Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

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:
Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 07:33

That's fascinating @Submariner about English Literature degrees.
It seems crazy that anyone could be expected to read a book like Ulysses in a week + other reading!

As I've said on this thread already I didn't read English in university, mine was another Arts subject. I had friends who were in English & it's funny because I read voraciously for pleasure & they would ask me for recommendations & I always wanted their book lists!

I've always had a hankering to go back & perhaps study English Literature even though I'm in my 50s now. In some ways I feel it would be a great age / perspective to do it. But then I remember I have a job & responsibilities.

If i won the lottery I think one of the biggest pleasures I could imagine (besides travel) would be to quit work (which I love & is a creative sector) & have the time & means to study & read as much as I wanted to...imagine it!

OP posts:
Mutabiliss · 31/05/2023 07:40

There were very few contact hours on an English Lit degree in the early 2000s, it's not like you spent hours talking about the text. You read it (or not) and then you have maybe a lecture or a group seminar about it for an hour or two, then you go away and write an essay if required, or you make revision notes and hope something sticks for your exams. The work was almost entirely self-motivated. (I assume there's more contact now students have to pay so much for the degree.)

I usually had to read the equivalent of three books a week (might be one book, one play and a collection of poetry) plus critical theory around the subjects if you were doing an essay.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 07:59

It was similar in my subject - I had 8 hours of lectures a week & tutorials / seminars & the rest was self directed study / reading / research/ essay writing.
And I graduated in 1992!
I know it hasn't changed much since then as I've been in contact with the department over the years.

However 3 books a week when we're talking about book like Uylsses seems v onerous!

OP posts:

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

Books
Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 08:01

In my imaginings I like to think about having space to read challenging books with a group who were equally interested & meeting weekly to discuss in minute detail....a far cry from the reality of studying English it seems Grin

OP posts:
Mutabiliss · 31/05/2023 08:16

Haha, yes that would be lovely... sadly not what you get though! Maybe a really good book group would fulfill that desire?

I have a similar fantasy but about studying history instead 😁

JoanOgden · 31/05/2023 09:20

This is a great thread! I have read Ulysses - I loved much of it, though (despite my degree in classics, which finally proved its worth) I did get lost at various points and had to resort to checking chapter summaries on the Internet to ensure I had understood what was going on.

I love modernist stream of consciousness novels (Woolf, Ford Madox Ford etc) - they still feel so fresh and new, even after a century.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 09:32

@Mutabiliss history was one of my subjects! And probably that reality is not how you imagine it either...!

@JoanOgden I'm loving the thread too, so interesting, I'm delighted I started it.

To be honest, I have no idea why I threw War and Peace into the opening comment, I think I panicked a bit that I would just have a load of people saying that Joyce was rubbish!!

Would you be interested in joining a Ulysses reading group?

OP posts:
Maireas · 31/05/2023 09:45

Morning! Thank you for this thread, @ValentineGreen and opening the discussion. Like you, I'm a little surprised that a person can get a first class literature degree just using those pass notes, but obviously times have changed. I am an old gimmer.
I did History at university, almost did English, but thought the former may be more interesting. I graduated in 1981, a long time ago!
Love literature and reading has been my mainstay in life.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:04

Oh @Maireas we're very similar! I also did history having toyed with English Literature and I graduated in 1992!

Reading has been the mainstay in my life too and I am so grateful for it!

Last night I was reading up on Virginia Woolf's views on Joyce / Ulysses and it's super interesting. She is SO snooty about him and his work and yet....so heavily influenced. Her class superiority seems to have gotten the better of her..

OP posts:
Maireas · 31/05/2023 10:12

Ah, the Achilles heel of Virginia Woolf indeed! I never read Ulysses when I was younger, but maybe that's why I got a lot out of it recently. Growing up in an Irish background, with heavy RC traditions, I am familiar with some of the streams of thought. Also, Joyce's use of language is a joy, so much language now is just functioning, truncated, simplistic. This is a person who loves words. I've read all the best sellers/Booker Prize winners in recent years and have given up. Dull, dull, dull.

