title: Ulysses by: Joyce, James published: 1921 read: 2022-03 preview

My major feat: I finished “Ulysses” by James Joyce. I had to, since it’s 100 years ago the book was first published (in its full form). Having tried it twice before, and giving up after having reached 1/3, I was aware that some of it is enjoyable. (And a lot of it is not.)

Ulysses is like a good poison: you can only take it in small portions. It means that, yes, I will read it again, one chapter per two months or so. Because… did I get it all? Well. not by myself. I got help, from a podcast: Reading Ulysses by RTÉ https://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_readingulysses.xml. I listened to each episode before digging into the corresponding chapter; without it, half of the stories in the chapters would be obscure to me.

So, for me, Ulysses was not a book I just read. I needed to study it, in order to grasp part of the contents. Shortly about the story: it’s a day in the lives of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. I will not go into the background stories running, you can find them described in wikipedia or elsewhere. But basically, after Stephen meets fellow students in the morning in a tower at the coast, switch to Bloom who makes his breakfast, goes to a funeral, picks up a poste-restante letter from his lover, meets and discusses, drinks and eats. The two meet later, end up in Bloom’s house and the last chapter involves the thoughts of Bloom’s wife who wake-dreams about her would-be lovers.

The story is not exceptional, therefore. What is exceptional is that this is the first (or the first major) nonlinear book. Typically, books used to be telling a story from the beginning to the end; very interpretable, very straightforward. You will still find that in children’s books nowadays.

Ulysses changes that kind of narrative. Yes, some of the Episodes of the book are narrative, and to a certain part of palatability describe what’s happening. But quite a few Episodes, and certainly present in all, are centred about thoughts of the people involved. As thoughts go, random short bits which may not have a clear connection, which force you to understand the background to understand – correction, partly follow ––them, which make them, well… let me give you an example:

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler’s will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch! In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.
(Help: https://www.bloomsandbarnacles.com/blog/2019/02/26/decoding-dedalus-omphalos)

But I don’t want to put you off this book! So here, beautiful parts in the penultimate chapter:

What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?
Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left, Gardiner’s place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner of Temple street: then, at reduced pace with interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place. Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the circus before George’s church diametrically, the chord in any circle being less than the arc which it subtends.

and it continues in a Q&A fashion: …

What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885, 1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make before their arrival at their destination?
He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction of the converse domain of interindividual relations.

I don’t advise anyone to pick up this book and read it. I do advise you, though, to study the story, the background, the ideas of the book, and why Joyce wanted to beat Shakespeare. And then, do as I say don’t do as I do: take it one chapter after the other, in a pace that keeps you busy until the end of this year, or the end of the world, whichever comes later. 

Or, just def it.