Manny’s review of Ulysses > Likes and Comments
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No! Don't read this! Who told you to do this? You should tell that sucka to back right off, brotha.
Be sure to have Ulysses Annotated by Gifford alongside...it is a running catalogue of all the obscure references Joyce makes in Ulysses. A trusty friend for your arduous journey.
Actually The Bloomsday Book is probably a better companion for a first read, unless you want to understand all the references right away and be the Master of Knowledge.
You have to! I referred to the Wikipedia chapter summaries to tell me what was happening. With as well-read a dude as you are, I'm sure you'll have more fun working out the rest yourself :-)
MJ wrote: "Actually The Bloomsday Book is probably a better companion for a first read, unless you want to understand all the references right away and be the Master of Knowledge."
Seconded. As Gifford acknowledges, much of the annotations is involved with sweeping aside all the street furniture, that one not get too distracted with how "meaningful" every little detail is. It's not required for general comprehension for which the Blamires' is fantastic. Gifford is more the encyclopedia or archival catalog than a reader's guide.
Manny, the thing that really worked for me was buying the Audible.com audio book and listening and reading at the same time. The narrator (Jim Norton) nailed it and his different voices helped me understand who the heck was supposed to be talking. Marcella Riordan's narration of the last chapter (the only time Molly speaks) was brilliant. Anyway, I loved the book but was stalled many times before I tried the reading/listening method.
Thanks for all the advice, everyone! I have just ordered a copy of Blamires from Abebooks.
The Blamires, for me, was helpful, but also in many ways stated the obvious. Gifford's book really helped me to embed the book into its cultural context.
Probably not a useful comment, pardon me if that's the case.
From I comment I left on Good Reads Ireland a few months ago when they were reading this book:
So, about Ulysses. I read the book when I was much younger, probably in my early 20s, and enjoyed it immensely. At the time I had purchased three guides to the work (Stuart Gilbert, Richard Kain, and William York Tindall), and often consulted these as I was reading. Probably overkill, but I can assure you that this did not decrease my enjoyment of the book, quite the opposite.
If any of you can look at a copy of Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan, I would certainly suggest that you take a look at what he says about Ulysses. (I would love to type the whole two pages from the book, but can't bring myself to put that much effort into this post.) But I will try to give a flavor of what he says.
He starts off by making "five simple statements" about what a large majority of "intelligent critics" believe about the book. These range from
1. It is probably the most completely organized, thought-out work of literature since The Divine Comedy.
to
5. Unlike its original, The Odyssey, it is not an open book. It yields its secrets only to those willing to work, just as Beethoven's last quartets reveal new riches the longer they are studied.
Others statements claim that it is the most influential work of fiction of the 20th century; it is not "pessimistic', and "It broke not one trail, but hundreds."
These are followed by three suggestions: read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man first; read a good commentary first (he recommends Edmund Wilson, Stuart Gilbert & Anthony Burgess); "Don't try to get every reference ... get what you can, then put it aside for a year".
He finishes by listing four of Joyce's purposes: to trace as completely as possible the thoughts and doings of a number of Dubliners on a single day; to trace virtually completely those of Bloom and Daedalus; to give the book a form paralleling that of Homer's work; and "To invent or develop whatever new techniques were needed for his monumental task".
Hi Ted! I have been thinking about your comments while reading. I should have more to say when I am further along...
Ted wrote: "put it aside for a year"
What a piece of sheer numbskullery. Get really enthusiastic about reading it, then just totally forget about it for a year and then have to read all the commentaries again to refresh your memory. Oh yeah. Nice.
It actually annoys me when people* are so gung-ho about how you read Ulysses. Just enjoy the beautiful beast and have a guide handy.
*Not you Ted, you're only the messenger
[Edit: this comment wasn't supposed to sound aggressive, more coolly peevish]
Well, I take it that Fadiman was attempting to offer advice because of the difficulty that a lot of people have in reading (ie, actually finishing) Ulysses. If you take a look at the GR Ireland comment thread for the quarterly read they had earlier this year of Ulysses, you will find that several of the members did indeed give up on the book; and many of those left very negative comments about it. So it's not an easy read for everyone, and Fadiman was apparently trying to give some encouraging words, believing as he obviously did that it was a piece of 20th century literature that was truly ground-breaking and worth some extra effort.
