A companion piece, I suppose, to my recent post about my Ulysses playing cards:
I find posts like this to be very gratifying. Blogger Deepan Joshi calls me his “guide” for Joyce’s Ulysses and writes, after reading all of my posts about it:
My guide has encouraged me with her simple explanation and after years I have finally mustered the courage to get past “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan” and hopefully would reach the 40-page run-on sentence of Molly Bloom, lying in bed.
My work here is done. When I wrote all of those essays about each chapter in Ulysses, I did it for myself, certainly, because I enjoy talking about the book, and thinking about the book. I also, obviously, like to share what I’m thinking about things (hence: the blog). But I also hoped that my writing may remove some of the mystique surrounding Ulysses (critics can be quite annoying about the book, making it seem like it is only for specialists, and that could not be farther from the truth), and might encourage someone to pick up the book and give it a go.
It can be opaque. Yes. I had a guide. My father. And Anthony Burgess, too, but mostly my father. I could call him up and say, “Dad. WTF?” and I would read him a passage and he would start explaining it. My favorite example is how my dad, in one comment, cracked open the Cyclops episode for me. I could understand the LANGUAGE of the damn episode just fine (which is more than I can say for the Oxen of the Sun episode), but I didn’t know WHY. I didn’t know what was going on, who was the new narrator, why why why why. Remember what Joyce said: “With me, the thought is always simple.” But sometimes to get to that thought is a bit of a journey (which is part of the fun of the book).
I loved reading Joshi’s thoughts about Ulysses, and so thrilled that my posts would have traveled out there into cyberspace, and encouraged someone to continue on.
With a book like Ulysses, it is worth it. Believe me. No other book like it.
Your guide helped me immensely as well when I read Ulysses two years ago…I don’t know that I would have gotten through it without your writings. I have a love/hate relationship with Joyce, but I’m embarking on Finnegans Wake this summer. And to my surprise, I cannot wait.
Won’t you do the same for Proust?
Nope! You’re on your own there.
Thanks for the mention Sheila. And to tell you the truth âUlyssesâ would not have become an obsession had I not stumbled upon your blog. I mean I’ve read a cricket writer using a phrase to define a bamboozled batsman as ‘that he looked like a man who had just read a page out of Joyce’s Ulysses’. Seriously, you sometimes just have to say WTF and sleep like a lotus eater and put it off for another day. In the long-run, though, I have to complete the Odyssey because as you mentioned so wonderfully in one of your posts what Joyce said on his deathbed; and that can absolutely tear a heart apart.
Gosh, for heaven’s sake, it is the novel of the century and the man knows it. He just wants to know does nobody understand? Great to see you doing justice to him. Donât we all wish we could say before death knocks at the door with some certainty that it did mean something⦠otherwise what is the point of it all.
Between your enthusiasm (and with the help of your guide) and that of Steven at A Momentary Taste of Being, I have gathered sufficient courage to embark on Ulysses this year.
I also have a handsome new edition of Finnegans Wake calling to me.
Sheila,
Several decades ago, I embarked on reading as many of the âclassicsâ as I could. I came to Ulysses fairly early on as Iâd heard much about it. Boy did Joyce piss me off. There was no doubt the man could write but did he have to use his talent to make me, and others (I hoped I wasnât alone), look stupid. Honestly, I hated the guy and thought him a big showoff.
After reading your posts on Ulysses and Joyce in general, I vowed to give it another try. That was more than a year ago and still no go. After this post, I took a look at editions available on Amazon. Thereâs an annotated edition available. Hope itâs heavily annotated.
Real soon – any day now.
George – hahaha I believe you’re right: he is a showoff. You kinda have to go with it, I guess – because that element is DEFINITELY there. But once I clicked into it – I just found it a blast. A challenge, yes, but I like challenges. He makes you work, no doubt about it – but if you’re up for it, there are great rewards.
There is a structure there, a sense – but I wouldn’t say there is a real meaning. Nothing is hidden in the book – there is no philosophy of life or over-arching theme. Joyce was annoyed by all the writing of the “subconscious” that was so in vogue at the time, with the influence of Freud/Jung – he thought “the miracle of the conscious” was enough to keep us busy for all eternity.
That’s kind of what the book is about, in my opinion.
Anyway: it should be fun – albeit challenging, and yes, at times, maddening.
good luck!