with Octavio Paz.

His best known work, experimental and heavily influenced by the verbal inventiveness of James Joyce, was published in 1983 under the title Larva.

Julián Ríos currently lives and works in France, on the outskirts of Paris

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically what happens if you are extremely talented but also have a penchant for liking fan-fiction-y, Goodreads-eque reviews. This is a niche book that will only be enjoyable if you have read Ulysses, have enjoyed Ulysses, have looked into some literary explorations of Ulysses, and plan to re-read Ulysses. It’s just some nothing characters (a few of whom are called “A”, “B”, and “C”) “discussing” the book, but it reads like 4-5 people trying to outdo each other with Joyce trivia. At very few points in the book is something that a character says actually taken in by another character, but that’s just the name of the game. If you like reading tidbits about the book and haven’t read a combination of Harry Blamires’s The New Bloomsday Book and Patrick Hastings’s The Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses, then this will be a breath of fresh air.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ríos’s soi-distant novel reads as if Harry Blamires’s indispensable Bloomsday Book had mated with a trendy Spanish pomowerk. A professor and three students (A, B, and C) discuss Ulysses in chapter-by-chapter college-course breakdown form, punning along the way with merriment and imitating each of the stylistic quirks that makes Joyce’s novel such a pleasure to disappear into. Ríos seems more interested in trivia and scholarship than the fiction-making mischief as incorrectly described on the blurb, so readers seeking a Joycean fiction will be disappointed by Ríos kneeling at the altar of JJ and sacrificing his play for pedantry. A must for Ulysseizers, who may experience a Ulysseizure.

Bragging bonus:

*1000TH BOOK READ ON GOODREADS*

I AWARD MYSELF £555,555!

THANKS, ME!

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it a novel? The House of Ulysses is labeled a novel on the cover and title page of my edition. I'm not sure it is, though. There's little story except that of the Joyce novel itself. The only narrative movement is that which follows the course of the novel famously paralleling the Odyssey. There are characters: a professor named Ludwig Jones, a mysterious Macintosh man who seems to correspond to the mystery man of Dublin on that first Bloomsday, except this one carries a Macintosh computer, a mature reader, a young woman, an old critic, and a museum guide. We follow these characters as they walk through the Martello Tower, famous as the site of the opening chapter of Ulysses and now the site of Dublin's James Joyce Museum. As The House of Ulysses progresses, the characters stroll from point to point in the museum, each exhibit corresponding to a chapter of Ulysses. The novel is made up of a detailed summary of each chapter of the novel as the characters discuss it, followed by sections called "Passageways" which, as the word suggests, offer additional information indicating ways of understanding. Often the Rios chapter will be written in the same style as the Joyce chapter. Whatever it is, it's fun. And it's interesting from first page to last. The language is Joycean, as you might expect, full of double entendres, verbal mischief and magic, puns, and meaningful information about the intricacies of Joyce's work, including occasional mentions of Finnegans Wake and Dubliners. I don't know if readers not familiar with Ulysses would be engaged by the Rios novel. For those of us who are, some of the interpretative material and glosses will be old news, but much of it will be new. That makes The House of Ulysses a fascinating, valuable read, whether we already understood a particular facet of the diamond or not, because Ulysses is one of those novels we'll never get to the bottom of.

[Tonymess · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fiction about a fiction!

Author Julián Ríos, in an interview published on the Dalkey Archive website, when asked about his influences, spoke about James Joyce and “Ulysses”, he said; “I published a fiction-essay or kind of meta-novel on this masterpiece, Casa Ulises”, that work was translated by Nick Caistor, and published in 2010, appearing as “The House of Ulysses”.

A novel that is a physical and mental tour through James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, we are guided through the “house” by;

Our Cicerone in rigorous black with a purple polka-dot bow tie, long-legged and pallid, white streaks in chestnut hair smoother back with brilliantine, a blind man’s glasses, a straggly moustache. Like an ice-skater or Fredasteric dance he glided across the Museum’s wide black-and-white checkerboard floor.

The touring party, through the House of Ulysses, includes our narrator, who simply observes and reports to us, three readers;

carrying (each one, one each) a volume of the monumental illustrated edition of Ulysses in three parts: a lanky gent with a white-flecked beard wearing prehistoric white overalls; to his left, the slender form of a dark-haired girl poured into a pair of white shorts, cropped hair and laughing black eyes (“Eyes full of night”) over the indigo “Ulysses Museum” T-shirt, fronted and back-sided by Joyce; to her left, a few paces away, wrapped in a grayish coat with bulging pockets, the tiny old man with white locks and crackling breath, sucking on an extinguished pipe.
The mature reader (did she call him Ananias?), the young female reader (Babel or Belle?), and the old critic. Let’s call them A, B, and C, for short.

