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Original poster

Have you read Ulysses?

205 replies

ValentineGreen · 29/05/2023 17:46

Or War & Peace?
I read Ulysses a few years ago but since then I've read a lot about it & now feel like I would like to reread it..

Just wondering if many others have read it?

OP posts:
caramac04 · 30/05/2023 12:15

This was our class read, chosen by the teacher, when we were aged 11 or 12. I remember hardly anything of it now but I did look forward to our weekly episode. I think I probably understood very little other than the ‘story’. Perhaps I should read it now rather than detective novels 😂.

WetBandits · 30/05/2023 12:18

Maireas · 30/05/2023 12:14

I would have thought you had plenty of time as a student to read a set book? 🤔

Show quote history

Most books, maybe…but not that one 🥴 especially when you’ve other books to read and analyse for your other classes as well as working 40 hours a week to be able to live 🙃

Didn’t do me any harm not to read it.

Maireas · 30/05/2023 12:25

I'm sure it didn't.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

Books
SinnerBoy · 30/05/2023 12:33

I tried to read it years ago, but gave up. I tried again a couple of times, before being evil and foisting it on a charity shop.

8state · 30/05/2023 12:37

I tried, but there was a section where a man (stephen?) appears to be watching a young woman on the beach, and being quite creepy. Did I misunderstand that bit? It put me off the book.

GMH1974 · 30/05/2023 12:44

I read War and Peace in lockdown. I skim read some of the war bits as I didn't find them very interesting.

EBearhug · 30/05/2023 13:00

8state · 30/05/2023 12:37

I tried, but there was a section where a man (stephen?) appears to be watching a young woman on the beach, and being quite creepy. Did I misunderstand that bit? It put me off the book.

No, you didn't - it's one of the reasons I think it would be difficult to make into a film. Though you could cut bits, but I don't know. Mind you, they made a film of Tristam Shandy, and that was far more tedious - you get half way throughthe book, and he still hasn't been born. Picked up a bit towards the end, though. (That took me 5 years to get through.)

I read Ulysses in September (started on a flight to Australia, as I knew I couldn't easily be distracted.) I did look quite a few things up, but I don't mind that. Some parts are easier than others. I found the dream sequence tedious. Loved Molly Bloom at the end. It might have helped that having been to Belfast some months earlier (and also trying to persuade the lovely D to bed, which meant I was trying to keep up with his Irish background, but anyway...) I had been thinking about Irish history over the last century in previous months, so the context was in my mind.

Haven't read W&P, but enjoyed Anna Karenina, and I suspect I would enjoy it when I get to it. Have read Les Miserables, Tom Jones, Middlemarch - I like a good long novel from time to time - I try to line one up for when I have a long journey.

EsmeShelby · 30/05/2023 13:04

Read it twice. Didn't much like it.

BirdChirp · 30/05/2023 13:10

I love Catch 22, Moby Dick and Tristram Shandy.

I 'read' Ulysses but didn't understand it, and I'm not enthused enough to give it another go with wiki by my side.

The Crying of Lot 49 also defeated me.

Dahliasrule · 30/05/2023 13:15

Read it for Uni. Can’t say I enjoyed it though lecturers rated it. Many years later I needed to wedge something while doing DIY in the bathroom and unfortunately the book fell in the toilet bowl! At least it wasn’t War and Peace.

PinkLazyApple · 30/05/2023 13:27

@MaudGonneOutForChips he's listed here, under H 😉

PinkLazyApple · 30/05/2023 13:27

@MaudGonneOutForChips forgot the link!

m.joyceproject.com/info/people.html

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 30/05/2023 13:52

@LeonardCohensRaincoat I actually just said to dh over the weekend that it was strange Joyce was not in Midnight in Paris!!

@caramac04 your teacher chose Ulysses as the reading project for 11 and 12 year olds?? That's a very unusual choice I would have thought?

I feel a bit dispirited that someone could read English at university and write an essay meriting a first without ever having read it. And also would have thought that being a student of English literature would offer the prefect opportunity to explore a text such as Ulysses in a supportive environment? I did not read English but have always been interested in books / thoughts / ideas that have influenced how we understand the world around us and our own behaviours.

As for the pp who said the element of voyeurism on the beach was enough to put them off, I think while that was daring and unusual to write about in the 1910's / 20's it's mild compared to what we read in many many books or see on tv in films and programmes.

I understand it as Joyce desiring to reveal or excavate the entirety of the frailty of the human condition. Bloom was by and large a good man who was flawed (as we all are) and didn't always make the best choices.

Since starting this thread I have also been thinking a lot about the 'inaccessibility' of the references as discussed and it also struck me that education itself was very different in the era the book was written and published. There was a far greater emphasis on classical education and far more people would have been very familiar with The Odyessy then than now. Plus people learned latin in school etc. Lots of the scientific references were new theories / discoveries which would have been in the papers etc so more generally known about?

