Man this book is hard!

my mother bought Ulysses for me when i was 20 and i started it several times when i was younger but this year i finally read it. at the start of the year i read a third of it then i put it away and i read the rest of it in september and october while i also read other books that were easier and more enjoyable reading like some austen and wharton and i think some genre fiction. it is definitely the most challenging thing i have ever read and probably the most rewarding. partly because i wanted to show myself that i could do it, and because i was proud of what i achieved, but even more so because of all of the ideas that at times transported me completely. i think it is meaningful what Desolation says about letting it wash over you. i think it is very natural to feel frustrated about not understanding many details but there are reasons why you have to be OK with not understanding those details. the most obvious reason is because Joyce intended for this book to puzzle university staff level readers, but what this also means is that he does not actually intend for readers to understand everything. we have to keep in mind, that he was an extremely intelligent person, and like any very serious literary author he was writing to posterity, and he understood that all of his contemporary references would become less important with time. what you have to think is, what are the basic things that are going on in this, who are the major players and what are they more or less doing or discussing, what does it mean that the narration is in the style of middle english or the imagined fluid voice of a woman, and so on - and if you can do those sorts of things, which are the basic elements of reading any book at all, you will learn some of the most important things that Joyce really wanted to convey. if like Desolation says we really want to understand the details then we can go back 3 or 4 times.

it seems like a good annotated edition is necessary because sometimes it is just very hard to tell what is going on. but do not get the penguin annotated students edition i had, you will regret it, because it is rubbish. shop around and look at reviews, there must be better annotated editions out there. did norton ever do one, because normally i found their editions pretty robust.

i have got to say something that is important to me, a little theory of mine. that the reason i think that Ulysses is really so difficult to read is not because of all the references to little early 20th century cultural details, or because parts of it are in other languages, but because the language in which it is mostly written is just very uncompromising and pure literary english, with no concessions to readability or prescriptive style. reading this is a great opportunity for picking up a few things about our language. that is just a kind of a slightly silly little idea of mine though.

Is there a reason why being "difficult to read" equates in some people's heads with being a "great book"? Hmm. the jury is still out on Joyce as a great writer, very clever yes, dashed odd - definitely. "Finnegan's Wake" is one of those books that life is too short for. That's why it'll always be a text more often spoken of than actually read.

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Originally Posted by manuscript

it seems like a good annotated edition is necessary because sometimes it is just very hard to tell what is going on. but do not get the penguin annotated students edition i had, you will regret it, because it is rubbish. shop around and look at reviews, there must be better annotated editions out there. did norton ever do one, because normally i found their editions pretty robust.

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I agree that Penguin isn't up to much, I don't like the Oxford World Classics Edition either. Those are the only annotated editions I know of. I found they didn't explain some of the most bemusing things, and over-explained in other places. And that's just in the first fifty pages after which I gave up... There are whole books of annotation longer than Ulysses itself, I looked at these using "Google books" and "Amazon look Inside". They suffered from the same problems as the annotated versions. I think Manuscript is right when he says Ulysses was meant to be a puzzle to academics, one they obviously haven't cracked, at least not in a way to help the common reader looking for "full understanding".

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I agree that Penguin isn't up to much, I don't like the Oxford World Classics Edition either. Those are the only annotated editions I know of. I found they didn't explain some of the most bemusing things, and over-explained in other places. And that's just in the first fifty pages after which I gave up... There are whole books of annotation longer than Ulysses itself, I looked at these using "Google books" and "Amazon look Inside". They suffered from the same problems as the annotated versions. I think Manuscript is right when he says Ulysses was meant to be a puzzle to academics, one they obviously haven't cracked, at least not in a way to help the common reader looking for "full understanding".

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i agree very much with what you wrote about explanations being excessive or omitted. i began with a great deal of faith in the annotations and became increasingly frustrated and annoyed, it was only in the last few chapters that i gave up on them. it was as though the editor had been driven mad by the text to the point of becoming completely detached from the reality of its relationship to a genuine audience. i am sorry to hear it about oxford world classics as i have been going through a love relationship with those editions, but i guess it was only a matter of time. you know what you are talking about and i will be the first to buy a copy of your edition! :-)

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Originally Posted by Desolation

The novel can, and should, be read cold. Don't approach it like an academic or a scientist, it will ruin all the fun.

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Read whatever you like however you like, but part of the fun of reading such an erudite work is being able to engage with it on an intellectual level. It's like reading the score of a musical composition: it's not necessary, but it's certainly a valid approach to appreciation. I didn't have to have a degree or a library of reference works to read Ulysses (I only used Blamires' Bloomsday Book), but knowing the background and getting the context of the allusions really helped me enjoy the work. The same goes for Finnegans Wake, which I greatly enjoyed reading.

