Have you read Ulysses?

Harry Angstrom

Seeing as it's Bloomsday, I thought I'd ask this question.

I read it about 10 years ago but it was pretty heavy going at times. I started reading it in January and didn't finish it until the end of June. I'm glad I read it (it was like running a marathon!) but I don't think I'll ever read it again.

After finishing Ulysses, I gained confidence to start on Finnegan's Wake but I gave up after 10 pages .

I sometimes think there is too much emphasis placed on both Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake as a lot of people seem to look at these books and form the opinion that Joyce is inaccessible. I'd like to see Portrait Of The Artist and Dubliners given more prominence when Joyce's canon of work is discussed, as well as his play Exiles and his works of poetry.

Callan57

I have a copy but haven't read it yet .... but I will, one of these days

Yep, enjoyed it too. Preferred Portrait of the Artist though.

Niles

Read chapters of it in college, wasn't really impressed to be honest. Guess it's down to individual taste. Slightly preferred Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man but wasn't that wild about either really. Maybe I didn't give them a chance.

Manach

Only the original by Homer. I was a tad confused till I released Penelope must be a Greek word for Marge.

Permabear

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Plowman

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Permabear

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The Scientician

Nope, I just carry it around with me this time of year. Joking aside, I've had a gander at some passages in it but never really fully perused it nor read it cover-to-cover. It's in the "I really must" pile.

Denerick

I plan to read it as soon as I have my (first) mental breakdown.

KnifeWRENCH

It's been on my "to do" list for about 3 years........so I should get around to it any day now! :pac:

The Mad Hatter

I read the first couple of hundred pages a year or two ago, and found it wasn't as hard a slog as I'd been led to believe. The prose was beautiful, but I felt that without having read Homer I was missing out on a lot, so I went back to read The Iliad and The Odyssey. I admit they've defeated me. I tried translations by Alexander Pope and found that the constant iambic rhythm of the verse got genuinely nauseating after a while. I'm gonna try Graham Chapman's translation next (which I hear is more faithful anyway).

Permabear: I don't know if you're into Twitter, but you might like the user @_FinnegansWake_, who's tweeting the book 140 characters at a time. Little daily fragments of profundity and strangeness.

spintendo

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

I read the first couple of hundred pages a year or two ago, and found it wasn't as hard a slog as I'd been led to believe. The prose was beautiful, but I felt that without having read Homer I was missing out on a lot, so I went back to read The Iliad and The Odyssey. I admit they've defeated me. I tried translations by Alexander Pope and found that the constant iambic rhythm of the verse got genuinely nauseating after a while. I'm gonna try Graham Chapman's translation next (which I hear is more faithful anyway).

Permabear: I don't know if you're into Twitter, but you might like the user @_FinnegansWake_, who's tweeting the book 140 characters at a time. Little daily fragments of profundity and strangeness.

Why not read the prose translations of Homer?

Lustrum

I tried it once and got to page 41 before giving up, I hadn't a clue what was going on even at that stage. The missus got me Dubliners then because she loved it so I read that and didn't like it, maybe I just don't get Joyce!

My english teacher in school used to read Ulysses every year for lent, he was some man

The Mad Hatter

spintendo wrote: »

Why not read the prose translations of Homer?

I probably will, if I can't get through the Chapman, but I want to try as I've never read an epic poem.

Permabear

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Travel is good

No haven't read it yet, but I think I tried to, many years ago.

The film Is on RTE1 tonight at 01.20am, for those of us who haven't read the book!

The Mad Hatter

Permabear wrote: »

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Possibly, but I hope not. The estate has started being a little softer on copyright since Joyce's main body of work work will be in the public domain in less than a year. They even let Kate Bush use an extract from Ulysses as song lyrics this year, though they turned down the same request twenty years ago.

I actually quite like getting the Wake in little bitesize chunks like this. I have a feeling that when I do eventually read (experience?) Finnegans Wake, a lot of the passages will be dreamily familiar. Twitter has lots of little gems like that. You might also like John Quincey Adams' account: his diary entries were almost invariably just a line long, so some historical society started tweeting them two hundred years to the day after they were originally written.

Thanks very much for the suggestions, by the way. I've heard great things about the Lattimore translation.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I've read Dubliners and Portrait... but I haven't got around to Ulysses yet. I might buy a copy as soon as I finish the books I'm reading at the moment.

