Ulysses

Rating:
Summary: The most beautiful utterance of the human mind!!!
Review: Essentially, "Ulysses" is a novel,
but in actuallity, it's an 800 page poem.

If you desire the most gorgeous prose,
the richest characters in literature,
and the ultimate verbal rebel and revolutionary,
then read James Joyce and his "Ulysses".

If you like "Ulysses", try: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake, Dubliners (all by Joyce), Arthur Rimbaud's complete works, The Castle, The Trial (both by Franz Kafka), anything by Albert Camus, anything by Virginia Woolf, and well, too many others to mention, so you'll have to find them on your own.

Rating:
Summary: Not Enough Suspense
Review: The author kept getting bogged down in details instead of moving the storyline along, because we don't need to know everything about the characters, just enough to keep reading until the climax of the story; if you compare it with something like the Hunt for Red October you'll see what I mean, there the author knows to advance the plot and doesn't waste his time and ours. Here there is way too much information when all the reader wants is to solve the plot and find out what happens. I expected it to be a lot more fast-paced because of the reputation.

Also, where was the editor? A book shouldn't be hard to read but there were run-on sentences and bad grammar in some places.

Rating:
Summary: Variety
Review: It seems Ulysses touches on every theme experienced in human life. But it doesn't dwell on any of these subjects (or literary style) for long enough to pass judgement.
Bloom is criticized for being a jew, but his critics are drunken commoners who are also simultaneously ridiculed and praised. Stephen mourns for his mother but dislikes and avoids his father. Bloom's wife truly loves her husband but she cheats on him.

This novel is purposely vague because there are several ways of looking at any one thing and Joyce demonstrates this truth in the various narrators. Almost every character and line of dialogue is considered and reconsidered through the minds of the characters or other unnamed narrators. Joyce is telling us there is no one truth accesible to everyone, all we can do is appreciate the endlessly interactive and timeless quality of an ordinary day and strive to love our enemies.

Rating:
Summary: Anyone who says time heals all wounds has never read Ulysses
Review: Ulysses is a hardcover bounded knife in the face.

Ulysses is to bad book as Gary Busey is to ugly man. "Oh, you're so ugly it's heinous. Cover that up with a paper bag." That's how bad of a book it is.

Joyce is blind in one eye because he read Ulysses and then the eye hung itself.

I'm contemplating traveling back in time and murdering James Joyce, in the face.

For Ulysses to be any worse of a book, it would have to break into your house and defecate on your bed.

For two hundred pages the author decided that there would be no descriptions, only dialog in the form of a play, which made the run-on sentence that was the last thirty pages no surprise. Good books are entertaining while conveying an idea, be it humorous or profound; this book provided neither. It was long, boring, and poorly written.

Rating:
Summary: vertigo the CLASSICS,
Review: i feel like im A CHILD PRODIGYon a STEAMSHIP back in time maybe BEheaded for theSTARSHIP titanic, or in a computer .playing HIDE AND GO SEEKa role playing game, the ice berg like its mostly below the surface i feel you know submerged like a voyeour lookin in or an omnipresent god peering down on theGROUND players,READING EACH SENTENCE LIKE NEARLY ALLPEDESTRIANS ANNOMONOUS,LIKE THYRE NOVELS THEMSELVES,im like their shadows on the walls moving like clockwork. this book is totally ABSTRACT IN A VERYFAIRY TALEoppresive way.

Rating:
Summary: A Breakthrough Achievement
Review: From start to finish, Mr. Joyce dazzles the reader with the use of symbolism, dark humor, semantic puzzles, riddles, irony, grace, and magic. A shaman of the modern age, Joyce imbues his massive tome with word-remedies for the chronically sick and desperate--the very people who inhabit his 'dear dirty Dublin'. With Ulysees, Joyce marked himself as one of the major writers of his age...of any age!

Rating:
Summary: Mission Accomplishable
Review: O.k. to start with...for all of you out there who are interested in reading "Ulysses" but are intimidated by all of the rest of you out there who say it's unreadable, take my advice. Read this book. It's absolutely ridiculous to say this book can't be read. I can't say you're going to find it interesting or enjoyable, but you can read it.

There are people who would have you believe you have to wage a massive campaign of pre-"Ulysses" study before delving into Joyce's novel. I've heard it's necessary to read biographies of Joyce, read all of his other literature, read about the history of Dublin, read Greek mythology...even study Dublin city maps!!! Don't you believe any of this. "Ulysses" is perfectly approachable having read none of the above. I admit that reading "Portrait of the Artist" first is helpful, and at least having some passing knowledge of "The Odyssey" won't hurt, but being familiar with these other works will only help you appreciate some of Joyce's nuances. Being unfamiliar with them will not prevent you from digesting "Ulysses."

Now, for the book itself. Is "Ulysses" good? That's become an almost irrelevant question to ask. Do you have to like "Ulysses?" No. Do you have to admit that it is the greatest novel ever written? No. Anyone denying that the book was influential in altering the course of literature would just be foolish. However, I don't think "Ulysses" is the be-all and end-all of 20th Century literature, and the new ground that Joyce broke would have been broken anyway had he not done it first. He was certainly an innovator, but other authors (Faulkner comes to mind) use Joyce's modernist approach to fiction and do it better.

