"Readers who journey with Joyce’s Leopold Bloom as he navigates the shoals of everyday life on an unremarkable summer’s day in Dublin become deeply familiar with his inner world and the quirky crevices of his mind.... In Bloom, [Joyce] created a settled, contented individual, 'a good man,' as he once described him, a counterpoint to the noisiness of the world around him. In 1919, W.B. Yeats wrote apocalyptically that 'things fall apart; the center cannot hold,' but Joyce, in the same period, pitched his antihero’s tent firmly on the center ground.... In a passage at the heart of Joyce’s message to the troubled world around him, Bloom sets out his credo: 'Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred.' It is 'love,' the opposite of hatred, he insists, 'that is really life.'... In the 'Circe' episode... Bloom appears as a political reformer with a charmingly idealistic manifesto: 'The reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature.'... At a time like ours, when narrow partisan opinions thrive in places and prejudice continues to flourish in plain sight, I [like] Bloom’s centrist appeal to transcend force, hatred and history...."
Writes Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States and author of "Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey" in The Washington Post.
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A big fart in Joyce’s general direction.
“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.” - Ulysses, James Joyce
I was so glad to read this knowing that I wasn't the only one in the world that thought of the sea as 'scrotumtightening'. Thank you James.
I've tried reading it like three times and just can't. And I made it through 'War and Peace'!
"A big fart in Joyce’s general direction."
Plenty of farts in Ulysses, plenty of everything. It's such an all-encompassing book. You can just live in it. I've lived in it for almost forty years now. By the end of the book, Bloom's mind starts to overlap with your own, phrases that get stuck in his head get stuck in yours. Little bits of his mental shorthand start to work in your own consciousness. And, it is to be hoped, some of his basic decency becomes yours.
Significant shrinkage
*And the head coach wants no sissies,
So he reads to us from something called ‘Ulysses’. *
Thanks to Alan Sherman
Weird!
Today is 2/2/22. How come no one mentioned that? Is this a holiday?
I knew it was Groundhog Day, but that's something extra special. We should get the day off.
And I'm genuinely curious, about Ulysses:
1) How many people have actually read it?
2) How many have started it, but not finished it?
3) How many people have not read it, but pretend they have (English lit professors, for example)?
4) How many believe it deserves its reputation as a masterpiece?
5) How many believe it's good, but not great?
6) How many believe it's "shite, mate"?
"I've tried reading it like three times and just can't. And I made it through 'War and Peace'!"
How far did you get? The big "walkout moment" for a lot of readers (like the scene with the meat hook in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre") is the beginning of Chapter 3: "Ineluctable modality of the visible...", to which the normal reader responds "Okay, I'm out". But that's just Stephen, and Stephen is a bit of a pain in the neck. You're supposed to find him pretentious and frequently inscrutable. He is Joyce's self deprecating parody of himself as a young man. You don't really have to follow everything Stephen is thinking, certainly not on the first reading; Bloom will be along shortly and he's much more relatable.
There are a lot of "companions" and "annotations" and "guides" to Ulysses, but I'm not sure they're all that helpful on the first go-round, they tend to make you obsess on tracking down every little reference, which is a terrible idea at that point. The book "James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays" edited by Hart and Hayman, while it has a fairly intimidating title, and some of the prose is maybe a bit "academic", is actually one of the best aides to keeping ahold of the big picture. A different scholar takes on each chapter separately. With Ulysses, the main unit is the Chapter, and as long as you pick up the gist of each chapter as it goes by, you should be okay.
But hey, Ulysses is not for everyone (although it tries to be).
Now this Ulysses is my speed:
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
Ye Gods, another dumb Orish Politician latching on to Joyce. A
"At a time like ours, when narrow partisan opinions thrive in places and prejudice continues to flourish in plain sight, I [like] Bloom’s centrist appeal to transcend force, hatred and history...."
Really? What Horseshit. How does "Predjuice hide in plain sight"? Joyce was the most non-political author - ever. If you can tweeze some great political thought out of his writings, its because you're reading things into it that aren't really there.
Given that Joyce was battling massive and painful eye problems and trying to write his books his inattention to politics isn't suprising. He was neutral in ww1, the Irish Civil war, and WW II. He rarely talked about Nazism, Fascism, or Communism. He was against Censorship, but signed few political manifestos against it.
@Andrew.
Ulysses is the greatest novel ever for English Professors and would be literary sophisticates. One can talk about it forever and indentify all kinds of word play, symbolism, hidden meanings, allegories, and parodies of other writers.
It just doesn't have a real plot (its supposed to mimic Homer). Or characters that actually do anything interesting. So, its never become popular with the general public, no matter how much praise has been heaped on it.
Its main selling point in the 20s and 30s was that it was a "dirty book" that was banned in the USA/UK. After that, it was hyped as the "Greatest novel of the 20th Century".
Personally, I think it has some of the greatest writing ever. But as a novel, its too long, and lacks good characters and story. I dip in and out. Even Shaw and HG Welles couldn't finish it.