On the walking tour I did the guide was saying how Bloom's job as an advertising canvasser was a very new notion in 1904 and as such represented modernity and of course we're jaded by the concept of 'selling and advertising now' 100 years later..

OP posts:
8state · 30/05/2023 13:53

@EBearhug Glad I didn't misunderstand it. I'm quite sensitive to anything that seems a bit rapey in books and films. It's nowhere near as bad as the Odyssey, with the maids being hung, when some of them were probably raped. I can see that the book gives great insight into Irish history and culture and I seem to remember finding it funny up until that point.

8state · 30/05/2023 13:57

The beach scene was triggering to me, with the suggestion of Bloom secretly masturbating while watching a 17 year old. I might be projecting my own experiences of being assaulted by flashers as a teenager, and how horrible that was. I may be being unfair to the book, and should try to interpret it in another light.

caramac04 · 30/05/2023 14:23

@ValentineGreen having just looked it up I realise it was Odysseus not Ulysses. PP’s comments re masturbation made me query my memory. I think somewhere along the line I believed the two works were one and the same. #thick.

My English teacher was very good and never creepy or icky so wouldn’t have chosen Ulysses.

8state · 30/05/2023 14:29

@caramac04 I would think it may have been a censored version of the Odyssey. While Odysseus was away, many of his maids either slept with Penelope's suitors and hangers on, or were raped. For this Odysseus hung them, as his maids were now damaged property. I hope your teacher found a children's version! Ulysses is structured around books of the Odyssey, so you are right to connect them.

Chanel05 · 30/05/2023 15:16

Ulysses yes. English lit degree.

caramac04 · 30/05/2023 17:46

@8State thank you. I’m sure you’re right, I genuinely don’t recall any inappropriate stuff, more of a romantic/hero’s quest. I’m definitely going to read it as a much older person now.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 30/05/2023 18:32

@8state most likely your teacher was reading from an edited version suitable for that age group?

I've had a quick look over on the 'what I'm reading' section while I see threads for reading other books 2023 I didn't see one for Ulysses
.
Do you think we have enough of us to start a thread?

OP posts:
ChannelLightVessel · 30/05/2023 22:40

I’d love to join in. I did the War and Peace readalong last year, which was brilliant. I don’t know much about Ireland in 1904, but I have studied the Odyssey.

LaGiaconda · 30/05/2023 23:35

I.think Joyce deliberately put everything in. Defecation. Masturbation. The important thing is that Molly Bloom gets the last word.

Currently reading an easy novel. Too often easy is boring.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 00:18

I agree @LaGiaconda he was really trying to hold a mirror up to humanity in all its failings as well as all its beauty & mystery. Like a sort of hyperrealism!

OK- let's do it! I'll set up a thread in the next day or two & we'll get reading!

Looking forward to it 😀

OP posts:
Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 00:19

And I LOVE molly getting the last word - and what a last word it is ❤️ 😍

OP posts:
Submariner · 31/05/2023 05:57

ValentineGreen · 30/05/2023 13:52

@LeonardCohensRaincoat I actually just said to dh over the weekend that it was strange Joyce was not in Midnight in Paris!!

@caramac04 your teacher chose Ulysses as the reading project for 11 and 12 year olds?? That's a very unusual choice I would have thought?

I feel a bit dispirited that someone could read English at university and write an essay meriting a first without ever having read it. And also would have thought that being a student of English literature would offer the prefect opportunity to explore a text such as Ulysses in a supportive environment? I did not read English but have always been interested in books / thoughts / ideas that have influenced how we understand the world around us and our own behaviours.

As for the pp who said the element of voyeurism on the beach was enough to put them off, I think while that was daring and unusual to write about in the 1910's / 20's it's mild compared to what we read in many many books or see on tv in films and programmes.

I understand it as Joyce desiring to reveal or excavate the entirety of the frailty of the human condition. Bloom was by and large a good man who was flawed (as we all are) and didn't always make the best choices.

Since starting this thread I have also been thinking a lot about the 'inaccessibility' of the references as discussed and it also struck me that education itself was very different in the era the book was written and published. There was a far greater emphasis on classical education and far more people would have been very familiar with The Odyessy then than now. Plus people learned latin in school etc. Lots of the scientific references were new theories / discoveries which would have been in the papers etc so more generally known about?

On the walking tour I did the guide was saying how Bloom's job as an advertising canvasser was a very new notion in 1904 and as such represented modernity and of course we're jaded by the concept of 'selling and advertising now' 100 years later..

Just to chime in on the English Lit point. I was assigned Ulysses on my English Lit degree and never got past the first couple of chapters. You had to read on average a book a week (plus critical reading of course) so I didn't find it a supportive atmosphere to read Ulysses. I never wrote an essay about it but I much preferred reading it at my own pace later. Took me more than 10 years to finally get around to it!