Tonight, I finished reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. I’ve written my final blog post of ‘disordered thoughts’ about the last chapter, Penelope, and have scheduled it for publication on this blog on Bloomsday, June 16th.
Phew!
- Intro
- Chapters 1,2,3 (Telemachus, Nestor, Proteus)
- Chapter 4 (Calypso)
- Chapter 5 (The Lotus Eaters)
- Chapter 6 (Hades)
- Chapter 7 (Aeolus)
- Chapter 8 (Lestrygonians)
- Chapter 9 (Scylla and Charybdis)
- Chapter 10 (Wandering Rocks)
- Chapter 11 (Sirens)
- Chapter 12 (Cyclops)
- Chapter 13 (Nausicaa)
- Chapter 14 (Oxen of the Sun)
- Chapter 15 (Circe)
- Chapter 16 (Eumaeus)
- Chapter 17 (Ithaca)
- Chapter 18 (Penelope)
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Ulysses is one of those books that I fear I will always be too intimidated to read. I’m curious to read your thoughts though.
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By: Iris on May 23, 2010
at 4:33 am
Hi Iris, I think that since you enjoy read-alongs that you would probably love Ulysses – it lends itself to bookchat because you can enter it at any level and still enjoy it. I read it first by myself over the summer holidays before I had to study it at university, and at that time my reading was mostly the classics so I was alternately entranced, irritated, confused, bemused, and lost in admiration. I had no real idea what it was about but I still felt it was worth reading. Then, after lectures about it and discussions in tutorials I began to glimpse some of its riches especially the humour which I had missed entirely the first time round. The third time I read it because my adult son was reading it, and by then I had more experience both in life and in reading modern books and even more of it made sense. This fourth time is the best because I’ve been able to play around on the net and use online resources to enhance my reading. I’ve discovered all these other people reading it, being puzzled by it and not feeling embarrassed to say that they don’t understand something.
Joyce would be saddened to see that his work is intimidating. He didn’t mean it to be.
If you do decide to tackle it one day, check out Library Thing and Good Reads; they’ve always got groups reading it, that’s where I’m hoping to find companionship when I decide to tackle Finnegan’s Wake.
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By: Lisa Hill on May 23, 2010
at 8:35 am
Lisa – What an accomplishment! I took a course on Ulysses in college and still didn’t read the whole thing! In fact, I wrote my paper on “Penelope” and tried to wing it. Obviously, that wasn’t possible…
So congratulations, I’ll be looking forward to your Bloomsday post. Where were you 14 years ago??? Hehe.
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By: tolmsted on May 23, 2010
at 10:36 am
Well done, Lisa. I read it at university and enjoyed it (in the way one enjoys Ulysses – liking the challenge and the experience) … would like to read it again one day but am not committed enough to do so right now!
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By: whisperinggums on May 23, 2010
at 10:44 am
*chuckle* I reckon there could be a PhD in the whole notion of what it means to ‘read’ Ulysses. Looking back on my first time I know I read the words, but I don’t think I could have written a paper on Penelope either – and few 18 years old could IMO (unless they have had experiences quite unlike mine at that age LOL).
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By: Lisa Hill on May 23, 2010
at 11:55 am
Re. which I had missed entirely …
Well done. The humour was the one thing that stuck with me after the first time — a lot of the rest of it dropped away, and it took me a second reading to remember that it was there, but I remember, for a while after Read No. 1., wandering around, muttering, “James Joyce: Ulysses: funny book. Didn’t expect that.”
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By: DKS on May 23, 2010
at 4:50 pm
Lovely to meet up with you today Deane!
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By: Lisa Hill on May 23, 2010
at 5:42 pm
It was! Thank you for lunch. (I don’t agree with Randall Jarrell’s she-writes-too-much assessment because prolific fecundity at this stage of her career is part of her style — the more she gives you, the more there is to give, like coral growing.) I think I’m intrigued by the Pembroke because he looks at you sideways, warily, as if he’s expecting you to do something terrible, but he doesn’t know what it will be, and neither do you. So there’s a question there. And his eyes, each one with an indentation above it, like U inverted, along the top of the lid, as if they’ve been set into his skull with an ice cream scoop.
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By: DKS on May 23, 2010
at 9:42 pm
I think you could teach me a lot about looking at art – we must have lunch again soon!
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By: Lisa Hill on May 23, 2010
at 10:10 pm
Lisa, thank you for your long and honest answer. I love to hear about people rereading books throughout their life and what ‘growth’ they realised they went through through rereading the book. (That must be one of the worst formulated sentences ever).
I think you’ve convinced me that I really should give Ulysses a try sometime!
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By: Iris on May 25, 2010
at 5:15 am
Next time I’ll ask you about your embryonic GAN. I wanted to, and didn’t. (You’ve mentioned it once here, in a comment to WG.)
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By: DKS on May 25, 2010
at 9:23 am
Iris, I look forward to reading it about it on your blog some time!
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By: Lisa Hill on May 25, 2010
at 5:48 pm
Deane, we can chat for hours – but not about my GAN – you’d be bored silly!
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By: Lisa Hill on May 25, 2010
at 5:49 pm
I know a couple of people who like to talk about their GAN-equivalents (short stories, poems, and so forth). This is a form of boredom I’ve had some practice with.
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By: DKS on May 27, 2010
at 10:11 am
Deane, you may inspire me to write more than I have been – so that I can live up to your expectations:)
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By: Lisa Hill on May 27, 2010
at 6:36 pm
Ulysses is the book I sometimes use as an example to teach my college students a reader’s humility: i.e., if I have trouble understanding a great book, it isn’t the book’s fault!
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By: Shelley on May 27, 2010
at 1:09 pm
Hi Shelley, welcome to chatting on ANZLL:)
What you say is so true. I wish some Amazon reviewers knew this!
Lisa
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By: Lisa Hill on May 27, 2010
at 6:37 pm
Holy smokes! I think applause is in order. That is quite the task. Congratulations!
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By: Lydia on May 29, 2010
at 11:32 pm
[…] book. I am mean with my five stars, I reserve them for spectacular books like James Joyce’s Ulysses and Patrick White’s Voss so I didn’t rate anything with five stars last year even […]
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By: Six Degrees of Separation, from Atonement, to … | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on August 4, 2018
at 10:58 pm
[…] Ulysses by James Joyce […]
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By: Last Stories, by William Trevor (Reading Ireland Month 2020) | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on March 11, 2020
at 10:13 pm
[…] Joyce’s Ulysses (which I last read in 2009-2010) is so famous for his allusions to music that there are compilations that you can buy so that you […]
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By: Six Degrees of Separation: from Second Place, to…. | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on September 4, 2021
at 1:28 pm
[…] like to think I’m adventurous: I’ve tackled Finnegans Wake and Ulysses; I love reading B.S. Johnson and Brian Castro and Gerald Murnane; I’ve shared my adventures […]
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By: Danged Black Thing, by Eugen Bacon | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on September 5, 2021
at 9:01 am
[…] were 30 of them including my desert island book Ulysses (see my ‘disordered thoughts’ here), and I was prompted to see if I could add to it by checking the current list at […]
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By: Six Degrees of Separation: from What are you going through? to…. | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on November 6, 2021
at 4:17 pm
[…] were 30 of them including my desert island book Ulysses (see my ‘disordered thoughts’ here), and I was prompted to see if I could add to it by checking the current list at […]
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By: Six Degrees of Separation: from What are you going through? to…. | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on November 6, 2021
at 4:17 pm