I suspect many people have read, or tried to read Ulysses. Far fewer have understood it. I read it once- in 1972 (I think). It was in my sophomore year in college and the class devoted the better part of the term to that book. So we read it in chunks. I have no friggin memory of it today. Too many hours of The Wire and other series, too many sporting events, too many annoying politicians, too many hours reading other stuff, too many years have passed through this brain to remember much. But...
Years ago I started buying classic literature books- leather-bound, top-edge gilt- thinking I'd pass these on to my kids at some point in my life. So...a hundred moves and many adventures later, I still have those books. Never did have any kids (though I married into them, but they were already well into their lives). So now that I recently retired, I'm going back to read all of those classics, many that I read years ago, many that I've never read. In the middle of Anna Karenina now. Ulysses is a-comin' soon. I am very curious to see how my older, wiser mind understands the book now, compared to the 18 year old I was then. It was torture back then.
Ficta said...
"I've tried reading it like three times and just can't. And I made it through 'War and Peace'!"
How far did you get?
I don't even remember! I just found it utterly uninteresting. I tried Gravity's Rainbow once or twice, too, same result.
But then, I'll read Hawthorne all day long, so, eh, to each their own.
Now try Finnegans Wake!
I bought the book to read once and never did. I admit the fault is within myself, likely, and should like to write a 300 line run-on sentence to express why.
I often thought someone should give people in Detroit “3acres and a cow”. Out of all of those abandoned homes-blocks of them, I thought the city could have helped people help themselves. It would be taken the wrong way: isn’t it always? But what a gift it could be.
I read Finnegans Wake, once. It was mostly just thrashing my way through it. There's such an enormous density to it. It's fascinating, but I really think you need to read it at the rate of about a page a day or less. Perhaps when I retire...
With as little presumption as possible, the following is offered as notes for anyone who would like to read and enjoy Ulysses.
First, no one is obligated to attempt to apprehend, much less like, any work of art. The inducement to do so is that the work of apprehension and appreciation of literature is supposed to be, not just valuable in expanding one’s understanding of people and the world, but pleasurable as well.
On the issue of the accessibility of art, it can be helpful, according to some literary theorists, to keep in mind that one of the ways art works is to impart a sensation of unfamiliarity, of things as they are shown and perceived in the work, in contrast to how they are supposedly known. The creation of a sense of uncertainty, even puzzlement, is deliberate and necessary. Increasing the difficulty and length of perception and impression creates the conditions for extending one’s understanding, sympathy, and insight. Enjoyment of enduring works require time and patience—periods of immersion and return.
As was said by Oscar Wilde (who was in a position to know), “If a book isn't worth reading over and over again, it isn't worth reading at all.” Chaucer, Shakespeare, Melville, Nabokov. etc., reveal little of themselves upon casual readings. “Gems Juicy,” as he referred to himself in Finnegan’s Wake, spent seven years writing Ulysses. It is dense, in the best sense of the word, and operates on numerous planes. An initial reading is barely enough as an introductory orientation.
Anyone who wants to enjoy and appreciate it is well advised, in the words of Rufus Thomas, to “turn your damper down”—ease into it, let it work. The many “guides” and “keys” to the book can be helpful during or after a first reading, if only to orient oneself to its scope and depth, and to help illuminate some of Joyce’s methods and themes. The great Joyce scholar, Zack Bowen, also used to emphasize the book’s humor and playfulness—the innumerable references, double entendres, puns, and puzzles—its “Easter eggs.”
As one commenter said, Ulysses is not for everyone. As it’s my favorite literary work, however, I’m grateful to Ann for the opportunity to offer some ideas for anyone who would like to take it on.
@rcocean,
Thanks for the info. It's a novel I've always heard about but never read.
I do remember in the movie "Back to School," Rodney Dangerfield gets carried away by the "yes yes yes" sequence.
P.S.: A detailed guide for second and successive readings is D. Gifford and R. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated , as long as one avoids going down too many of its rabbit holes.
I can say that I read and enjoyed Ulyssess but not that I 'got' anything profound of it. It took multiple tries. First time I got about 50 pages in and lost all track of what was going on and quit. On the second try I got about 100 pages in before I gave up. It took at least 3, and maybe 4 tries, to get through it all but on every restart the previous parts made more sense. This all happened around 1978/9 when I was in college. If I had ever had to read it for a class I'm sure I would have loathed the whole experience but I was just reading it for the hell of it. I occasionally think I'll go back to it but my 'to read' stack is so big right now I might die before I get to the bottom of it.
Bloom's views are part of his character. I wonder how seriously to take them as a political ideal or program. I also wonder how Bloom's apolitical/political vision fits in with Joyce's exile from Ireland and politics and into art and aestheticism. Also, I wonder what to make of it.
One can't help finding Bloom's thinking more attractive than the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. But it does seem a little bland and blah, unexciting and uninspiring. It's very much of the 19th century, too. Most people today (and many people even a century ago) would not be contented with three acres and a cow.
wondering if any one tried reading it backward [gobbledygook words] or from end to beginning chapters [may be as retrospective memory-joggery-pokery]
A-a-a-and ... nobody cares.
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