Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/07/zachary-leader-richard-ellmann-james-joyce-review/682907/

by petethomas • 1 year ago

107 130 1 year ago

sys32768• 1 year ago

zabzonk• 1 year ago

Those of a more light-hearted temperament might prefer Ellman's book on Oscar Wilde. But Joyce is himself very adequately described and amusingly so.

jahnu• 1 year ago

Honestly, it’s not as strange a read as people make out. Read it twice. After the first time which was ok but not an amazing experience I then read an analysis/explaination and then I read it a second time which was obviously much easier and it was really great.

Finnegan’s Wake on the other hand… bailed after three pages.

rjpower9000• 1 year ago

I had a similar experience. I finally got around to reading Ulysses when I had some downtime between jobs and pushed my way through it. I ended up referring to https://www.ulyssesguide.com/ as I went along which helped substantially: the extra context and discussion made me appreciate the novel more.

I came to the conclusion that while I didn't necessarily _like it_ per se, I had to acknowledge how absurdly talented Joyce was, and that there was some justification for being in the top books list. My feeling was that the lack of enjoyment was a fault of the book but more that I didn't have the background to appreciate it. Though there were also some chapters where most people agree Joyce was just trying too hard and it shows.

atombender2• 1 year ago

I've never read Finnegans Wake, but it made a lot more sense when I heard it spoken out loud, which I think was the intent. Here's Joyce reading it: https://youtu.be/M8kFqiv8Vww?si=YO69BX_KVEINr5mo.

I had the same sensation when I listened to Fiona Shaw performing The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who breathes completely new life into it: https://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk?si=IBKeyTnu0KCZ2r_U. (She's an amazing actress, truly one of the greats.) The poem is supposed to many types of voices talking, so you lose a lot of meaning if you just read it like a poem (even T. S. Eliot himself reads it quite poorly!).

eszed5• 1 year ago

Fiona Shaw is one of the greats. I've been lucky enough to see her on stage a couple of times.

For those of you who don't recognize her name, she's Maarva in Andor, and some minor character (I don't remember) in the Harry Potter films - neither of which roles get even close to challenging her range and power.

segfault993• 1 year ago

Anyone seen Jorn Barger lately?

jknoepfler• 1 year ago

I (too) had a similar experience! On the first read I felt like I was barely scratching the surface but could enjoy just enough of the lyricism and imagery to slog through, but definitely didn't "get it". Then I read it with a bunch of fellow book nerds and put some effort into unpacking it and had a blast.

It definitely repays sustained attention, if literary fiction is your jam.

2b3a51• 1 year ago

RTE produced a dramatised reading of Ulysses by actors. Still available for download. I found this helped me access the written text.

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2025/0527/1146705-listen-ulysses-...

gnulinux4• 1 year ago

It's definitely not the hardest "arthouse" novel (or whatever you call it), I found Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon so much more harder, and Beckett's Three Novels (i.e. Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) was likely the most difficult text I attempted to read in my life. Even then, I think it's still pretty difficult for an average Western reader in 2020s, our literacy attention span and interest is very low. People should definitely attempt it though!

squidsoup2• 1 year ago

Pynchon's "California" novels (crying of lot 49, vineland, inherent vice) are much more readable, and arguably enjoyable. I found Gravity's Rainbow pretty inscrutable.

i_hated_finegan• 1 year ago

You made it three pages? I doubt I made it two.

sivers• 1 year ago

If you don't mind audiobooks, here's one way (well, two ways) to listen to Ulysses:

https://sive.rs/ulysses

gnulinux4• 1 year ago

Just in case people consider this seriously, I just want to add my two cents: Ulysses although is prose, it's so much more of a poetry than prose compared many other novels. I personally don't think listening to someone's reading of Ulysses will be remotely similar to reading it on page. Some of the chapters are really almost entirely about discovering how to read this chapter. I don't necessarily think it's bad, just the same way you can listen to poetry by going to a poetry reading session, you can listen to Ulysses. Just note that it's going to be an entirely different experience than reading it, and it will likely forever bias your interpretation of the book. Just my humble two cents, I don't claim to know anything.

ramesh312• 1 year ago

You can listen to the man himself reading it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI

It's meant as pure lyrical poetry. Reading it aloud is like dancing with your tongue instead of feet.

phendrenad2• 1 year ago

Why not both? Listen and read along.

thaumasiotes4• 1 year ago

What a surreal take. Poetry differs from prose in that it relies much more heavily on being spoken aloud.

plemer2• 1 year ago

The best reading I've found is from Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Ireland’s national public-service broadcaster. [1] It's treated more as a play, one part per actor. It's special - my closest other experience is watching Shakespeare.

