James Joyce’s Ulysses

I have always been inter­est­ed in the great books and have read many of them, but Ulysses has always remained in my mind as the most chal­leng­ing so I had not attempt­ed read­ing it. I decid­ed to give it a try and obtained a copy of the left pic­tured edi­tion from the Cam­bria Library on Octo­ber 20th. Last night I fin­ished it. I had no idea how humor­ous, inter­est­ing, and approach­able it would be.

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Here are quotes from the Wikipedia entry for the novel:

“Ulysses’ stream-of-con­scious­ness tech­nique, care­ful struc­tur­ing, and exper­i­men­tal prose—full of puns, par­o­dies, and allu­sions, as well as its rich char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions and broad humour, made the book a high­ly regard­ed nov­el in the Mod­ernist pan­theon. In 1999, the Mod­ern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els of the 20th century.”

“Episode 17, Ithaca
The episode is writ­ten in the form of a rigid­ly orga­nized cat­e­chism, and was report­ed­ly Joyce’s favourite episode in the nov­el. The style is that of a sci­en­tif­ic inquiry, with ques­tions fur­ther­ing the nar­ra­tive. The deep descrip­tions range from ques­tions of astron­o­my to the tra­jec­to­ry of urination.”

The tech­nique he used in chap­ter 17 is cer­tain­ly a favorite of mine. Here is one fun section:

“What rela­tion exist­ed between their ages?

16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen’s present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom’s present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages ini­tial­ly in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the pro­por­tion increas­ing and the dis­par­i­ty dimin­ish­ing accord­ing as arbi­trary future years were added, for if the pro­por­tion exist­ing in 1883 had con­tin­ued immutable, con­ceiv­ing that to be pos­si­ble, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the max­i­mum post­dilu­vian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive hav­ing been born in the year 714, would have sur­passed by 221 years the max­i­mum ante­dilu­vian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would con­tin­ue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been oblig­ed to have been alive 83,300 years, hav­ing been oblig­ed to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C.

What events might nul­li­fy these calculations?

The ces­sa­tion of exis­tence of both or either, the inau­gu­ra­tion of a new era or cal­en­dar, the anni­hi­la­tion of the world and con­se­quent exter­mi­na­tion of the human species, inevitable but impredictable.”

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I would love to take a class on the nov­el and reread it there­in.
Too fun and inter­est­ing — give it a try if you are at all curious.