Ulysses (original 1922; edition 1993)

A true review of this book would be just two words: "I'm speechless".


It is a fascinating, frustrating, not entirely enjoyable read. There are moments of stunning beauty, humor, shock, severe boredom, and opacity. In it's minutely detailed description of a single day in 1904 Dublin it attempts to contain all of human experience and more, and, perhaps purposefully, demonstrates the futility of depicting human experience. I am not sure if I liked this book, but if I could only have two books with me on a desert island, this would be the second book. ( )

James Joyce is obviously an incredibly talented writer, but his style is too difficult for me. There were passages that I enjoyed but on the whole this book was more of a chore than a joy. ( )

5 stars because its a work of genius, so everyone says.

4 stars because it has so many deep literary and classical references that to say one understood the book, is like saying one is very well educated.

3 stars because the words, strung together in a stream-of-consciousness mellifluous, onomatopoeic way, read just beautifully.

2 stars because it was boring as hell. I just couldn't care less about the characters, I just wanted them to get on with whatever they were doing and have Joyce interfere in their lives with his references, his poetry, and his mellifluous whathavewehere considerably less.

1 star because I had to give it up. It got wet when I dropped it in the bath and the pages stuck together when I dried it out. Since it wasn't exactly cheap to start with and there wasn't another copy in the island bookshop (mine), I had no choice but to give it up.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Or it would have been if I hadn't had the audio book.


Reviewed 28 May, 2011 ( )

Ahhhhhhh fuck this book. I will return to you when I'm more educated or masochistic. I made it to page 250! So that's...like, I'd be done, if this was Finnegan's Wake!

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I am free at last!

This review will be all over the place, as I have so many conflicting thoughts regarding this book. While I did love certain sections, they just could not make up for the fact that the rest of the book was simply a form of literary torture. I don't think I've ever had such a roller coaster ride of a reading experience before. Joyce managed to make me laugh out loud one second, and the next I was sitting on my hands so as not to gouge out my own eyes. Am I glad that I read it? Absolutely. Will I read it again? Hell no.


I found Recovering Your Story: Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Morrison by Brown professor Arnold Weinstein to be an immense help while reading Ulysses. Honestly when I first started reading it, I was very cynical. Whenever I would hear people talk about how amazing Ulysses was, my brain always translated it into "I have no idea what the hell he's saying, so it must be brilliant!" But the author of this guide really opened my eyes. After reading certain explanations or interpretations of his, I found myself thinking "damn, that Joyce is a clever bastard". Through Weinstein's observations I also learned the best way (for me) to read the stream of consciousness chapters - which surprisingly have turned out to be my favorite. I've found that I love Bloom as a character (maybe it's the underdog thing) and I absolutely love being inside his head. My favorite episode was Hades, followed by The Wandering Rocks, Nausicaa, Penelope, and the first half of Circe (that one just went on way too long and it ceased to be amusing).


Unfortunately, none of that was enough to make me actually enjoy this experience. And as much as I loved the final page, it was a bit anti- climactic - I felt like Queen's "We Are the Champions" should have been playing in the background as I closed the book (forever). Or at least the "We Did It!" song from Dora the Explorer.


( )