[1] https://www.rte.ie/culture/2025/0527/1146705-listen-ulysses-...

fullstick• 1 year ago

I'm doing "subtitles" for Ulysses right now. Combo physical book and audio book while I read.

some_random• 1 year ago

Ulysses to me is a really good example of a book whose reputation has been sabotaged by being assigned in class, that was where I first read it and while I was ambivalent to it most people seemed to hate it.

Spivak• 1 year ago

I think high schools / universities do their students such a disservice assigning books that students don't have the life experience to understand. Like they can read the book and analyze it sure but they're going to hate it and be bored out their minds because the experiences being portrayed aren't relatable (yet).

No high schooler or undergrad is going to understand a book that talks about being trapped in a life they don't enjoy by the choices they've made that's meant for a reader in their 40s.

gnulinux4• 1 year ago

This is extremely true. Reading Dostoyevsky as an adult was like finding a long lost treasure in ancient scrolls. I never understood what's the point in High School. Some of the classics are really classics because they're so much about humanity at large, and unless you're a literary prodigy like Rimbaud or whatever a lot of human drama won't make sense to you in high school--maybe even then. Schools really blew it out of proportion by assigning books like Crime & Punishment, Ulysses etc to 16 year old kids who are essentially overgrown toddlers. I think kids should still attempt to read these books in High School (learning comes from challenge) but creating the entire curriculum based on these adult books does them a disservice by not answering the "why do we give a shit?" question.

Really, same thing goes for most other disciplines. So many kids learn 4 years of algebra without having the slightest clue that this all is building to something called "Calculus" that they don't understand what it is.

rurp• 1 year ago

I agree with this so much. My parents got me reading books early and I regularly read now, but for the most part I hated school asigned reading. There were maybe three books I actually enjoyed throughout high school and college, with the rest being a slog to get through. After college I stopped reading for fun for years because I was burned out on books I didn't enjoy.

A lot of school asigned reading cements the idea that someone just doesn't like books because, well, they haven't ever liked anything they were told to read.

Encouraging people to read period should be the first goal with yound adults, and if they want to read something that academics sneer at then that's totally fine. Reading any sort of book has benefits, and those who develop a love for it will naturally seek out more challening and interesting books when they are ready for them.

bachmeier• 1 year ago

high schools / universities do their students such a disservice assigning books that students don't have the life experience to understand

I disagree. If you read a book first, it can inform you as you go through your life experiences, and it can potentially have far more value to the student that way. The mistake in teaching these books in school is that the teaching is generally done with the assumption that students have already had those life experiences, making it a complete waste of everyone's time. At least that was how it was taught when I was in school.

asimpletune• 1 year ago

What classes assign Ulysses? Serious question.

wk_end2• 1 year ago

Well, I had a third year university class that assigned it. But it assigned only it, for the entire semester, because it was a seminar devoted to reading Ulysses.

(This is far-and-away the best way to read Ulysses, FWIW)

ramesh312• 1 year ago

The title is in reference to Molly Bloom's stream of consciousness monologue in the final chapter. If you read one single work of english literature in your life, let it be this: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm#chap1...

patrickscoleman• 1 year ago

Finally read it this year and so happy that I did!

Although a lot of that reading was skimming haha. I think that's good for a first reading though. You get a really good idea of the overall pacing and chapter-to-chapter variety that way.

TurkishPoptart• 1 year ago

Why this one?

sombrero_john• 1 year ago

Ulysses is the kind of book people read just so they can tell other people that they read it.

klodolph2• 1 year ago

I’ve never met anyone who has done that, this sounds like the kind of thing someone would say just to put people down.

casey2• 1 year ago

You are saying this in a thread full of people who are telling everybody else in it that they've read it. And these people should be put down

squidsoup2• 1 year ago

Incorrect, its a book for people that like farts.

sandy_coyote• 1 year ago

I tried reading it once, but hearing excerpts of this book read aloud really unlocked it for me. In the right hands (mouth?), it's hilarious.

jackconsidine• 1 year ago

Happy Bloom's Day 2 days ago everyone [1].

I'm on my 4th attempt at Ulysses. It's just two dense. Too many niche references that only an educated early 20th century Irish citizen would understand.

[1] Ulysses took place all on June 16th 1904. Most of the book is stream of consciousness from Leopold Bloom. Bloom's Day is now a celebration of Joyce in Ireland

WalterGR2• 1 year ago

Too many niche references that only an educated early 20th century Irish citizen would understand.

Presumably there are dozens of companion references to explain those. Can anyone recommend some?

kej• 1 year ago

I have this site [0] bookmarked in case I ever get around to reading it again. I like the use of hypertext so that you can follow the explanations you want and ignore others, and the inclusion of pictures and videos reminds me of the breathless anticipation of new multimedia experiences back when CD-ROMs started becoming common.

