help !! Ulysses

[jayanti]

hi guys!! these days i am desperately trying to make sense out of Ulysses by joyce. but his stream of consciousnes writing is driving me crazy...
:rolleyes: can anyone help me in getting the hang of the book.

[Eric, son of Chuck]

Lol, you know, I was just about to post that exact question. I just started reading it, and I was wondering if we have any Joyce experts who could provide tips, ie things to keep in mind while reading. If you ask me, Joyce was tight-rope walking on the fine line between genius and madman.

[Zeno]

Ulysses is a difficult book,as everyone admits. I think the problem many people have is trying to find a symbolic meaning or something in it. The book is really just there to be read and is mostly the ideas and refrencess that come to the mind of an extremly well edjucated man with refrences to netieche and latan phrases and everything elses comeing at the reader all at once. so i think the thing is just read it and dont try to "understand it" because often there is really nothing to understand or any great "meaning"

[hadji9]

hi guys!! these days i am desperately trying to make sense out of Ulysses by joyce. but his stream of consciousnes writing is driving me crazy...
:rolleyes: can anyone help me in getting the hang of the book.

[Here is a copied portion of an e-mail I had sent to a friend on how to make sense of 'Ulysses' by studying the third episode: 'Proetus']

PROTEUS

I think you told me that you had read the first few episodes of 'Ulysses', and I bet that once you got to the third episode (referred to as 'Proteus' in the Gilbert schema) you probably lost all enthusiasm to carry on as I did when I first read the opening passage: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs, Limits of the diaphane." (p. 37) I think this is the most important episode in The Telemachiad (part 1) because it utilizes the interior-monologue technique more so than any other episode besides 'Penelope'. In 'Telemachus', Joyce transforms Buck Mulligan into St. John Chrysostomos, Oscar Wilde, the Trojan Horse and, of course, Claudius (Hamlet's uncle) not to mention Antinous of 'The Odyssey'. However, these transformations are relatively base compared to the compound transformations that Stephen Dedalus undergoes in 'Proteus'. Knowing that every time a reference is made to a person, place or thing a transformation occurs helps make reading 'Ulysses' relatively simple. It is all a matter of comparing and contrasting. For example, I thought that Stephen was transforming himself into Adam when his thought began to dwell on the fall of man: "Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on the Edenville. Aleph, Alpha: nought, nought, one." (p.38) Here Stephen uses the technique of visual and audial association to get from point a.) observing two midwives carrying a bag along Sandymount Strang to point b.) mocking the creation by pretending to phone back to "Edenville". Seeing the two midwives causes Stephen to ponder the birth of Man or the "Creation". The unknown cord that is hanging out of the midwife's bag is transformed into a "trailing navelcord" in Stephen's mind, thereby reversing the role of the midwives (since they are carrying a "misbirth" back to the sea "the great sweet mother" [p. 5] And since the misbirth is "hushed in ruddy wool", we must assume that the "child" was sacrificed [Stephen's feelings about his own existence?] as a lamb would be). 'Proteus' not only transforms objects and people, but also processes. For example, Stephen's distorted memory of a Paris bankclerk, "Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all right. Shakes hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a shake. O, that's all only all right." (p. 42) Through a similar process of reversal, Stephen is able to phone back to "Edenville" by transforming the navelcords that he pictures in his mind with the necessary phonecords he would need to be put through to Eve, the (great sweet) mother of humanity. As I said, I thought Stephen was Adam because of the relationship between the fall of Man and his own rejection of institutionalized spiritual power. If you read on you will notice that when Stephen is watching the two cocklepickers and their dog (leering voyeuristically at the female and gazing with disdain at her male companion) he constantly refers to the female with a tempting lust. Stephen goes almost entirely unnoticed to the female cocklepicker except for a "side-eye at [his] Hamlet hat." (p. 47) It is not hard to draw the association of the two cocklepickers and their dog to Adam and Eve and the animal kingdom; Stephen, it appears, is the serpent in the orchard: "Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and his my sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself." (p. 50) The "clouding over" that Stephen observes on Sandymount is transformed into the clouding over that occurred after Adam and Eve fell and just before their expulsion from Eden. "Allbright" is a reference to Lucifer who was the "Angel of light" and this prompts a vision of lightning and thunder (falling light?) which precipitates the exile of Adam and Eve to "evening lands".