And lurking in the background is a “beanpole unanimously baptized as the “man with the Macintosh” (a Macintosh computer, that is)”. These five characters, Cicerone, A, B, C and the man with the Macintosh are our prime debaters throughout this homage.

For my full review go to https://messybooker.wordpress.com/201...

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the back cover copy, The House of Ulysses claims to provide "a playful, punning, ideal companion for the experienced Joycean and cautious procrastinator alike." I have to respectfully disagree with the copyeditor at Dalkey Archive Press and suggest that you really won't get anything out of this book without having read Joyce's masterpiece first—even if you only really picked up 38% of it the first time through like I probably did. I expected Ríos's book to be more of its own unique novel, but in fact it reads like sitting in on a book club of 5 Joyceans discussing Ulysses chapter by chapter. There's nothing wrong with that, of course—I still had a great time with it—but this book just won't do anything for "cautious procrastinators." In any case, it was a fun read, and reminded me just how frustrating, complex, obscene, incredible, and fun Ulysses is. Another winner from my favorite publisher, Dalkey Archive Press down in Champaign.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sr. Rios provides good work, but the consumer should ask about specifics before the Spaniard takes to task. In fact, get it in writing. House of Ulysses isn't novel at all. There is a single flourish where Rios upends the Nausicaa episode and conveys the images from a reverse angle. Otherwise the tome is an analysis of Joyce's novel, overflowing with puns and free associations. While amusing, House of Ulysses isn't really an object of focus.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it a novel? It doesn't matter: it's a lot of fun for Joyce readers -- familiarity with, at least a reading of, his Ulysses necessary. In case that occurred some time ago, The Man with the Mac(intosh computer) is on hand, nerdishly silent but pulling up the schemata of the book as we enter each room/chapter.

But it's not an analysis of Ulysses and those who consider themselves deeply into that magnificent work of Joyce's shouldn't expect to get new ideas for or against any views they may hold -- not directly, at any rate. Rather, The House of Ulysses is an appreciation of, a homage to, Joyce's last fairly narrative work (the narrative in Finnegans Wake is surely not fair), along with an appreciation and perhaps even a homage also to the tremendous variety of readers who each find his or her own interest and pleasure in the work.

The house of Ulysses through which this books takes us is something like a museum, but with nothing, no objects, in any of the rooms (one for each chapter plus entrance and exit areas), which might be an indication of what Julian Rios expects of his readers, and which satisfies the readers on the tour represented in the work itself.

That Rios's first language isn't English and that The House of Ulysses is translated (invisibly) from Spanish, beautifully testifies to the universal appeal of the work whose house we're visiting. But most of all, one can only repeat that it's a lot of fun -- relax and enjoy it -- it's a lovely Joycean Ulysses Museyroom: mind your head going in!

[Jim Leckband · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ineluctable modality of the listicle:

▪ "The House of Ulysses" is at once a walkthrough of Ulysses, a pastiche of Ulysses, a commentary on Ulysses, and a commentary on walkthroughs of Ulysses. Joyce would approve.
▪ There really is no point to picking up this book for those who have not read the primary work.
▪ Ríos is as playful as Joyce, but not nearly as inscrutable. There does not need to be a cottage industry of books explaining "The House of Ulysses" as there is for "Ulysses".
▪ Mkgnao!
▪ Mrkgnao!
▪ Mrkgrnao!
▪ Reading this book 30 years after the primary text as well as a bookshelf of Joyce books, I was surprised at how entertained I was. It was almost like I was the intended audience...

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "The House of Ulysses," translated by Nick Caistor (Dalkey Archive: 280 pp., $14.95 paper), Spanish novelist Julián Ríos offers a guide that endeavors to entertain rather than educate. In an interview published in the literary magazine Context, he describes "The House of Ulysses" as "a fiction-essay or kind of meta-novel."

Ríos' main character, referred to as the Cicerone, a guide, leads a group of visitors through the book's 18 chambers, one for each chapter of "Ulysses." Dressed "in rigorous black with a purple polka-dot bow-tie, long-legged and pallid, white streaks in chestnut hair smoothed back with brilliantine, a blind man's glasses, a straggly mustache," the Cicerone is a stand-in for Joyce himself: part carnival barker, part scholar.