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Originally Posted by ennison

the jury is still out on Joyce as a great writer

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No it ain't.

Ah you are correct ere they come now, trooping on with the verdict. Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! That's him condemned then to be endlessly analysed in academia. Along the lines of What does he mean? And Ain't he clever? With old JJ more meant less. Once as a youngster (Ever sooo long ago when I was even younger than I am now) I was reading Ulysses when over my shoulder came the voice of Mr Fleck my History teacher "What are you doing reading that pornographic tome boy!" I was surprised to discover that the incomprehensible prolixity before me was pornography. Needless to say I was determined to find, that very evening, the dirty bits and I did. But they were merely grubby. Which is what Joyce himself was - grubby. Clever talented but very grubby. If he had just written "Dubliners" , "Stephen Hero" and "Portrait of The Artist..." I'd probably agree with that jury but someone told the sod he could write and he went and believed it!

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Originally Posted by ennison

Ah you are correct ere they come now, trooping on with the verdict. Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! That's him condemned then to be endlessly analysed in academia. Along the lines of What does he mean? And Ain't he clever? With old JJ more meant less. Once as a youngster (Ever sooo long ago when I was even younger than I am now) I was reading Ulysses when over my shoulder came the voice of Mr Fleck my History teacher "What are you doing reading that pornographic tome boy!" I was surprised to discover that the incomprehensible prolixity before me was pornography. Needless to say I was determined to find, that very evening, the dirty bits and I did. But they were merely grubby. Which is what Joyce himself was - grubby. Clever talented but very grubby. If he had just written "Dubliners" , "Stephen Hero" and "Portrait of The Artist..." I'd probably agree with that jury but someone told the sod he could write and he went and believed it!

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Extremely well put.

As luck has it my first Joyce attempt has drained all my mental capacities, and I do not think that I'll return to Joyce's other works for a long, long time. A shame for I understand his others might be more enjoyable (and legible) to me.

For me, like high school you, it took a while to understand how naughty (or in your words which I shall borrow, grubby) this book is, but being it such a challenge, I quite enjoy that aspect of it.

You must err in order to grow! Different strokes for different folks! and so on and so forth!

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Originally Posted by manuscript

i agree very much with what you wrote about explanations being excessive or omitted. i began with a great deal of faith in the annotations and became increasingly frustrated and annoyed, it was only in the last few chapters that i gave up on them.

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Why did you use the annotations in the first place? I used them because I was annoyed and frustrated by the book itself... mainly because of not understanding much of anything. But, like you, I was annoyed and frustrated by the annotations that left me annoyed and frustrated whatever I did. So why read it? Maybe it requires faith, faith in the "God of Modernism". But I don't have that, and I don't see how to get it, and have no desire to get it...

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it was as though the editor had been driven mad by the text to the point of becoming completely detached from the reality of its relationship to a genuine audience. i am sorry to hear it about oxford world classics as i have been going through a love relationship with those editions, but i guess it was only a matter of time.

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Yes! And the Oxford felt exactly the same, and the print size was awful, plus I was very doubtful about the edition they used... (a whole other barrel of worms...) I'm not that impressed by Oxford World Classics, like Penguin they are over-priced given the inferior paper quality... British publishers don't use acid free paper... I'd always go for an American publisher, Everyman hardback, or Wordsworth before considering Oxford or Penguin. I did get the Oxford Dr Johnson because it seemed comprehensive, but they'd left out a lot of the good stuff and filled the first couple of hundred pages with tedious juvenalia. So I'm incredibly careful about buying Oxford...

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Why did you use the annotations in the first place? I used them because I was annoyed and frustrated by the book itself... mainly because of not understanding much of anything. But, like you, I was annoyed and frustrated by the annotations that left me annoyed and frustrated whatever I did. So why read it? Maybe it requires faith, faith in the "God of Modernism". But I don't have that, and I don't see how to get it, and have no desire to get it...

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yes, i too used them because i found it very difficult to understand what was happening in the book on a basic level, but also i think because i knew i would not know what to look for in terms of more abstract themes otherwise, i needed signposts. i find the way you describe the cycle of frustration quite accurate. sometimes the annotations were useful and so i tried to focus on those that were. but yeah, when i did not find them useful i regularly found myself flinging the book across the room in all helpless rage. even unable to take it up again for sometimes up to a week.

i read it because i had to know what it would mean to read it or what reading it could give me. i have sometimes done the most stupid and unnecessary extreme things in my life just because i had to know what those experiences would mean. whether insecurity or curiosity drives my addiction to getting knowledge or something else i am not sure. (i am sure that much of the knowledge i have gotten is ridiculous or useless.) but at least in the case of Ulysses i think it was worth it for me.

