Ulysses in World Library Top 100 Books of All Time

Apr 02, 2015 Ben rated it it was amazing

Shelves: world-library-100, favorites, western-canon, modernism, ireland

Today is going to mean something. Today I am going to contemplate life and death, literature, philosophy and religion. I am going to search tirelessly for answers to the question of what it is to be an artist, what it is to create a work of art. I am going to speak out against the prejudice, bigotry, cruelty of others. I am going to reach out with compassion to other creatures, be they human, feline or avian. At the same time, I am going to indulge my appetite for food, drink, and sexual stimula
Today is going to mean something. Today I am going to contemplate life and death, literature, philosophy and religion. I am going to search tirelessly for answers to the question of what it is to be an artist, what it is to create a work of art. I am going to speak out against the prejudice, bigotry, cruelty of others. I am going to reach out with compassion to other creatures, be they human, feline or avian. At the same time, I am going to indulge my appetite for food, drink, and sexual stimulation. I am going to suffer grief at the death of my mother, of my son, of my father. I am going to experience the depths of pain, aware as I am of my wife’s infidelity. I am going to do the mundane work that pays the bills. I am going to interact with scores of people. I am going to lose myself in my thoughts and bodily sensations. In other words, every aspect of the human experience--- physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual , social--- will impinge on my consciousness today.

I have heard it said that Ulysses has no plot, is boring, that nothing happens. Well, yes, but on the other hand everything happens. All of life, possibility, wonder, delight, pain, hardship, can be experienced in any random day in any random place. So as to underscore the point, Joyce tells the story in every possible manner imaginable: stream of consciousness, third and first person narrative, closet drama, newspaper headlines, catechism question and answer, musical composition, parodies of essayists and prose writers sampled from the entire history of the English language. The result is an artful delight, recalling (in a perfectly subtle and nuanced way) not only the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey but also Hamlet, the Bible, and many other works from throughout the canon of Western literature. Anything and everything springs from an ordinary day in Dublin, and the result is an unforgettable masterpiece.

One word of warning though: don't try to read this without help; find a guide. I highly recommend Frank Delaney's "Re Joyce" podcasts and the Great Courses lectures dedicated exclusively to Ulysses. Ulysses Annotated is also very helpful to understand some of the obscure references and Dublin colloquialisms. With the assistance of Joyceian experts, you will be freed up to enjoy the music! ...more

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Feb 26, 2018 J_BlueFlower rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1001, guardian, ebook, 1001-read, norwegian-100, catching-up-read

What does it mean to read a book. Have I read Ulysses? I have sat and looked at every word in the book left to right. I have smiled at many puns and references. After each episode I read Sparknotes summery and analysis, and typically I found that I had missed the most important points in each episode.

I liked three episodes. Episode Twelve: “Cyclops”, episode Thirteen: “Nausicaa” and episode Seventeen: “Ithaca”. Cyclops have some extreme parodies of writing styles. Most of them are very good. The What does it mean to read a book. Have I read Ulysses? I have sat and looked at every word in the book left to right. I have smiled at many puns and references. After each episode I read Sparknotes summery and analysis, and typically I found that I had missed the most important points in each episode.

I liked three episodes. Episode Twelve: “Cyclops”, episode Thirteen: “Nausicaa” and episode Seventeen: “Ithaca”. Cyclops have some extreme parodies of writing styles. Most of them are very good. They seem to be a comment to the main dialogue, an effect that works well, and was so easy to understand that even I got it.

Episode Thirteen: “Nausicaa” is probably my favourite. At first the clichéd style was such a put off. Such a style can easily be the reason I give up on a book. But after a few pages “the gentleman“ enters and things start happening. Very interesting to see events with Gerty eyes and then.....

Sparknotes has many insightful comments. Most importantly "narrative style contains built-in ideology that effects what is reported and how it is reported." There is a wow-effect with Nausicaa here. That point was clear even to me.

Episode Seventeen: “Ithaca”, I think I understood too. He is - literally - procrastinating before the big final.

So I liked the three episodes that I understood...... and the rest was boring/a struggle. I am afraid so.

Episode Fifteen: “Circe” the nightmare/hallucination as a play. Yes, I saw that the play becomes increasingly un-playable with a man changing sex and giving birth in the middle of a scene. But I completely missed the major point that one person's involve elements of an other person's day and even to reference earlier scenes and words unseen and unheard by both. Sparknotes concludes that it “is perhaps more accurate to view the hallucinations of “Circe” as emanating not out of the subconscious of individual characters but out of the subconscious of the novel itself.” That is such a cool idea, but why hide it so in 150 pages?

I consider myself fairly well-read with some 140+ books from the 1001-books-you-should-read list. That probably put me in the top 1% well-read of people in general. But I did not understand it – that book was not for me. Should books be written for reading or for analysis by professors at the university. I do not know the answer. Saying that Ulysses is bad or boring, feels like saying that Einstein's original paper on general relativity wasn't well written because it is hard to understand.

What I gained from reading this book simply does not correspond to the amount of work and time I put in. It feels wrong to give it 2 stars because I understood so little. … But is the fault really mine or the books? Anyway, 2 stars was my reading experience: A relief to be finished.
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