Ulysses

Rating:
Summary: One of the best....
Review: This novel is difficult of course but really worth the effort. Written by James Joyce, and subsequently banned in America, and England it was ranked as the greatest book of the 20th century by the Modern Library.

Written in the revolutionary stream of consciousness style it fills about 1000 pages, and it is filled with puns, allusions, and other arcane references.

Another exceptional book is "The Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man," one of the best bildungsromans, and "Finnegans Wake," Joyce's last, and most complicated novel. "Finnegans Wake" makes "Ulysses" seem crystal clear.

Rating:
Summary: A cut above some packages which lack eye appeal
Review: This photomechanical reproduction of the 1922 first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses is a recommended pick for any library seeking a replacement for worn, aging paperback copies. The unabridged republication provides new audiences with the highlight of Joyce's literary career and is a cut above some packages which lack eye appeal.

Rating:
Summary: wow
Review: I can say without reservation that this is the most amazing book I have ever read in my life. It sparkles with emotion and visceral force, thrusting you so deeply into the lives of its main characters that the medium between the reader and the protagonists is completely penetrated and we quite simply become the characters. Asking such questions as "well what would have happened if Bloom had decided to do this" is meaningless because we know Bloom so well that it is impossible to conceive him doing anything other than as he does it. We are privy to his innermost passions and longings: in the Circe episode we too forlornly cry out to the apparition of his dead son Rudy, his destroyed hope for the honor of his name, his heritage, and his love. In the Wandering Rocks we feel Steven's pain as he is approached by his rag-clad sister begging him for food:
"She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death."

While some see the parellels to Homer as unnecessary pretentious obscurity, by recreating the Odyssey in turn-of-the-century-Dublin Joyce shows us that all of the heroic epics and action movies in the world are as shallow and meaningless filth before the only true glorious quest, that presented to us in the living of our lives each day.

The Homeric parallel also underlies another of Joyce's major aims in the work, that of preserving what has come before. Stephen, the book's other main character, is an autobiographical University student obsessed with the great works of Western literature. Both his thought-stream and his conversations with other characters are rife with allusions to great literature from the ancient Greeks through St. Augustine (the Catholic Church is also very important), Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Flaubert, and even Oscar Wilde. These many allusions are often seen as a reason not to read the book, but I can affirm that while one does lose something by missing them, the book reads quite well without them and often one can determine the significance of the allusion from the context without knowing its source.

Essentially Joyce has taken everything that has come before and combined it into a stunning novel that I feel puts him solidly beside Shakespeare as a true master of the English language. Of course when we say the English language that is up to some debate because, like Shakespeare, Joyce in no way feels bound to correct grammar and is quite willing to sacrifice it whenever he feels it hampers his expression.

Yes parts of it are difficult, but not so difficult that one shouldn't attempt the book because of them. I have a dirty suspicion that a lot of the reputed difficulty of this book stems from the exaggerations of those who have read it and want to look smart. You will have to do a little background research, and I strongly advise Reading Joyce's other two books, Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, so that you know the setting and the people. But that said, go for it! It is more than worth the reward of a little patience at the beginning. Also Harry Blamires' New Bloomsday Book and Anthony Burgess's Re Joyce are wonderful supplements to help clear up some of the initial uncertainty.

The book took me almost a year to get through, reading several of the episodes more than once, but coming away from it I absolutely confirm that it was COMPLETELY WORTH IT!!! READ THIS BOOK!!!

Rating:
Summary: There should be a law...
Review: ....against making different printings of the same book with different page numbers. In this book, they solve the problem by having page numbers from the first edition in the margins across from that page's original bottom line. Still, there are several editions of this book (and countless other books) where the pagination does not match up. This can be terribly annoying if you are in an English / literature class and everyone has a different edition of the book. Someone says "turn to page 37", and every page 37 is different. I think when the book publishers want to issue a new edition, they should copy the pages from an old edition using the photo-offset process. This is my personal pet peeve and probably has nothing at all to do with the actual novel by Joyce, but I can't really speak on that issue because I haven't read the book yet. When I do, I will update this "non"-review and make it more informative.

