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Summary: One of the many Joy(ce)s of life
Review: Joyce through his language and characters reproduces the many complexities of life down to the subtlest of nuances. So much so that, everything being said and done in the book is at once, posessed of a disturbing clarity and a strong undercurrent of confusion and chaso.Just in case you donot understand the book even after the 1000 odd pages, you still come out a winner. for without having understood anything you have understood the primary characteristic of life, which itself at times is like the book. Chaotic.
And in case u have understood it, you have succesfully unravelled the mystery called life.
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Summary: Difficult, but not impossible
Review: I haven't finnished it, i pulled it off the lbrary shelf to look at page one a couple of days ago, and now a couple of hundred pages on feel compelled to write a review. It is a very difficult piece of litriture, and not for those who enjoy a dime store novel, but it's not impossible, take heart at the fact I'm 16 years old and am loving every word, especially the especiallylongones that sit on every other sentence.
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Summary: "... I don't speak the language myself"
Review: I performed a search for the 100 greatest novels and checked Ulysses out at the library. I'm sorry, but thank God for western "Progress" and the "New" English. "...To tell you the God's truth, I think [I'm] right." If you're going to read this book, that's one thing. But, if you're going to understand it.. at all, you might want to have Ozzie Osbourne or The Naked Chef on hand who actually speak in this unintelligible, out-dated, even obsolete, Olde English archaic style. Trust me. "...You couldn't manage it under three pints [by yourself]" Better yet, consult one of the "experts" who voted this "thing" number one, and who must have about two inches of dust between their ears, or Great Granny's Cyclops glasses on. I'm convinced if J.J. were alive today, he would be just another "obscene" English rock star speaking the "Ulysses" dialect "...Lal the ral the ra The rocky road to Dublin." Say... what? Aye Mate .. Ha Ha.. It don't mattaw. "...Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro." Yeah Baby! I suffered through part of this extremely borish book and I'll probably suffer through to the end; and then, not the "experts" Howard's End, after that. Personally, I most enjoy the books that clearly communicate, that clearly speak something, and that make me want to turn to the next page. There are classics like that, but this ain't one of them old chap. "...Stephen raised the sheets in his hand. Well sir, he began. I forsee ... that you will not remain here very long at this work." Exactly Stephen.. Where's Ozzie? "...Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine faces." Oh, thanks Bro. Now it makes sense.
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Summary: English writer,so how much you can expect from him?
Review: What an awful book this is? When an English/American writer try to explain his/her ideas about life(I mention ideas about meaning,purpose and philosophy of life)and when he/she try to do this with complicated ideas and long sentences(or like very short ones especially in this particular book);what his/her work become to is:A tremendous nonsense!!! When you see a book like that I mentioned above(and I also warn you against it),all you need to do is:RUN,RUN, RUN AWAY!!! NOTE:My ideas about English/American writers doesn't concern Shakespeare.
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Summary: Why I read Ulysses.
Review: As I read Ulysses, I asked myself, what is the point of putting all these words next to each other? When I got to the end, (and not until then) I realized that this book is Joyce's search for God amid everyday life in Dublin. This God(the father) is one who is caring, concerned, shows consideration, and is also a cuckold. One of the greatest moments of my reading career was the question and answer session at the end of part 2, and it is very much worth the journey through the streets of Dublin of June 16, 1904.
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Summary: Our national epic has yet to be written...
Review: Right. Ulysses. The intellectual field of Joycewrit contains more essays, papers, doctoral theses, and professional articles than most libraries contain books. So much has been written about this book that I usually have to step back and laugh when contemplating the enormity. It is like fathoming the universal end when you are a child of ten.
With that said, I do believe I have something to contribute to *this* forum. I can tell you what this book is. It is perhaps the best and most complete example of written reality in existence. If the world exists in a grain of sand, then it exists in a day full of sand many times.