Naturally there are people who find it interesting and pleasurable enough to just sail (or slog) through it without needing his advice. :)
Once you are done with Ulysses I would warmly recommend "Strändernas svall" by Eyvind Johnson. I might have mentioned it before but it is to my mind the best novel written in Swedish, a(mother) re-writing of the Odyssey, but you can't get too much Homer! :)
not (mother), but (nother)
darn autocorrection
Joseph wrote: "Once you are done with Ulysses I would warmly recommend "Strändernas svall" by Eyvind Johnson."
Sorry, I didn't notice your post at once. Best novel in Swedish! That is a high recommendation. Better than Röde Orm? Anyway, I will check it out, thank you!
I suppose it is a little daring, but one has to put one's nose out sometime. It is of course subjective, but I think I can substantiate it quite well, except for that I haven't read a massive amount of Swedish novels, but a least many of our perceived 'classics' and this together with Selma Lagerlöf (Jerusalem) and Hjalmar Bergman (Markurells i Wadköping, Farmor och vår Herre och Cliwen Jac) are my favorites. Contemporary author, Sigrid Combüchen, Spill.
Mostly thumbs up, but every now and then I get a couple of pages that make no sense at all without referring to Blamires, and I temporarily lose faith. But damn it, the guy does write some fine Irish prose.
Joseph wrote: "I suppose it is a little daring, but one has to put one's nose out sometime. It is of course subjective, but I think I can substantiate it quite well, except for that I haven't read a massive amoun..."
I think you've sold me. I am also a big fan of Jerusalem, by the way!
Well if you look at what Fadiman said, he wasn't comparing Ulysses to the quartets, but rather comparing a level of commitment in reading the book to a level of commitment in listening to the music.
![s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1735525095p1/6431467.jpg)
Goddamn, this is brilliant. 'Well ployed'. For anybody still on the fence whether to read this book or not, this should push them over as it is now worth reading Ulysses just to get some of the jokes in here. Great stuff. I'm quite glad you gave 5 big shining stars to it as well, I've been eagerly reading your status updates on this one.
s.penkevich wrote: " worth reading Ulysses "
?????
Doesn't a nice pair of breasts deserve a fully-fledged sonnet?
Moonbutterfly wrote: "::: runs fast out of thread :::: hehe"
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quote...
I actually wrote a response to Manny's sonnet on the original thread, but I can't remember where it is. (It wasn't as good as his though.) Manny might remember.
Thank you again s.penk! If it's not clear, my real goal with this review is to get people to read Stephen Potter.
Brilliant. A fine pair of reviews, Manny.
Thank you Sarah! BTW, if you haven't read Lem's Gigamesh, it's a very funny satire on the book which I'd never properly appreciated before. There's an online version here.
Stephen Potter it is then. Your shelf 'people who want to become better assholes' sold it ha.
Nathan "N.R." wrote: "s.penkevich wrote: " worth reading Ulysses "
?????"
Okay, good point, Ulysses is so amazing that I consider it required reading regardless.
I think Gamesmanship and Lifemanship are about equally good, after that it declines. I must also reread them in fact!
Okay, I'm going to try it again, but with the benefit of some of the various forms of guidance everyone is suggesting. I have finished it before, but I got so lost along the way that I could barely find my way back.
What a superb review. More enjoyable than almost anything I have read in a long time, including some pretty decent pieces of literature (and s.penkevich's review of Tor Ulven’s “Replacement.”)
Thank you Stilletto! As you can see, I had fun writing it :)
Sorry . . . which book were you reviewing again?
Honestly. I provide in-depth commentary and everything, and you ask a question like that?
Like, how many Goodreads reviews even have a critical exegesis? Let alone one that's a page long. I spent time on that you know! I had to figure out what I meant, and it wasn't easy!
Oh! Is that what it was? I thought it was the script for a reality tv docudrama.
It could be that too! Joyce is very ambiguous you know. Critical exegesis by day, reality TV docudrama by night!
But...but...but...I thought Ulysses was the reality tv docudrama.
I give up. These po-mo effulgences illuminating seminal modernist literature are simply beyond my capacity to comprehend.
It's pretty simple really. Everything refers to everything else, and also to itself. Not much more to it.
Oh no, you don't. That's just another one of these new-fangled Grand Unified Theories. Next you'll be stating that literature is matter and reviews are the bastard offspring of antimatter and dark matter.