Rating:
Summary: Exhaustive, exhausting, rewarding
Review: It's great fun to observe the rancorous--at times vicious--debate this book has engendered among and between its admirers and detractors. Whatever else might be said of "Ulysses," it's clear that everyone who has read it (and even those who have not) has an opinion about it. But for those who are leery of beginning a book of this size and complexity without some guarantee that it is as "GREAT" as its admirers proclaim it to be, I offer these words of advice: take it slowly, don't get overly bogged down by the unorthodox style, and make a diligent effort to understand what Joyce is trying to say. It's easy to treat his ramblings as the workings of a drunk or inscrutable genius, and to "force" one's way through the book without getting anything out of it. I read "Ulysses" for the first time last summer, without annotations and with only a brief on-line summary of each chapter as my guide, and I'm sure I missed an awful lot. But I loved "Ulysses" nonetheless. The inventive style, the devious puns, the poetic prose--all of it amounts to a reading experience that will reward the patient and persistent with a tremendous intellectual and aesthetic (if not emotional) payoff. While it is not my favorite book of all time, I agree with those who say it's the most important novel of the twentieth-century. It so completely altered the literary landscape of its day that, 80 years after its publication, its effects are still being felt (but not always acknowledged) in the works of contemporary writers.

If you want to read this book only because you've been told it was "great" or to tell others you read it (and thus sound "intelligent"), pick up the Cliffs Notes and save yourself some time. If you honestly want to understand *why* this book is frequently cited as the best of the twentieth century, dig in. I plan to revisit "Ulysses" myself in the not-so-distant future.

Rating:
Summary: one cannot help but be impressed . . . (incommunicado--)
Review: I want you to decide for yourself. Ulysses, to some the masterpiece of all 20th century works, a glorious, sun-ravaged inspiring that is open to all nooks and encompasses all passion. Others call it ludicrious, pompous and dull; overlong; a frustrating exercise in pieceing together symbols. I want you to look over some of the other reviews and see for yourself the division between the pros and the cons; the academic justifications and the confused, ennerverated whining. The fans overpraise with unspeakable delight: believing themselves in the know--a fan of another person's excellence, a seer of all there is to know. You can scan the pages and glean all sorts of terminology, from the label of 'modernism' to the execution of 'stream-of-consciousness' (two indescribible approaches that cannot be so singularly defined as to explain just what, exactly, is going on). There are references to other experts' reviews, and the almost outraged frustration with which it is bespoken tells the person who couldn't get into it that somebody else out there has written about all the things you didn't like in the book and therefore it must be brilliance. The haters are less uniform in their scorn, although most of them summarize 'it didn't make any sense' in one form or another. There are rat-tat-tats of 'boring(s)' and machine gun slogans writing off this unquestionably influencial opus as something not even worthy of remembering.

Me? I fall less in the middle and more to the side of scorn. It is a techically dazzlingly display--a rip-roar of English-Latin-Gallic with the cantor on fire and the rhythm in flames. Boom-boom-boom goes the glory of this lover of language who plays and who plays and who plays--trickling insight with the tickle of a feather and bringing the house down with a terse yet finely tuned phrase . . .

The biggest problem is the story--a legitimate babble of voices talking over one another with a transformative center that can't keep anyone focused on what any of the characters is actually saying (the characters notice this too). The dialogue goes on for pages--twenty--fifty page stretches!--where no one seems to have the interest or attention span enough to keep things settled for a moment to even decide if any of them know what they're talking about. The topics shift abruptly--aloofly, it would seem--and the range of all of their interests is predictably limited. I can respect (and even admire) the effort to invoke this mindless clamor of Babel, and appreciate the consistancy that can redeem by none of them ever learning anything, but the end result is a story that no one can follow unless they had written it themselves.

Ulysses is a book Joyce wrote for himself. No doubt it was joy--an endless experimentation from a frustrated (and rather pompous) author who finally felt justified at the publication of his previous two books. Ulysses, to me, reads as more of a show-off work. A man with great genius who wanted to prove to everyone just how great he could be. The problem is that he was boasting to himself. Here is a book about me me me! All passing to 'naturalism' or the 'realistic aspect' related in numerous grinding scences, are valid, certainly, but merely another label that cannot begin to describe the monster Joyce created here.

In the end, an endlessly unpleasurable read that causes one to stop and think often, some of that time about setting the book aside and reading something better--

Rating:
Summary: the modern book of Modern Books ...
Review: still undiminished in effect and importance...

... please don't ignore this modern classic .. it is truly as valuable as Shakespeare, Rabelais, Jane Austen, Plato, Rilke, Proust, or Don Quixote ...

... in fact, many will regard it as MORE valuable ...