Sartre · 31/05/2023 10:20

English lit lecturer here and I have read it but I think it’s overrated personally, much to the disgust of colleagues. Never read war and peace. Lots of ‘classics’ are overrated bullshit imo. I feel that way about Homer which again, my colleagues are horrified by.

Maireas · 31/05/2023 10:23

Oh well. At least you gave them consideration.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:27

This is fascinating @Sartre can I ask who you do rate?

The article I was reading last night made a case for 1922 being a watershed year for literature and things were never the same after that and of course this was precipitated by Ulysses being published in Feb 1922!

Ezra Pound started a new calendar annotation in The Little Review 'p.s.U' which meant 'post script Ulysses' !

OP posts:
mynameisnotmichaelcaine · 31/05/2023 10:28

I did an English degree at Oxford in the early 2000s. I read Ulysses then, but didn't really get much out of it. Re-read it last year and had the same experience. I quite like The Dubliners though.

Read War and Peace in lockdown. Found most of it pretty dull. I read a few classics that I'd not read before during lockdown, and my definite favourite was The Count of Monte Cristo. I really enjoyed that.

LaGiaconda · 31/05/2023 10:29

I feel mildly shocked by the idea of classics as 'overrated (x2) bullshit. To me it's interesting why particular works are canonised and why they're popular either during the time or at some later period.

I remember Ulysses being described to me as the culmination of the 19th century novel in its aim for breadth and completeness (a sort of Middlemarch), despite it being more generally seen as the great work of Modernism.

Yes, someone like Eliot would have his own reasons for 'bigging up' Ulysses and it's legit to see the novel differently now. But I think it remains a great (epic?) novel of the city, and about the outsider - Bloom is Jewish - wandering around seeking connection.

It certainly has a kind of enduring power.

First read it when a student in the late 70s, doing a final year module on James Joyce.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:30

Too many exclamation marks in my last post, over excited to have found some people to discuss these things with (and stop boring poor dh and teen 'not James Joyces AGAIN'

OP posts:
Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:36

Again very very interesting @LaGiaconda I don't see Joyce as a 19th century writer and it's firmly modernist in my mind. But I love hearing different interpretations and ideas about it.

I agree that it was a bold move to make the protagonist of Ulysses, Jewish as there was then (as now) a very tiny Jewish population in Ireland. It certainly allowed Joyce to reveal some of the unpleasant anti semitic 'views' of the day..

As well as giving a tangible expression to ideas of belonging / connecting / othering etc

OP posts:
Maireas · 31/05/2023 10:41

I also noticed the term "ubermensch" used in Ulysses, which of course became a popular term in Nazi Germany. That intrigued me.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:42

@Maireas also couldn't agree more about the beauty of the language and the sense of luxuriating in words. It's gorgeous.

OP posts:
Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:44

Isn't that from Nietzsche? a huge influence on Joyce?

OP posts:
IJustHadToLookHavingReadTheBook · 31/05/2023 10:48

I have, but for uni.

Up there for me with Finnegan's Wake, which I once heard described as "a book that even those who went to university to do reading with a side module of extra reading find pretty hard going".

Maireas · 31/05/2023 10:52

ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:44

Isn't that from Nietzsche? a huge influence on Joyce?

Could be. Man and superman.

Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:53

I have not read Finnegan's Wake so far. I feel once I have revisited Ulysses and re-read that I will possibly do a lot of background reading and eventually try FW.
I feel it needs working-up-to..

OP posts:
Original poster
ValentineGreen · 31/05/2023 10:54

@Maireas I feel tonight's rabbit hole will be the use of ubermensch in Ulysses :-)

OP posts:
FuzzyCaoraDhubh · 31/05/2023 10:56

Very interesting thread! I've listened to about 120 pages on audio book (Jim Norton as narrator). I think it's very vivid and colourful. I'm sure lots of references will go over my head as I'm not well read in classics. I'm happy to let it wash over me though.

Swipe left for the next trending thread