Well, Scribble, you certainly have a way with words (serious understatement), along with the capacity to be hilarious in terms surrounding a book I could barely understand without any help whatsoever.
Thanks for the smiles and the truly enjoyable need (opportunity) to re-read your comments.
I am going to be presumptuous enough to send you a friend invite; I won't add a message, because this comment is it.
AthleticStilletto wrote: "Well, Scribble, you certainly have a way with words (serious understatement), along with the capacity to be hilarious in terms surrounding a book I could barely understand without any help whatsoev..."
You overwhelm me, AthleticStilletto. It's really the company (see above) I keep that is responsible for any outbursts, hilarious or otherwise. But inciting bouts of risibility in readers is always a plus.
Manny,
I have finally finished re-reading Ulysses (thanks for the inspiration). Oy vey.
As I think I may have previously mentioned to you in a comment, or, perhaps, in a PM, my plan was to use Cliff's Notes for support rather than relying on one of the various interpretive references suggested above. As it turned out, I garnered the most assistance by reading Ulysses simultaneously with Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot," which was me !
Stilletto, I am delighted if my silly review got you to re-read it! Now you have to get someone else to do the same thing. Sooner or later, everyone in the world will have read this uniquely crazy book :)
Hilarious! And, might I add, more understandable than Ulysses? And I laughed out loud at Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's appearances :D
Thank you Rowena! Though I'm sorry it was so comprehensible. I hope the notes convinced you that you hadn't really understood it at all?
If you didn't recognize it, the Twilight quote is genuine - near the beginning of Nausicaa.
Haha:D I just went back to re-read it and I noticed E.L. James' cameo! Too funny :)
Do you know, the really weird thing about writing this review was that I didn't realize how many Easter eggs I'd put in until I added the notes. Unless my subconscious was being extremely clever, E.L. James/Elijah and Carouge/le bel houx/Christ's blood were just lucky coincidences. It did make me wonder a bit about how much one can trust the commentaries.
Hey want to read this book but I reckon its not an easy read. I understand that a lot of people read it along with Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford. What would you suggest?
I read it with The Bloomsday Book - that certainly helped :)
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MJ
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Oct 26, 2012 03:30AM
No! Don't read this! Who told you to do this? You should tell that sucka to back right off, brotha.
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Be sure to have Ulysses Annotated by Gifford alongside...it is a running catalogue of all the obscure references Joyce makes in Ulysses. A trusty friend for your arduous journey.
Actually The Bloomsday Book is probably a better companion for a first read, unless you want to understand all the references right away and be the Master of Knowledge.
You have to! I referred to the Wikipedia chapter summaries to tell me what was happening. With as well-read a dude as you are, I'm sure you'll have more fun working out the rest yourself :-)
MJ wrote: "Actually The Bloomsday Book is probably a better companion for a first read, unless you want to understand all the references right away and be the Master of Knowledge."Seconded. As Gifford acknowledges, much of the annotations is involved with sweeping aside all the street furniture, that one not get too distracted with how "meaningful" every little detail is. It's not required for general comprehension for which the Blamires' is fantastic. Gifford is more the encyclopedia or archival catalog than a reader's guide.
Manny, the thing that really worked for me was buying the Audible.com audio book and listening and reading at the same time. The narrator (Jim Norton) nailed it and his different voices helped me understand who the heck was supposed to be talking. Marcella Riordan's narration of the last chapter (the only time Molly speaks) was brilliant. Anyway, I loved the book but was stalled many times before I tried the reading/listening method.
Thanks for all the advice, everyone! I have just ordered a copy of Blamires from Abebooks.
The Blamires, for me, was helpful, but also in many ways stated the obvious. Gifford's book really helped me to embed the book into its cultural context.
Probably not a useful comment, pardon me if that's the case.From I comment I left on Good Reads Ireland a few months ago when they were reading this book:
So, about Ulysses. I read the book when I was much younger, probably in my early 20s, and enjoyed it immensely. At the time I had purchased three guides to the work (Stuart Gilbert, Richard Kain, and William York Tindall), and often consulted these as I was reading. Probably overkill, but I can assure you that this did not decrease my enjoyment of the book, quite the opposite.