Other characters include the portly professor Ludwig Jones, an "Orsonwellian Falstaff about to burst the seams of his lizard-green tweed suit" and a man with a Macintosh computer, a play on one of "Ulysses' " most enduring mysteries — a character who shows up in various scenes and is identified only as "the man in the Macintosh." The group is rounded out by a trio of readers: a mature fellow named Ananias, a young woman named Babel or Belle with "laughing black eyes" who affects a "Ulysses Museum" T-shirt, and a fusty old Critic. Ríos' readers may recognize these characters from his postmodernist mega-work, "Larva: A Mid-Summer Night's Babel." But in "The House of Ulysses," the readers are addressed simply as A, B and C.

A typical "room" includes a brief summary of the corresponding chapter in "Ulysses" by the Cicerone, some scholarship from the Professor, the schema that Joyce provided early critics courtesy of the man with the Macintosh, and some playful punning from the troika of readers. Then the Cicerone proceeds through "passageways" that consist of short, discursive reflections on various aspects of the novel.

"The House of Ulysses," though rigidly structured, has no plot. The characters, such as they are, serve as devices to animate an extended conversation about the book in a way that captures the spirit of Joyce's jouissance, introduces the reader to rudimentary background information necessary for deciphering the novel (Homer's "Odyssey," for instance, or Shakespeare's "Hamlet") and engages in considerable wordplay. Here's an early exchange regarding Stephen Dedalus in Chapter 3, the point where many readers move on:

Professor Jones was close to roaring. What's in a name? LEOpold is feline, just as Stephen is canine. "Dogsbody," Mulligan calls him.

It also means servile, said C.

A vile sir? asked B.

Vile is evil as dog is God. The body of God: Godsbody? asked A.

The result is a work of criticism, albeit in disguise, that succeeds in making "Ulysses" immediate to readers familiar with the book and accessible to those reading it for the first time. "It is an easy house to run," Ríos writes, and a fun house too, and I strongly recommend it to those unable to finish "Ulysses."

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like how this book starts, the way the first sentence takes you immediately into a place of questions or uncertainty or play: "Step inside and take a look, or perhaps he said a book, sweeping his magic wand in a semicircle in front of him" (3). The story is structured as a walk through a museum about James Joyce, or maybe it's a whole museum just about Joyce's Ulysses. We move through the museum—and Joyce's work—along with our narrator and the tour group he's part of: the bow-tied museum guide, a loud American professor, a quiet man with a laptop, and three "readers" (two men and a younger woman) called A, B, and C, who seem, maybe, or maybe not, to work with the museum. After the museum guide gives an outline of Homer's Odyssey, a reminder of its sections and structure, we move straight into Joyce's Ulysses: Buck Mulligan and the Martello tower, then Mr. Deasy's school and the history lesson Stephen gives there, and so on, through the book. The characters all put forth their own interpretations of Joyce's plot and how it relates to Homer, their own ideas about what the right way(s) to read Joyce's work are—the autobiographical or not, the emphasis on Dublin vs. the emphasis on the structure provided by Homer's work, etc. There's lots of wordplay amidst the quibbling, particularly in short sections at the end of the chapters called Passageways: passages like this:

They all burst out laughing, said the Cicerone, when one of Stephen's pupils tells him Pyrrhus was a pier.
A pyrrhic pirouette that gives Stephen an empirical victory over the dock of the bay, said A.
Encore "pier," said B the Francophone. (43)

I like the wordplay, and I like how this book often imitates the style of Joyce's,—a chapter with the questions and answers of a catechism, a stream of consciousness chapter like Molly's monologue—though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say, as the back cover puts it, that the characters' conversations consist of "walking the line between a slapstick parody of the Joyce industry and a legitimate "guide for the perplexed"": it's playful and funny, yes, but the humor is more subtle than what I would call parodic. I did appreciate the book's steadiness as a guide: it's been six years or so since I read Ulysses in college (and OK, confession, I didn't finish it—we were supposed to finish it up just before finals week and it just was not happening—I did read most of it, though) but I never felt lost or overwhelmed while reading The House of Ulysses. I think Ríos's book probably works best if you have read at least some of Joyce's Ulysses, but even if you hadn't, I still don't think you'd be too lost, and this book might provide some inspiration to go read (or re-read) Joyce, to experience for yourself Joyce's telling of a day in the life of Dublin, Stephen Dedalus, and Leopold Bloom.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd like to think that there's more to Ulysses than insufferable puns and self-contained correspondences, but I suppose I could be wrong.