[Zeno]

There are many books of commentary avalible for this book not to mention cliff notes extra.

[b]

When I started reading Ulysses in English, I bought a book with an introductoin by Declan Kirbert.

Declan Kirbert explains - in hundred pages I believe - the difficulties of Ulysses and reveals the ideas behind it, for those who found themselves having a hard time understanding it.

But if you only want to use online recources, I believe you will find enough information after a good google search.

[MsrBarso]

I am currently reading Ulysses, about to finish, and this site has been of great help, lots of notes and tips especially for the most difficult chapters:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/index.html
for the rest i just suggest reading through not worrying too much about making sense of it, as i believe someone suggested already. it can be enormously enjoyable at times, so just get on with it the best you can.

[b]

That is indeed the site I used for help.

Thanks for remembering me of it's existence.

[AbdoRinbo]

A lot of people think that getting the 'gist' of Ulysses is what it is all about. That is often the only option available to many readers, given the bone-crushingly dense content of this notoriously intimidating novel. But don't think that just because there are some forbiddingly difficult moments in Ulysses (e.g. the third episode, for example) that going out and buying a set of annotations or a collection of critical essays is not worth your while. The beauty of Ulysses is not anything in general, but in those gems of details such as the 'transformation' of Stephen (clad in mourning) into Lucifer on Sandymount strand (Eden), which is only very subtely hinted at. The layers of meaning are what make Ulysses such a universal novel; it can be read on whatever level you like, and it goes without saying, you will get out of it what you put into it.

[jmark1949]

I had a college English teacher tell me (an English major) that most people have Joyce on their bookshelves just so they can appear intelligent and well read. No doubt he is very very difficult. If you are reading the book for a class, get the Cliff Notes. If you are reading it to be "literate," forget it. Read something you like instead.
jmark1949

[AbdoRinbo]

I had a college English teacher tell me (an English major) that most people have Joyce on their bookshelves just so they can appear intelligent and well read. No doubt he is very very difficult. If you are reading the book for a class, get the Cliff Notes. If you are reading it to be "literate," forget it. Read something you like instead.
jmark1949

Some people take Joyce way too literally (as though his only purpose as an artist was to redefine 'serious literature'). I like to think of Ulysses the same way that I think of Monty Python: Absurd . . . And, accordingly, certain questions arise: Is it verbose? Yes. Is it self-indulgent? You bet. But Joyce was always poking fun at himself in Ulysses, as in the scene in the 'Proteus' episode where Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter-ego) reflects back on his days as a young, fledgling artist as he walks along Sandymount strand: 'Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray!' (p.40).

There is humor everywhere, if you look hard enough. Listen to this passage from the 'Calypso' episode (where we first encounter the practical hero, Leopold Bloom) in which Bloom reads a bit of a short story from a newspaper while he's on the can: 'Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently . . .' (p.69) and I think you get the picture. Bloom's thoughts, as he reads the columns of newspaper, parody the columns of excrement that fall from his yielding and resisting bowels. This is the sort of 'up close and personal' view of Joyce's characters that you become accustomed to after easing into his multilayered style. Joyce once commented that, after reading Ulysses, you'll know Leopold Bloom better than you know your best friend. Make up your own mind as to whether Joyce is for you, keeping an open mind never hurt anyone.

[jmark1949]

Good advice. It's just that even if Joyce didn't take himself too seriously, everyone else seems to. But you're attitude seems to the best one for approaching him in a manner you can actually enjoy. thanks.
jmark1949

[AbdoRinbo]

Good advice. It's just that even if Joyce didn't take himself too seriously, everyone else seems to. But you're attitude seems to the best one for approaching him in a manner you can actually enjoy. thanks.
jmark1949

I think with Joyce I can say something along the lines of 'it's not the band I hate, it's their fans'. The people that I know who have read Joyce all have that 'I'm more intelligent than you, more sophisticated, better-read, better in general' attitude that makes me wanna freakin' kill myself. Some of his earlier works (like 'The Dead' and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) are not all that funny, but you can see that the older and more mature Joyce came to be, the more he outgrew his pompous regard towards the 'riff-raff' (or what he liked to call 'the rabblement').