Ulysses
Written over a seven-year period, from 1914 to 1921, this book has survived bowdlerization, legal action and controversy. The novel deals with the events of one day in Dublin, 16th June 1904, now known as "Bloomsday". The principal characters are Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly. Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book-although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States-and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession". None of these descriptions, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in its own way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book.
Stats for nerds
46recommend
297mentions
219people
2008–2026years
22% recommend71% neutral7% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > I've always been struck by how long sentences are in writing from a century or more ago
May I recommend Ulysses by James Joyce
- For anyone who is curious about Joyce but doesn't want to take on Ulysses, I would recommend his Dubliners collection of short stories, which is much more accessible and still a really good read. I would love to tackle Ulysses, preferably with a good companion piece.
- I read Ulysses last year and enjoyed it but this "companion" book was indispensable:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/ulysses-annotated-revised-and-e...
But also the free (online) Joyce Project with hyperlinked annotations:
http://m.joyceproject.com/chapters/telem.html
I wish I'd bought this version when It came out. It's pretty expensive now.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-cambridge-ulysses-the-1922-...
And I cannot recommend Frank Delaney's Re: Joyce podcast enough, sadly he passed away before completing the project
- I would strongly recommend anyone who has a second-hand impression of Joyce based on articles like this just go and read Dubliners. Seriously. It’s an amazing set of short stories that are wonderfully-written, at times funny, moving, sad, haunting etc. It’s just incredible. It’s not a hard read at all and will enrich your life. I recommend it to basically everyone and several people have talked to me years later about stories in it. It’s fantastic.
Then maybe read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A really great semi-autobiographical work.
At that point you’ve probably made your mind up one way or the other about whether you like Joyce, so then if you feel like it, go read Ulysses and/or Finnegan’s Wake if you want to. But don’t do it because you think it will impress anyone or anything like that. Just read it if you want to. Before you read Ulysses, I would personally recommend reading a good modern version of Homer[1] because that’s just a great experience anyway and plenty of people don’t know the original story and so don’t understand the relevance of the title and are kind of lost before they even get started.
[1] eg I’ve heard very good things about the Mendelsohn translation https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo243090... . I heard some excerpts from Seamus Heaney’s version read out and they were amazing and lyrical as you might expect but probably more “poetic” than most people might care for if they’re not already Heaney fans. I read an older translation but I can’t dig it out right now.
- I tend to rewind audio books and re listen to the last minute or two or three.
Ten years ago I read James Joyce’s Ulysses as a book. I enjoyed it, but when I listened to it as an audio book a year later, the excellent actors/voice artists really brought it to life for me.
I often self describe myself as a ‘gentleman scientist’ because for many years I have done my own research, sometimes in areas where I had no interest in practical application. I also believe that the act of writing is crucial to thinking (I have written 20+ books, 2500+ blog articles). I think too many people put too much emphasis on “work” vs. just living: averaging only ‘working’ about 60% of my adult life has made room for other activitites.
- Taking “best” to mean, “About to be banished to a small, rocky island in the North Atlantic, can pack one book”: Ulysses, and it’s not particularly close.
The book is fractally intricate and intellectually puzzling in the best sense—something new and special to notice every time you pick it up.
But it also wears like old leather, and I find myself returning to favorite chapters simply to sink indulgently into the characters, dialog, and setting.
Anybody who says no one has actually read Ulysses is unknowingly half-right: You can certainly get to a point where you’ll never finish reading it.
Related
Dubliners
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Finnegans Wake
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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Finnegan's wake
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Alice in Wonderland
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Romeo and Juliet
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Stephen Hero
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