The book I like most but understand least

[blazeofglory]

Ulysses is of course my most favorite book. This is also one of the most difficult books, and coming to novels, this is indeed the most difficult one. I read the book and I got lost. Not that not understanding the book fully I did not enjoy the reading. In fact I can enjoy a book more when I can not understand it fully.

What really I like of him is his honesty and nowhere I found him to portray himself hypocritically. And he took the challenge to be very honest, many a time he was rejected for being obscene also, yet he was a writer who would not be shaken so easily. He was always firm and he knew what he was doing.

His artistic presented was never surpassed. He created a beauty that remained never excelled, and both form and content remain intact in his writing.

I know I can never comprehend this book fully and yet the endeavor is worth doing. I am not a native English speaker, and I have a limitation of my own, and of course I have a limited vocabulary. I can not understand complex sentences at all. Yet I am allured and geared up to read it again.

For I am deeply touched upon and I find the book unputdownable despite all kinds of difficulties. Please share your views.

[Lambert]

With Ulysses, it’s difficult to know what single strand of thought concerning the novel to begin with, considering the vast (and possibly infinite) number there is to discuss. My mind always wrangles over the gargantuan chasm of difference that exists between Portrait and Ulysses. Firstly, my copy of Portrait can fit in my back pocket whereas my copy of Ulysses currently teeters precariously on a stack of books in front of me. Secondly, that my copy of Ulysses sits on top of that stack of books for easy access, illustrates how necessary it still is to me. Portrait I can always admire for it’s acuteness in style. But Ulysses takes in such range, such intricacy that it never ceases to amaze me how earthy it remains when I read now and again.

Joyce displays an immense encyclopaedic and erudite exhibition in style, yet he always shows us, with minute accuracy, how Bloom is consistently made to feel like an outsider in the society he inhabits. That’s one of the reasons why Ulysses ‘works’, if I can be that insouciant. Heh heh heh....