[0] http://m.joyceproject.com/info/aboutproject.html

paulette449• 1 year ago

I read Ulysses last year and enjoyed it but this "companion" book was indispensable:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ulysses-annotated-revised-and-e...

But also the free (online) Joyce Project with hyperlinked annotations:

http://m.joyceproject.com/chapters/telem.html

I wish I'd bought this version when It came out. It's pretty expensive now.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-cambridge-ulysses-the-1922-...

And I cannot recommend Frank Delaney's Re: Joyce podcast enough, sadly he passed away before completing the project

https://blog.frankdelaney.com/re-joyce/

freejazz4• 1 year ago

It's just two dense.

Try reading just one copy :)

squishington• 1 year ago

I remember listening to a Robert Anton Wilson talk, where he claimed that he had read letters that Joyce wrote to a lover. These letters were only released many years after Joyce's death. Apparently they revealed that Bloom's Day occurs on the date corresponding to Joyce's first ever sexual experience for which he didn't have to pay money (a hand job, for which he was very grateful). Wilson thought it was funny because the common narrative (and that supported by the church) was that the date corresponded to his first kiss with his girlfriend. But actually the church was celebrating a hand job.

lacker• 1 year ago

It took me a few tries to get through Ulysses, but I enjoyed it when I finally figured it out.

What helped for me is first reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is kind of like an easier version of the same style that introduces some of the characters in Ulysses. And then following along on ulyssesguide.com when I was reading it. Some of the parts (the fake quasi latin) are extra difficult and it helps to have a guide so you don't get completely lost as to what's going on.

io84• 1 year ago

I had a few tries at Ulysses in my 20s and always abandoned it.

I tried it again aged 38 and I found it flowed much more easily. The protagonist Leopold Bloom, who I remembered as an old man from earlier attempts, was relatable. It turns out Bloom is exactly 38.

I find side notes too disruptive when reading so my crutch for the middle was to skim a short chapter summary before a starting each new chapter. This let me enjoy the dreamlike qualities of the text without needing to catch every reference.

uqual• 1 year ago

In the 1970s I made the mistake of satisfying one of my general ed requirements by taking a one quarter class which covered _only_ Ulysses. The professor had done his PhD thesis on Ulysses and knew the page numbers (both in the edition he was using and the paperback version the students bought) of random passages even when a student came up with a question that was tangential to the immediate expected discussion.

It was quite a challenge writing the term paper (which was most of the grade) knowing it would be evaluated by this professor. My attempts were mediocre and in exchange I received a well deserved mediocre grade (some sort of "B") in the class (sort of a "Ain't that cute that uqual tried so hard and wrote so many pages of related but nonsensical BS but at least he came to class" grade).

It's safe to say that I will NEVER again read Ulysses!

da02• 1 year ago

What are some of the books that had the biggest impact in changing or developing your mind?

dekhn2• 1 year ago

The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Fire Upon the Deep.

arethuza• 1 year ago

I read Erich von Däniken's Chariot of the God when I was 8 or 9 and eventually became incandescently angry when I eventually realised it was all made up...

On a more positive note I read Catch 22 when I was about 13 or so and I think that gave me some inkling that the world wasn't really going to make much sense!

freejazz4• 1 year ago

So you wont read it again because you had a professor that dedicated his career to the book and it made you feel insecure? That seems unfair. Give a shot, free of pretension.

redavni• 1 year ago

Dude has a mildly traumatic experience in a high pressure environment at which he pushed through, and you respond with toxicity and name calling? This is not OK behavior for an adult. Do better.

plemer2• 1 year ago

Unhelpful

zerr• 1 year ago

Homer’s Odyssey as a prerequisite is the main obstacle.

biorach• 1 year ago

You don't need to have read Homer

adamwk• 1 year ago

It’s not a prerequisite though. Nor is Hamlet or any of the other works referenced. Very little will be missed if you haven’t read the Odyssey. It’s a book that stands alone on its own. Like anything else, Ulysses is inspired by other works, but you don’t need to catch every single reference or allusion to enjoy a book or movie

tianqi• 1 year ago

However, the Odyssey is much easier to read than Ulysses.

jfengel2• 1 year ago

You have to be familiar with it to appreciate the connections, but you don't need to read it. A good summary will do fine. Even the Wikipedia page is good enough.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn• 1 year ago

something, something, something, dawn, something, rosy fingers, something

told you I'd read it!

segfault993• 1 year ago

Jingle.

Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway makes for a nice stream of consciousness study in contrast.

everybodyknows• 1 year ago

Colorful gossip: It's been reported that Woolf disapproved of the morals of Ulysses.

segfault993• 1 year ago

Indeed. She called him a “queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples” after Ulysses.