For ultimately, Joyce is a lousy storyteller. Notice I did not say he is a lousy writer. One can't deny the absolute mastery of language apparent in "Ulysses." But Joyce is almost completely unable to connect with his reader. Parts of this novel come close to doing just that, but in between there are vast numbers of pages of dull, dull prose that set out to be as incomprehensible as possible. What was Joyce afraid of? Was he scared that what he actually had to say wasn't either particulary interesting or profound, so he had to bury it underneath layer after layer of obscure allusions and writing styles? I didn't understand every part of "Ulysses," and I don't believe all of these so-called Joyce experts do either, despite the massive amount of critical study done about it. However, understanding every single part of the novel and understanding the novel are two different things, and I believe I understood "Ulysses." And what I found is that it's not the beast everyone's made it out to be, but neither is it particulary interesting or profound.

In short, I would recommend that everyone read "Ulysses," if for no other reason than that you can have an opinion on it. I won't be reading it again, so I guess I'll have to just live in ignorance of all the hidden delights Joyce offers his readers. I neither loved it or hated it---there are many books I've enjoyed reading less and many more books I've enjoyed reading much more. Before reading "Ulysses" I was reluctant to state that I didn't like Joyce's writing, feeling that any opinion about Joyce without having read his masterwork would be uneducated. Well, I've read the damn thing now, and I can state with a very educated opinion: "I do not like Joyce's writing."

Rating:
Summary: Book of books!
Review: I could have not gotten through the book the first times with the Bloomsday Guide. And even with that, there were points I was SO frustrated I wanted to throw the book at a wall. The last chapter is almost worth the pain of it all. Now, the second time I read it, I could not put it down. It was like a mystical-religious reading experience for me. I figure 3 reads of Ulysses and one gets as close to the radiance Joyce talks about in Portrait of the Artist. However, it may take more than 3 reads to find that in Finnegan's Wake. I'll let you know when I do.

Rating:
Summary: entertainment or education?
Review: Okay, so we know already that this book has been deemed 'The Greatest Book Ever Written' which is why, I must confess, I endeavoured upon it. I took no literature class concerning it, nor do I plan to. My only other experience with literature that is vaguely similar to this is 'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon, which I read about a year ago. And although I found the esotericism in GR interesting and comparably relevant to my personal work, I actually found U to be a slightly more entertaining read. However, if it's 'entertainment' your looking for, don't read this. Go read a Stephen King book, or something. In fact, don't read anything, just go see the new Tomb Raider movie.

...I didn't give this book 5 stars, because, as it's been mentioned in other reviews, there were too many points in the book that I was wanting more. More wordy experiments, more originality. Too often, some sort of brilliant style will surface and then go away and drone on for another 50 pages until some other new and interesting element occurs again. Some may say that I'm simply saying that the book wasn't 'entertaining' enough, contradicting my argument in the previous P. Well, to those I say, whatever. I can deal with being a hypocrit. I mean, when you really think about it, there are two conflicting elements of human nature at work here, 1. the sort-of Americanization of a culture to need constant entertainment, and 2. the instinctive craving to learn. Which is more powerful in you?

I will say that if you just want an interesting snippet of this book to read, I'd read the last chapter. This really made the book worth reading IMO. It's done without hardly any punctuation and it's left to the reader to cipher where sentences begin and end, really the definitive stream of conscious technique, but more than that, it's the most emotionally powerful section of the book, right up to the last few words.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant, self-contained universe
Review: Reading a book at age fifty-seven produces a very different experience from that at age twenty-three. I have been surprised to see how much the "classics" keep changing, as I get older! :-)

When I was younger, "Ulysses" bothered me, as a show-off stunt: difficult to read, and hardly conforming to the rules of a novel. And it was also tarred with the brush of "Finnegans Wake" -- somehow it seemed clear to me that Joyce had picked a mistaken road, if he wound up at FW.

BUT, the other day, just for the heck of it, I picked up "Ulysses" at the CMU library and was surprised to find myself getting blown away -- repeatedly. Suddenly the characters and their concerns emerged: I realized that Stephen was in torment over the death of his mother, just as Bloom was in torment over his wife. The description, in Chapter Two, of a clumsy boy needing help with his homework, and Stephen's reaction to him -- in fact, Stephen seeing himself in that helpless boy -- was very moving. The description of the dog running along the beach -- utterly brilliant. More than brilliant -- it is simply stuff that has never been matched, much less surpassed.

The other big difference, at age fifty-seven, is that I have a lot of time, now. I returned "Ulysses" to the library, unfinished -- but I know I'll be going back to it. These days I don't regard it as a failed novel. I think of it as 18 prose-poems written around a common theme, a common plot, and extraordinary characters -- by one of the great masters of the English language. It'll be around for many many years.

Highest recommendation!