Ulysses

Rating:
Summary: Joyce can teach one how to write.
Review: If you haven't read Ulysses yet, and feel daunted by the wildly different, extremely strident reviews of it, read on and I'll try to explain why this novel is worth your while.

First, a brief summary. Ulysses attempts to capture what life was like in Dublin, Ireland, at the start of the twentieth century. It doesn't do this like a history book, solely in terms of political events and noteworthy individuals; rather, it attempts to convey the nature of the day-to-day lives of ordinary people by following its protagonist, an inoffensive fellow named Leopold Bloom, around the city. (It occasionally switches to following a young man named Stephen Dedalus, whom Bloom meets eventually, but Bloom is the main character.) It describes the things that transpire in the world around Bloom, as well as the thoughts that go on inside his head.

Ulysses contains many disparate literary styles, but none are gratuitous; all are used in the service of the novel's themes. Joyce wanted to show how poetry, history, heroism, romanticism, and indeed all of human civilization, can be found slumbering in each individual, no matter how mundane his life might be. This comes to the fore in chapter 14, in which Bloom goes to a maternity ward to convey his best wishes to a woman in labour. When he arrives, he meets a bunch of drunk medical students who make callous remarks that make him uncomfortable; after some time, the nurse comes in and announces that the woman successfully gave birth, which relieves Bloom's anxiety. In addition to these simple events, the chapter tells the entire history of England. That is, the first paragraph is written in monosyllabic Druidic calls, the second approximates the style of ancient Latin historians, the third glides into early Anglo-Saxon poetry ("before born babe bliss had"), then it switches to Chaucer and medieval prose, and so on, the style of each paragraph moving a little bit forward in history, until it collapses into a mix of modern slang in the end.

Thus, in numerous prose styles, the chapter recreates the birth and life of the English language itself, without warning the reader that it's doing this. In essence, it shows the history of a whole civilization in an original way. But the important part is, it never stops making sense; the plot and the dialogue keep progressing along with the style. Thus, the birth of a child is shown alongside the birth of the whole English language, indicating that civilization is born anew with every new human being. An ordinary birth is made to look like the culmination of all of English history, thanks entirely to this method of describing it. You don't have to have read Chaucer and Shakespeare and Gibbon to appreciate this chapter; Joyce read them for you, so all you have to do is watch the language change.

This happens all the time throughout the book. For instance, chapter 13 finds Bloom wandering around on a beach, where some teenage girls are hanging out and talking. Without further ado, the book inserts itself into the mind of one of these girls. Her thoughts aren't anything amazing: basically, she just wants to fall in love with a handsome man, be loved in return, and be happy. However, in describing these thoughts, Joyce adopts the style of a dime-store romantic novel of the sort that are marketed to teenage girls: it's rife with sentimental, flowery prose like "the summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace." The thing is, this style accurately reflects what folks go through during their teenage years: it's got the same heightened emotion, the same vague yearning, the same feeling one gets when falling in love for the first time, that this has never before happened to anyone else and will never happen again, the same romanticism and idealism. Thus, it's remarkably easy to sympathize with the girl, again solely due to Joyce's technique.

That's probably the biggest reason to read Ulysses: all these styles and epic analogies are founded on a powerful emotional centre. Some folks like to say that this book is a "celebration of life," or something to that effect. Well, in my opinion, it's a book about loneliness more than anything else. A large part of the book consists of Bloom's internal monologues, creating the impression that he's constantly hounded by unwelcome thoughts. When he's not running into hostile nationalists or petty gossips, he thinks about his adulterous wife. Then, in chapter 14, he meets Stephen Dedalus, decides to follow him out of the maternity ward and into the red light district, and then brings him home. Bloom, whose own son died eleven days after being born, feels fatherly affection toward Stephen; yet, Bloom and Stephen have nothing to say to each other. They engage in some small talk, but Stephen clearly doesn't take Bloom seriously, and Bloom doesn't really know how to approach Stephen. Then, Stephen, who is the closest thing to a friend that Bloom has met all day, leaves. Bloom goes upstairs and goes to sleep next to his wife; the final chapter is told from his wife's point of view, and it becomes abundantly obvious that her perception of her own husband is often wrong, and always strangely detached, as if he's not close to her at all despite living under the same roof. The style is breathtaking, rhythmic stream-of-consciousness, highlighting the sadness of this emotional distance between the characters.

So, don't feel threatened by the style. Ulysses is very readable; true, each chapter has its own style, but most of the styles are perfectly accessible, and make the plot more engaging. All the "difficult" parts don't happen until the second half, giving you time to get accustomed to Joyce's idiosyncrasies (he doesn't tell you when he's moving from objective description to internal monologue, but after a while, you can usually tell). Just you try it on.