Permabear

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Asphyxia

After starting and stopping for a few years I finally started it in January and I'm over half way through it now I do like it but I prefer Dubliners and Portrait Of The Artist... I've got Finnegan's Wake here as well which I might read again.

Harry Angstrom

Travel is good wrote: »

The film Is on RTE1 tonight at 01.20am, for those of us who haven't read the book!

I remember seeing that film a few years back. Considering it was made in the straitened times of 1967 and the fact that Ulysses is practically unfilmable, it's actually not a bad piece of work, all things considered. I remember Joe Lynch played Blazes Boylan. I never looked at Dinny Byrne in quite the same way again.

There was another film made relatively recently called Bloom, which was a bit disappointing although I have to say that Angeline Ball did a great job as a very voluptuous and a very sexual Molly Bloom

squeakyduck

I've read it through (as much as you can read Ulysses to the full 3/4's?!) twice and my first time reading it was in random episodes which caused me to hate it.

In my third year of college I had the opportunity to take a class with Declan Kiberd, my love of that book flourished. I turned up to every class and I loved to hear him speak in English seminars. The love that that man has for the book is infectious! He said that if we had trouble understanding an episode skip it and it would be discussed in class....then start afresh with another chapter.

In my MA year I studied the book with him again. His book Ulysses and Us is a fantastic help and is very easy to read.

IvyTheTerrible

I tried about 5 years ago maybe, I got 150 pages through it and just couldn't carry on, it was too much hard work. I think I was hampered by having little to no classical knowledge.

Enkidu

Permabear wrote: »

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Personally I would recommend Lattimore above Fagles, in my opinion Fagles distorts Homer too much (e.g. removing the epithets) and honestly, as subjective as this is, it doesn't "feel" like Homer. Lattimore and Fitzgerald, I think are closer to Homer, Lattimore more accurate, Fitzgerald more readable.

squeakyduck

Travel is good wrote: »

No haven't read it yet, but I think I tried to, many years ago.

The film Is on RTE1 tonight at 01.20am, for those of us who haven't read the book!

Downloaded this earlier and I'm watching it now! So far so good! Episodes are a bit muddled but the plot is interesting!

Nhead

Read it and loved it...I think about it a lot. Changed the way I view Dublin.

Plowman

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pipelaser

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

I tried about 5 years ago maybe, I got 150 pages through it and just couldn't carry on, it was too much hard work. I think I was hampered by having little to no classical knowledge.

I was really hampered by having no classical knowledge as well.
Still managed to get through it. I was wondering what the hell was going on for much of the middle of the book, but then the true prize came in the last two chapters, they are excellent. Esp the second last.

Now that I have completed it, (after it taking a few months and having to watch the film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEuj4kOCmc
) I must say that it the most rewarding of all the books I've read.

I'm fascinated by Joyce.

The Princess Bride

Had every good intention to read it, went to my local library, but alas, some other well intended member had already taken it out.
.......at least I tried.

mosin

My news years resolution every year is to read Ulysses but frankly I find it a bit daunting. Is there such thing as a reading group you can join specifically to help you get through Ulysses? Wud love to join one in the Dublin area.

Posy

I have read it. I knew that I would be studying it in college so read it the summer before. Then I did it in college and studied it fairly in-depth and wrote a few essays on it.
I think it's a great book, very entertaining.

I don't think I'd have the patience for 'Finnegan's Wake' though.

pipelaser

mosin wrote: »

My news years resolution every year is to read Ulysses but frankly I find it a bit daunting. Is there such thing as a reading group you can join specifically to help you get through Ulysses? Wud love to join one in the Dublin area.

If you don't find one, then there are other ways to get through it.
I found watching "Ulysses 1967 Part 1" (and so on), on Youtube brought a lot of the main events in the book to light. There is also a good Wikipedia page that shows you what to look for chapter by chapter.
Reading through them or watching the film first doesn't in any way spoil the experience of reading, it makes it more accessible.
For a lot of the middle chapters of the book I was still completely lost though!

DublinWriter

The whole genius of Joyce was that he gave no 'concession' to the reader.

Basically he lands you in a foreign country and leaves it to you to figure it out, rather than what most authors do by putting you on a complete package holiday.