If any of you can look at a copy of Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan, I would certainly suggest that you take a look at what he says about Ulysses. (I would love to type the whole two pages from the book, but can't bring myself to put that much effort into this post.) But I will try to give a flavor of what he says.
He starts off by making "five simple statements" about what a large majority of "intelligent critics" believe about the book. These range from
1. It is probably the most completely organized, thought-out work of literature since The Divine Comedy.
to
5. Unlike its original, The Odyssey, it is not an open book. It yields its secrets only to those willing to work, just as Beethoven's last quartets reveal new riches the longer they are studied.
Others statements claim that it is the most influential work of fiction of the 20th century; it is not "pessimistic', and "It broke not one trail, but hundreds."
These are followed by three suggestions: read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man first; read a good commentary first (he recommends Edmund Wilson, Stuart Gilbert & Anthony Burgess); "Don't try to get every reference ... get what you can, then put it aside for a year".
He finishes by listing four of Joyce's purposes: to trace as completely as possible the thoughts and doings of a number of Dubliners on a single day; to trace virtually completely those of Bloom and Daedalus; to give the book a form paralleling that of Homer's work; and "To invent or develop whatever new techniques were needed for his monumental task".
Hi Ted! I have been thinking about your comments while reading. I should have more to say when I am further along...
Ted wrote: "put it aside for a year"What a piece of sheer numbskullery. Get really enthusiastic about reading it, then just totally forget about it for a year and then have to read all the commentaries again to refresh your memory. Oh yeah. Nice.
It actually annoys me when people* are so gung-ho about how you read Ulysses. Just enjoy the beautiful beast and have a guide handy.
*Not you Ted, you're only the messenger
[Edit: this comment wasn't supposed to sound aggressive, more coolly peevish]
Well, I take it that Fadiman was attempting to offer advice because of the difficulty that a lot of people have in reading (ie, actually finishing) Ulysses. If you take a look at the GR Ireland comment thread for the quarterly read they had earlier this year of Ulysses, you will find that several of the members did indeed give up on the book; and many of those left very negative comments about it. So it's not an easy read for everyone, and Fadiman was apparently trying to give some encouraging words, believing as he obviously did that it was a piece of 20th century literature that was truly ground-breaking and worth some extra effort.Naturally there are people who find it interesting and pleasurable enough to just sail (or slog) through it without needing his advice. :)
Once you are done with Ulysses I would warmly recommend "Strändernas svall" by Eyvind Johnson. I might have mentioned it before but it is to my mind the best novel written in Swedish, a(mother) re-writing of the Odyssey, but you can't get too much Homer! :)
not (mother), but (nother)darn autocorrection
Joseph wrote: "Once you are done with Ulysses I would warmly recommend "Strändernas svall" by Eyvind Johnson."Sorry, I didn't notice your post at once. Best novel in Swedish! That is a high recommendation. Better than Röde Orm? Anyway, I will check it out, thank you!
I suppose it is a little daring, but one has to put one's nose out sometime. It is of course subjective, but I think I can substantiate it quite well, except for that I haven't read a massive amount of Swedish novels, but a least many of our perceived 'classics' and this together with Selma Lagerlöf (Jerusalem) and Hjalmar Bergman (Markurells i Wadköping, Farmor och vår Herre och Cliwen Jac) are my favorites. Contemporary author, Sigrid Combüchen, Spill.
Mostly thumbs up, but every now and then I get a couple of pages that make no sense at all without referring to Blamires, and I temporarily lose faith. But damn it, the guy does write some fine Irish prose.
Joseph wrote: "I suppose it is a little daring, but one has to put one's nose out sometime. It is of course subjective, but I think I can substantiate it quite well, except for that I haven't read a massive amoun..."I think you've sold me. I am also a big fan of Jerusalem, by the way!
Well if you look at what Fadiman said, he wasn't comparing Ulysses to the quartets, but rather comparing a level of commitment in reading the book to a level of commitment in listening to the music.
Goddamn, this is brilliant. 'Well ployed'. For anybody still on the fence whether to read this book or not, this should push them over as it is now worth reading Ulysses just to get some of the jokes in here. Great stuff. I'm quite glad you gave 5 big shining stars to it as well, I've been eagerly reading your status updates on this one.
s.penkevich wrote: " worth reading Ulysses "?????
Doesn't a nice pair of breasts deserve a fully-fledged sonnet?