NoboruWataya• 1 year ago

For anyone who is curious about Joyce but doesn't want to take on Ulysses, I would recommend his Dubliners collection of short stories, which is much more accessible and still a really good read. I would love to tackle Ulysses, preferably with a good companion piece.

CalChris• 1 year ago

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is also approachable.

jbm• 1 year ago

I read Dubliners in CEGEP (Grade 12) and, while I didn't care for it much at the time, in retrospect it's impressive how I still remember the beats from "A Mother". Apparently the characters were based on people Joyce actually knew.

zJayv• 1 year ago

Kenner is useful when it comes to Ulysses. Also map books. I don't remember using this particular volume but assume there are predecessors https://www.amazon.com/James-Joyce-Ulysses-Grafiks-Literary/...

b112• 1 year ago

Better to read about Ulysses in Ilium by Dan Simmons, a scifi book. Best if read without knowing the plot.

billyhoffman• 1 year ago

During my last semester at Georgia Tech, I had one remaining 3000-level English credit I needed to graduate. During the last week to register, I quickly found an open class titled "Modern Authors" and signed up.

But when I attended the first day, I learned that Gatech's online registration system had truncated the class title. The full title was "Modern Authors: James Joyce", and I was the only engineering student in a semester long class about James Joyce, which I had to take it and pass in order to graduate.

It was... pretty good actually.

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man was enjoyable, as were his short stories. His style was unlike anything I had read before and it was musical in a way. However, I found Ulysses impenetrable: It rambled, and was difficult to understand what was even being described in the text, let alone the significance of it. Mostly it was just strange. Thankfully the majority of your grade was based participating in class discussion. Talking about it, seeing how confused everyone else was, and trying to make sense of it all together was a fun way to spend an afternoon in Skiles.

arolihas• 1 year ago

Ugh Skiles, don't remind me. Being confused in that ugly building was a traumatic rite of passage.

number6• 1 year ago

You should try Finnegans Wake. At this point, Joyce feels less like a literary giant and more like an elaborate inside joke among a select few.

Simon_O_Rourke• 1 year ago

No, for the love of God don't try Finnegan's Wake. Take the 25 bucks you would have used to buy it online and do something better with it, like burning it in the trash can, or buying a North Korean memecoin with it.

yaur• 1 year ago

I'm sure I'll eat some donuts here, but Ulysses is neither an interesting nor a well written story.

staticautomatic2• 1 year ago

I agree wrt it as a “story” and yet i still find it very enjoyable to read!

optomas• 1 year ago

Oh come on. A snot green nose rag. You can almost taste it, can't you?

If text can make you gag with revulsion, it is, by definition, good communication.

inglor_cz• 1 year ago

I am trying to read Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man right now, but the 19th century Irish-isms keep kicking me off the flow. I can't concentrate on the story with so many unknown words, people and events.

There are explanatory notes, but reading them precludes immersion, and not reading them precludes comprehension.

staticautomatic2• 1 year ago

The trick with Ulysses is to just let it wash over you. If you try to fully understand each sentence it’s too hard to read.

nilirl• 1 year ago

Maybe pulp fiction has spoiled me but I found it unapproachable.

I crave pace, parsability, and clear purpose.

seanhunter• 1 year ago

I would strongly recommend anyone who has a second-hand impression of Joyce based on articles like this just go and read Dubliners. Seriously. It’s an amazing set of short stories that are wonderfully-written, at times funny, moving, sad, haunting etc. It’s just incredible. It’s not a hard read at all and will enrich your life. I recommend it to basically everyone and several people have talked to me years later about stories in it. It’s fantastic.

Then maybe read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A really great semi-autobiographical work.

At that point you’ve probably made your mind up one way or the other about whether you like Joyce, so then if you feel like it, go read Ulysses and/or Finnegan’s Wake if you want to. But don’t do it because you think it will impress anyone or anything like that. Just read it if you want to. Before you read Ulysses, I would personally recommend reading a good modern version of Homer[1] because that’s just a great experience anyway and plenty of people don’t know the original story and so don’t understand the relevance of the title and are kind of lost before they even get started.

[1] eg I’ve heard very good things about the Mendelsohn translation https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo243090... . I heard some excerpts from Seamus Heaney’s version read out and they were amazing and lyrical as you might expect but probably more “poetic” than most people might care for if they’re not already Heaney fans. I read an older translation but I can’t dig it out right now.

liveoneggs• 1 year ago

Ulysses is on the same "reading level" (Lexile) as "Who is Lebron James" - 1050 - for advanced elementary and middle school.

Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes

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