Malachy Grange answers “I have tried reading this book twice but...”

Deepak Pitaliya asked this question about Ulysses:

I have tried reading this book twice but could not get past 30-40 pages. I even read Iliad and Odyssey before starting this book as the book is supposed to draw some parallel with Odyssey. Is it readable?

Malachy Grange I started reading it 5x and finished it twice. The first time I used Anthony Burgess's Re Joyce as a guide while I was in college. It was understandab…moreI started reading it 5x and finished it twice. The first time I used Anthony Burgess's Re Joyce as a guide while I was in college. It was understandable (to a degree) and enjoyable (to a degree). The other time I finished it I was under the influence of mind altering drugs most of the time and so I don't remember much except that it was spectacularly visual and I wondered if Joyce was on psychadelic drugs when he wrote it. Two other times I just gave up after wondering why was I reading it again, dashing around it, but wound up reading the ending - Molly's soliloquy - twice. The BEST was reading while listening to Frank Delaney's podcast, also called Re:Joyce. He is the best, a native Irish writer who is having the time of his life reading it, telling stories, laughing and bringing the book to life, once or twice a week, going over a sentence or a paragraph at a time along with other info about Joyce and the book. Great stuff. Profoundly enjoyable. He estimated it would take him 25 years to finish the project. Unfortunately, he died about 1/4 of the way through it. So I'm looking around for another guide. Lots mentioned here.(less)

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