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Yes! And the Oxford felt exactly the same, and the print size was awful, plus I was very doubtful about the edition they used... (a whole other barrel of worms...) I'm not that impressed by Oxford World Classics, like Penguin they are over-priced given the inferior paper quality... British publishers don't use acid free paper... I'd always go for an American publisher, Everyman hardback, or Wordsworth before considering Oxford or Penguin. I did get the Oxford Dr Johnson because it seemed comprehensive, but they'd left out a lot of the good stuff and filled the first couple of hundred pages with tedious juvenalia. So I'm incredibly careful about buying Oxford...

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hahaha. what you write makes me realise how much my preferences have been based on irrational prejudices deriving from product branding.

sorry i did not respond earlier but i had not seen your message. i actually came back to this thread just now (glad i did) to write something further specific i had been thinking about the penguin edition. that it described Molly's chapter as existing in order to complete all of the perspectives on Bloom. even at the time that sounded silly to me because i found the final chapter so especially brilliant and interesting, almost magical after the rest of the book in the way it dealt with reality. then i read something today somewhere else about the concern Ulysses as a novel has with transposition or flow of knowledge across people and i realised why it seemed so silly to me. the editor seems obsessed with the idea of Bloom as a center of knowledge, to the point of subsuming other characters entirely to this quest for knowledge about Bloom, rather than reading them as something more interesting, such as figures in a narrative progression concerned with thought itself. why not see Molly's final word as being the final word on the ideas developed through the book, rather than just the final word on Bloom, when ideas rather than personality seem so obviously to be the book's concern? (i hope this doesnt sound too crazed, i just felt the need to write about it.)

Manuscript, I'll try to offer a short explanation as to why, for one reading of the novel, it is important to consider Molly as an extension of Bloom. Much of Ulysses is about personal consciousness, and Joyce realized, much as Carl Jung did, that part of understanding one's conscience is understanding the part of it that is buried or sub-conscious. One of Joyce's main goals was to create a "whole character"; he felt, to a certain degree, that the only whole character in literature was Hamlet. The result, of course, is that Bloom cannot be fully understood without both Stephen and Molly; likewise, he cannot fully understand himself without considering his relationships with every other character with whom he interacts. This is one of the motifs that creates the transition to Finnegans Wake. HCE (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker or "Here Comes Everyone") is, in many ways, the next step in Joyce's analysis of the individual and his/her place in the totality of human existence. Another way to look at the subject is to consider "metempsychosis," the concept that Bloom and Molly discuss repeatedly in Ulysses. On the surface level, it is synonymous with reincarnation, but Joyce takes it further and explores different levels of the "transmigration of the soul." Understanding of different individuals allows his characters to "absorb" parts of them or "transfer" parts of themselves (ideas, feelings, consciousnesses, concepts, facts, histories, ambitions, understandings, etc) into others. This is essentially what happens as we experience new people, places, and beliefs; we learn. But, what Joyce is questioning is how we consciously utilize those interactions. How a character like Bloom changes and grows with each interaction is one of the major themes of the book. Likewise, there are many aspects of Joyce in both Stephen and Bloom. In short, Bloom could theoretically not exist unless Stephen had existed because he is, in many ways, a later version of Bloom, just as Stephen is an earlier version... that Stephen/Bloom combination still, however, room to progress, grow, and evolve. HCE (Finnegan's Wake) could technically not exist without the previous Stephen > Bloom > Molly process...

Just reread my post, and I hope the "I'll try to offer a short explanation" part didn't sound snooty and condescending. I really did just mean that I hoped I would be able to provide a short, coherent explanation. Ha ha ha.

What do you mean by "cultural difference"? where are you from? A book like this has to be studied not read like we would normally read a book. I began reading it as if I were studying it for a degree course, making notes etc research.

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Originally Posted by vaarl69

What do you mean by "cultural difference"? where are you from? A book like this has to be studied not read like we would normally read a book. I began reading it as if I were studying it for a degree course, making notes etc research.

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You make it sound just like a sacred scripture. Maybe Joyce intended it that way, but he sure as hell didn't write it to only studied academically.

Ulysses is one of my favorite books, but not because I understand it. I just delight in the writing, the festival of words. There are plenty of resources to guide you through following his model (The Odyssey).