Moonbutterfly wrote: "::: runs fast out of thread :::: hehe"http://www.goodreads.com/author/quote...
I actually wrote a response to Manny's sonnet on the original thread, but I can't remember where it is. (It wasn't as good as his though.) Manny might remember.
Thank you again s.penk! If it's not clear, my real goal with this review is to get people to read Stephen Potter.
Brilliant. A fine pair of reviews, Manny.
Thank you Sarah! BTW, if you haven't read Lem's Gigamesh, it's a very funny satire on the book which I'd never properly appreciated before. There's an online version here.
Stephen Potter it is then. Your shelf 'people who want to become better assholes' sold it ha.Nathan "N.R." wrote: "s.penkevich wrote: " worth reading Ulysses "
?????"
Okay, good point, Ulysses is so amazing that I consider it required reading regardless.
I think Gamesmanship and Lifemanship are about equally good, after that it declines. I must also reread them in fact!
Okay, I'm going to try it again, but with the benefit of some of the various forms of guidance everyone is suggesting. I have finished it before, but I got so lost along the way that I could barely find my way back.What a superb review. More enjoyable than almost anything I have read in a long time, including some pretty decent pieces of literature (and s.penkevich's review of Tor Ulven’s “Replacement.”)
Thank you Stilletto! As you can see, I had fun writing it :)
Sorry . . . which book were you reviewing again?
Honestly. I provide in-depth commentary and everything, and you ask a question like that?
Like, how many Goodreads reviews even have a critical exegesis? Let alone one that's a page long. I spent time on that you know! I had to figure out what I meant, and it wasn't easy!
Oh! Is that what it was? I thought it was the script for a reality tv docudrama.
It could be that too! Joyce is very ambiguous you know. Critical exegesis by day, reality TV docudrama by night!
But...but...but...I thought Ulysses was the reality tv docudrama.I give up. These po-mo effulgences illuminating seminal modernist literature are simply beyond my capacity to comprehend.
It's pretty simple really. Everything refers to everything else, and also to itself. Not much more to it.
Oh no, you don't. That's just another one of these new-fangled Grand Unified Theories. Next you'll be stating that literature is matter and reviews are the bastard offspring of antimatter and dark matter.
Well, Scribble, you certainly have a way with words (serious understatement), along with the capacity to be hilarious in terms surrounding a book I could barely understand without any help whatsoever.Thanks for the smiles and the truly enjoyable need (opportunity) to re-read your comments.
I am going to be presumptuous enough to send you a friend invite; I won't add a message, because this comment is it.
AthleticStilletto wrote: "Well, Scribble, you certainly have a way with words (serious understatement), along with the capacity to be hilarious in terms surrounding a book I could barely understand without any help whatsoev..."You overwhelm me, AthleticStilletto. It's really the company (see above) I keep that is responsible for any outbursts, hilarious or otherwise. But inciting bouts of risibility in readers is always a plus.
Manny,I have finally finished re-reading Ulysses (thanks for the inspiration). Oy vey.
As I think I may have previously mentioned to you in a comment, or, perhaps, in a PM, my plan was to use Cliff's Notes for support rather than relying on one of the various interpretive references suggested above. As it turned out, I garnered the most assistance by reading Ulysses simultaneously with Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot," which was me !
Stilletto, I am delighted if my silly review got you to re-read it! Now you have to get someone else to do the same thing. Sooner or later, everyone in the world will have read this uniquely crazy book :)
Hilarious! And, might I add, more understandable than Ulysses? And I laughed out loud at Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's appearances :D
Thank you Rowena! Though I'm sorry it was so comprehensible. I hope the notes convinced you that you hadn't really understood it at all?If you didn't recognize it, the Twilight quote is genuine - near the beginning of Nausicaa.
Haha:D I just went back to re-read it and I noticed E.L. James' cameo! Too funny :)
Do you know, the really weird thing about writing this review was that I didn't realize how many Easter eggs I'd put in until I added the notes. Unless my subconscious was being extremely clever, E.L. James/Elijah and Carouge/le bel houx/Christ's blood were just lucky coincidences. It did make me wonder a bit about how much one can trust the commentaries.
Hey want to read this book but I reckon its not an easy read. I understand that a lot of people read it along with Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford. What would you suggest?
I read it with The Bloomsday Book - that certainly helped :)
