Ulysses in Spring Is in Bloom: Ulysses at the Wild Detectives

Aug 20, 2017 Biblio Curious rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics-western, 30-favorites-post-2017

A review, eh? At times I felt like a read a spilt Scrabble game, other times it was cosmic. I think this is a book to be experienced while reading rather than just read as a novel.

Personal Anecdote: Last night, between reading the last of these Ulysses pages and a single prose poem of Solzhenitsyn, I felt like my very existence was the result of Woodstock. Very cosmic.

I think the experience of Ulysses is incredibly personal yet so very sharable with others who have read it. It can show us how ...more

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Apr 18, 2018 Ronald rated it it was amazing

I first read Ulysses in 1993 as a challenge, like climbing Mount Everest. I first read it with the help of Stuart Gilbert. My reading was slow and methodical; I wasn't concerned about liking or not liking the book. I wasn't reading critically either; I wasn't concerned about the book's value as literature. This odyssey through Ulysses was all about achievement, reading it because it was there, because I was told that I would not read it all the way through, not with total understanding anyway. I I first read Ulysses in 1993 as a challenge, like climbing Mount Everest. I first read it with the help of Stuart Gilbert. My reading was slow and methodical; I wasn't concerned about liking or not liking the book. I wasn't reading critically either; I wasn't concerned about the book's value as literature. This odyssey through Ulysses was all about achievement, reading it because it was there, because I was told that I would not read it all the way through, not with total understanding anyway. I was told that most people gave up by the third chapter. Even many of the writers in Paris during the twenties faked their way through Ulysses or didn't read it at all. For many, it has become a book like the Bible, a book that many owned, but never read. I took several months to read it, maybe a half-year.

Since that first read, I have read Ulysses through several times, each time time with a different key or book of annotations: Ellman, Kenner, Burgess, Gifford, and others I don't recall. I also attend and read at the annual Bloomsday event at the Gaelic League in Detroit. I don't read it through every year, but every year I study a specific chapter between May 1 and June 16 while choosing and preparing my reading for that year's Bloomsday. However, this year I read it all the way through again because I have been invited to speak at my local library in Dearborn on reading Ulysses for the first time.

I learned very early in my reading of Ulysses, how important it was for me to read aloud. James Joyce was a musician, a wonderful singer, and his sense of music is reflected in his writing. Chapter eleven, Sirens, was written by Joyce as a fugue in prose. I have tried to analyze the fugal structure, but I don't think it's a fugue. It's more like an opera with a wonderful overture, containing all the motives developed in the chapter in the first page and a half. I love chapter eleven! One year I recited the overture of that chapter on Bloomsday, singing every line of the songs, which were siphered through the text.

I could go on and on about many of my favorite chapters and passages

of Ulysses, but I must stop. Many of those whom I would count among my closest friends, stay away from me in June. They know what I'm like from bitter experience. They do not want to be cornered and bombarded with an onslaught of recitations from Ulysses. I know how obnoxious I can be; I have been told. Even all my friend's friends have been warned about the notorious Joyce maniac.

Ron

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Jun 10, 2018 Sami rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-clubs, own-irl, drbc

Promoted to read this massive book for a summer reading project and as a personal challenge, I was able to advance my reading comprehension in a book I found somewhat boring. I didn’t really enjoy the material or plot, but I did enjoy the “Easter egg hunt” architecture with the literary styles and themes woven throughout Ulysses. Each chapter (or episode) implements a special literary writing style. Some are old; some are new; some unheard of in 2018.

My recommendation: don’t read this book “for ...more

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