What I mean is that the book works on any level. At a closely read level one can find absurdly esoteric references to minutiae that only has relevance for June 16, 1904. The esoterica works, though. By making something obscure that is in essence very simple, Joyce makes one think about it in a new way. Look at Chapter 17 remembering that Joyce's goal is to make the simple obscure. Then ask yourself what happens over the course of the chapter. Never has less accomplished more. Ithaca (ch. 17), by the way, was Joyce's favourite chapter.
At a broader level Joyce's expressive mechanism becomes clear and truly rises above any intellectualization. Perhaps you should not worry too much about that passage of Italian shouted in the street, or the odd bit of vaudevillian obscurity. Instead look at the scope and breadth of a single day and the myriad thoughts that pass through your mind. Could someone decipher your day from your thoughts with ease? And as in a real day, as in reality, a man's life is not so simple to pick apart as a speech in a novel may lead you to believe. A simple bit of dialogue spoken to a boaster may reveal a great amount: "Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the opposite of that that is really life.
-- What? Says Alf.
-- Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred." And that, I am glad to say, is all we get.
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Summary: Review? Criticism?
Review: This book is beyond the review and criticism of the multitudes. Only James Joyce, I believe, could adequately review himself.
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Summary: This book is a bit much
Review: Joyce defeats his purpose by making this book impossible for a reasonably well-educated reader possessed of a reasonably decent vocabulary to get through without having to reach for the dictionary every other sentence, causing the reader to break his rhythm and disrupting the author's stream-of-consciousness narrative. And Joyce's vocabulary isn't merely extensive, its obscure and often so archaic that most dictionaries weighing fewer than 20 lbs. don't contain the words he uses. Unless you're young, if you don't read a book sentence by sentence, understanding the meaning of most every word, you aren't really reading or absorbing it, and its a waste of time, which is sad, because Ulysses has been such an influential work. But ultimately who cares? I'm coming to the unfortunate conclusion that the work of almost every member of the Lost Generation is failing to stand the test of time. Its one thing to read these icons in your early 20s; its another when you're approaching 50. As you get older, you realize Fitzgerald's and Hemingway's novels are terribly dated; Gertrude Stein's theories about writing are infinitely more interesting than her writing itself; and guys like Dos Passos are irrelevant. Now Joyce. Like Pound, he's interesting in the abstract, I guess. And I imagine that, years from now, apart from Portrait of the Artist and Dubliners, such will be his only legacy.
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Summary: The Best Novel of the 20th Century???
Review: Not a novel in my view, more an artist using all his materials in a vast experiment, with the secondary agenda of shocking the establishment and sensibilities of his time. Constantly changing style and using a truly massive vocabulary, often seemingly at random, he seems to be using his powers to toy with the reader. There is no real story, no exploration of the human condition and yet it is truly amazing. Like watching a world class gymnast who has total mastery of their body you are left feeling Joyce can do anything with our language.
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Summary: Inner organs of beast and fowl
Review: In reading some of the reviews other Amazon customers have written about ULYSSES, I feel compelled to respond. I am particularly concerned by the number of people who gave the book a poor review after admitting that that hadn't bothered reading past the first few pages. There's an adage in criticism that goes something like "Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good" (AMEN to that)...a corallary could be "Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's a 'literary hoax." Yes, as hard as it may be to believe in some circles, ULYSSES is not a hoax. It is, however, difficult, and not, I repeat NOT for everyone. The stream-of-consciousness, the language(s), the style(s), and the fact that Joyce brought in all sorts of obscure references make it just plain difficult sometimes. The travels of Leopold Bloom about Dublin on that fateful day of June 16, 1904, can be, for the right individual, a difficult, fun journey. What brings fans of this work, like myself, back to it again and again, is the fact that each time we read it we discover something we missed (or misunderstood) the last time (or last 10 times) around. With a little work on the reader's part, ULYSSES can be finished. Many of us have actually made it to the end, scratched our head, and started again a few weeks later (after full recovery). Give it a shot, and if it's not for you, don't even bother moving onto FINNEGANS WAKE...you won't make it past the third line!
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