Reading Ulysses
March 14, 2004
I am beginning my third serious attempt to read James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The first time I was in college, and I was simply overmatched. I was pretty fresh from reading Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist, and it was just too much of a project. I had been so moved by Dubliners that I continued to reread it perhaps a dozen or more times in my 20s. When I taught, I often included “Araby,” “The Dead,” or “A Painful Case.” I don’t think I ever managed to make anyone appreciate Joyce nearly as much as I did.
The second time I tried reading Ulysses I was in my late 20s, and was ready intellectually, but I apparently no longer had a sense of humor. I simply didn't get it. I think that I was so damn serious about "getting it" that I missed the whole point. Now that I have my sense of humor again, the book is coming to life. I can't say I have breezed through the first 120 pages, but I have enjoyed them; already I am about 30 pages past my quitting point the last time.
Along with understanding that the book is funny, I am also understanding the sadness--or perhaps the loneliness--at the core of the book. Bloom's social awkwardness is touching, and the failure of others to even try to understand him is so much more striking to me now. I also had missed a key detail to Bloom that really jumps out at me now, namely, that his father committed suicide.
So, perhaps I will finish this time. So far, so good, but I don't want to jinx myself.
No surprise here, but there are some excellent Web sites for Ulysses in particular, and James Joyce in general. I found the full text here, but I have no idea if is authoritative (or legal!), or how it compares with the corrected text that was published in the 1980s. There are also, you can imagine, many pictures of Joyce, though, again, I am not sure if they are being used properly. Still, it is nice to have so many resources so readily at hand. One of my prize possessions in college was a poster of Joyce, purchased at The Harvard Coop. That same image is everywhere on the Web now.
Posted by Bill Trippe at March 14, 2004 10:46 PM
