Still, it is disappointing that so many respondents inserted their own, clearly worldly, opinions about unreadable or bad literature. It also makes the story more relatable and deeply human (something Joyce was good at, yet overlooked for). I have the Gifford, Gilbert and Ulysses Annotated texts-those are great scholarly works-but the Blamires book is the one to use if you want to just follow along and understand, in common language, WTF is going on. Just remember it is not a Stephen King or Robert Ludlum novel…in fact there is no other novel I know written in English that is as great as Ulysses or as difficult to tackle.ĭeepak-don't know if it's too late, but wanted to recommend one other resource: It's called The New Bloomsday Book by Harry Blamires. I can offer more help and give my list of the 9 cogent sections if you are interested, but give it a try and a lot of time if you want to appreciate the work as it was intended. I'm not into the complex Joycean literary, historical puzzles and conundrums, but I am into the Joycean poetry of the work that exposes his characters, citizens and people of Dublin, Ireland on June 16th 1904 to the world. I believe the difficult parts are meant by Joyce to confound linguists and academics and the other parts of the novel are to present a universal theme on humanity to us more common readers. The points of the work are numerous and in order to appreciate it (if I can use that word), you should expose yourself to the entire work in some manner, knowing right away that half of the sections are very difficult and often incomprehensible. Conversely, the 9 other sections are extremely difficult to understand and of those 4 are plain awful. In my opinion 9 of these sections are easy to read and in fact quite enjoyable, they can be read or listened to exclusively without the other 9 sections and one would understand and enjoy the primary principles or themes of the novel. 4) There are 18 sections of Ulysses which correlate to the sections in the Odyssey. 3) I looked at some external or secondary sources both before and after each section and often found them helpful but not altogether vital. I did a number of things in the tackling of the project: 1) I listened to each section aloud via an audio book, then went back to read the section from the text (I had the original Sylvia Beach edition which I think is better than the later academic "improved" edition.) 2) I listened to some of the Frank Delaney podcasts of the first 2 sections and then I was on my way. Like a marathon, I am proud that I finished it. I wanted to quit, but because I had announced my intentions to several good friends, they held my feet to the fire and I endured and triumphed at the end. I'm over 50 years old now and it was hard sledding. Why? Because I felt I owed it to myself and the work which is considered the greatest novel of the 20th century. I faked it in college, but finally sat down to give it my best try after 30 years. If you still hate it after you've listened to it, contact me for the refund. The end result: an enchanting world of incredible humor, satire, parody, romaticism and pure old Irish poetry await. For me- and I'm a serious classics nerd-the recorded book is 1000% ivelier and more engaging than slogging through the book, wondering which point of view the reader is in at any given momen, It takes a great actor to switch intonation and give all the story's narrators their own unique voice so you can hear when we drift into Stephen's or Leopold's stream of consciosnous, or when we move back into third person omnicient. Its like listening to music, smetimes lyric somtimes sardonic always engaging, as if the book were written to be recited. Recorded books spent a year working with the Joyce family and hired incredible Irish actor Donol Donnelly fo narrate all the episodes except Penelope, read by a terrfic Irish actress. Once I heard the book professionallly narrated I entered the Promised land (which btw is a big theme in the novel) and a whole new world opened. Then, in a last ditch effort I downloaded the Audible version. To the Giffords no tes made things even more mind-numbing. I had tried Ulyssesseveral times myself and couldn't wrap my head around the written word. listen to it! Then you'll see and feel what all the shouting is about.
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