.. the underlying social and psychological nature of the entire industrial age, modern or postmodern, is revealed here ... interpret as poetry, if you must ... but raise yourself above the modern pseudo-intellectuals and their admired scribblers by reading and assimilating this fantastic novel... I care not which edition ...

.. ULYSSES is every bit the monument people say it is ... but don't ignore it because it IS a monument. On top of all that, it is as humorous as many things. Read it now.

... ULYSSES is a fine height from which to regard the modern world from...

... and get your own copy...

... you'll be glad you did.

.. it has yet to be replaced.

Rating:
Summary: Forget the hype...you can read this book
Review: Despite what the reviewer from MA had to say about this novel, it is readable and it should be approached by anyone who is interested in it. It is not an easy read, but then again, really innovative and engaging works never are. Joyce does something in this novel that few authors have the courage to do--trust the reader's intelligence.

Yes, this is a retelling of The Odyssey, but even without that framework, the novel stands by itself. The story picks up about a year after Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man leaves off with some of the same characters, notably Stephen Dedalus. But the protagonist of the work, Leopold Bloom, is the real stroke of genius. It might help to read Portrait before approaching Ulysses just to get an introduction to Stephen and his family. Anyone who really wants to get as many allusions as possible should probably use Gifford's annotations, which are available for both texts.

As for our friend from MA...well, what can you say about someone who is reviewing the Cliff's Notes version of the text? Is that what Poly Sci majors read in order to try and feel intelligent as English majors?

Do not be afraid; you can read this book. If you are afraid of starting a book that is so long by yourself then get some friends or family involved and read the book out loud to each other. It's marvelous.

Rating:
Summary: The greatest realist novel
Review: Joyce is the most talented user of the English language since Shakespeare. His use of language is dazzling in its inventiveness and sophistication, and the sonic qualities of his writing are the equal of any poet. 'Ulysses' is rich, beautiful, moving, and evocative; the cleverness of the novel is associated with a profoundly human and humane sensibility.

Often, this 'modernist' novel is contrasted with 'realist' novels, as though Joyce was doing something strange and different, but I don't think that's true - on the contrary, if a realist novel is one that communicates reality, then the stream-of-consciousness passages of 'Ulysses' are the high-water mark of the realist prose tradition, because they do something that no-one else has ever really managed - persuasively communicate his characters' experiences and thoughts from within. And there's more about the reality of Dublin life in 1904 than you would get from a dozen other novels of the period. He's not writing something other than a realist novel - he's doing it bigger and better than anyone else.

BUT - it's not an easy read. The density of the prose makes it like reading poetry, and it's hard work just as reading an 800-page poem would be hard work. Furthermore, it's not all equally good; some of Joyce's experiments with language are less successful than others - the surrealist chapter springs to mind as a weak bit. When you're half-way through one of the less successful chapters, and it's both hard work *and* rather boring, it can feel a little bit like banging your head against a brick wall.

So - know what you're getting yourself into. This book isn't for everyone, and you're not going to finish it in the course of a a one-week beach holiday in Marbella. But if you think you're up to it - have a go. It may just really annoy you. Or it may be the most rewarding book you'll ever read.

Harry

Rating:
Summary: Joyce's Labrynth at its Most Complex
Review: From the beginning of anyone's Joyce readings, he automatically assumes a powerless position. In Dubliners, we are walking through a labrynth of short stories connected only by theme and setting, paralysis and Dublin. We see the same theme and setting in A Portrait. Ulysses, though, presents Joyce's labrynth at its most complex. Unlike other more traditional novels, the chapters in Ulysses have almost no connections from one to the next. Rather, Joyce presents a series of coincidences and seemingly unrelated events within one day. The navigation of the novel in most places becomes rather belaboured, especially "Oxen of the Sun." Like the epic it was modeled after (Odyssey), Ulysses includes moments of divine intervention. However, a Ulyssean intervention is made by either Joyce or the reader rather than by a Greek God serving as a deux es machina. The plot of Ulysses is the plot of the modern hero in the greatest epic of all, life. The novel is the most intricate, and probably the most realistic novel ever. I say it is the most realistic even though it has many moments of disillusionment with knowledge that we all go through many moments of disillusion throughout each day of our lives. The characters, just as the readers, are hopeless in the grand scheme of things. Fate, rather than the human hand, controls all of us. If you feel like trampling through a labrynth of deeply insightful and, at times, awfully confusing epiphanies, then Ulysses is for you. The labor involved in the reading makes its brief moments of understanding (the epiphanies) all the more worthwile. After all, you have to go through hell to come out right.