...and many would argue that is what life basically does itself. There's no overwhelming cohesive narrative to your life, so why do you expect one in fiction?

The reward is that you discover things for yourself through his work.

Posy

That's a great way of looking at it. Joyce certainly won't hold your hand during the difficult narrative.

Does Finnegan's Wake actually make any sense though? Ulysses has characters and a plot- F.W just seems like nonsense!

The Sparrow

I decided to give Joyce a go this year so I'm going to start Dubliners tomorrow and hopefully work my way up to Ulysees. Hopefully it will be fun and rewarding.

bullpost

Dubliners is very accessible and enjoyable.
Watch the film "The Dead" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092843/ when you've finished the book.

The Sparrow wrote: »

I decided to give Joyce a go this year so I'm going to start Dubliners tomorrow and hopefully work my way up to Ulysees. Hopefully it will be fun and rewarding.

Permabear

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PurpleBee

don't let anyone tell you its necessary to read Homer to appreciate Ulysses, read the chapter summaries of the Odyssey and you'll have more than you'll ever need.

deem79

Dubliners is fantastic. I'm not smart enough to 'get' Ulysses - if I ever get around to it I'll have explanatory notes beside me so I can get all the references

DublinWriter

Permabear wrote: »

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I agree and I disagree.

Finnegans Wake is generally agreed to be the most 'difficult' novel in the English language.

I believe the key to the text is the recording Joyce's reading own from i.8 (the Dublin two washer-women). It's on youtube.

But to read the text alone is like trying to decipher musical notation without any idea of the staves or what instrument is playing which part.

I came from a stance of disliking FW, to starting to believe I was beginning to understand it, to actively hating it.

It was as much written for Joyce's own amusement than any one elses. For example, the character 'mamalujo' was named by combining the names of Nora (Mama), his daughter Lucia (Lu) and Georgio (jo). He only confessed this secretly later.

How on earth could anyone decipher the text on that basis?

During the years of its writing, Joyce was a functioning alcoholic. More is to be gained by reading Nora's account of Joyce's working method (he'd write all night, drinking white wine, laughing to himself in the next room) than any scholarly thesis.

PurpleBee

DublinWriter wrote: »

During the years of its writing, Joyce was a functioning alcoholic. More is to be gained by reading Nora's account of Joyce's working method (he'd write all night, drinking white wine, laughing to himself in the next room) than any scholarly thesis.

Lots of great writers are alcoholics... (not sure what a functioning alcoholic is) alcoholism is almost a prerequisite to becoming a great writer

also its a documented fact that Joyce was gutted at the preference people had for Ulysses over Finnegans Wake, it took him 17 years to write... its hardly an "in joke" between family members.

I've only ever read parts of FW and its unbelievably dense, not sure its my cup of tea, but at the same time, it seems pretty amazing to me

Kinski

PurpleBee wrote: »

Lots of great writers are alcoholics... (not sure what a functioning alcoholic is) alcoholism is almost a prerequisite to becoming a great writer

Some were, plenty weren't. We shouldn't romanticize alcoholism by pretending that it fuels creativity.

Permabear

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DublinWriter

Permabear wrote: »

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Interesting...did Joyce himself state that, or is it third-party speculative interpretation?

Permabear

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PurpleBee

Kinski wrote: »

Some were, plenty weren't. We shouldn't romanticize alcoholism by pretending that it fuels creativity.

not romanticising it, just pointing out that alot of great writers were alcoholics.

Kinski

PurpleBee wrote: »

not romanticising it, just pointing out that alot of great writers were alcoholics.

PurpleBee wrote: »

alcoholism is almost a prerequisite to becoming a great writer

?????????????????????????

PurpleBee

That was my over reaction to the other poster's disparagement of Joyce's writing as an alcoholic. My point, rather than romanticising alcoholism, was to point out that it is not necessarily a barrier to the production of great writing...

never said that it fueled creativity.

it is at this point that I shall stick out my tongue

Grievous

Permabear wrote: »

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I always enjoy reading your posts on Joyce. Did you study him in university?
Being Irish, I am always surprised I don't spend more time reading great Irish writers like Flann O'Brien, Wb Yeats, and Joyce himself.

At the moment, I am more interested in Nikos Kazantzakis (Greek), Marguerite Yourcenar( French) and James Shapiro (American).

Permabear

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