Lordy Jesus. So this was a “grail” read for me. A book I’ve contemplated reading for many years but never got around to tackling until I spotted this centennial edition as a guide. For others who are thinking of diving in, I cannot recommend this edition of the book more highly. The Cambridge edition is organized with short, insightful, and interesting essays that precede each chapter. After the third chapter, I would not have known what in holy hell was going on without those essays to guide me. I understand why Virginia Woolf abandoned this text after 200 pages, and I do not know how the book got banned for obscenity because that meant that people would have had to actually read the book and comprehend it. (Plus, the really explicit section — Molly’s ramblings thoughts — is saved for the last chapter. So, again, one would have had to make it all the way through to complain.)
When I was a little over halfway through through, I listened to The Neutral Ground Podcast episode titled, “Why James Joyce’s Ulysses Matters 100 Years Later.” It was a wonderful discussion that further helped me understand what I was reading. It also freed me to give up on trying to understand the story and simply enjoy the language. Some of the phrases I underlined as I read simply because I enjoyed them:
“Paris rawly walking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets.”
“School of turlehide whales, horde of jerkined dwarfs, flayers knives, faming, plague and slaughters.”
“We don’t want any of your medieval abstrusiosities.”
“Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies.”
“…yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot.”
“That Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts.”
“Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh?”
Other things I enjoyed (but would have most certainly missed without the essays as a guide):
Joyce’s descriptions of Dublin as a city of filth and squalor (most notably in the chapter titled “Lotus Eaters”).
His take on journalism, as relevant today as it was 100 years ago (in “Aeolus”).
Imagery of food used to describe rivers and roads (in “Lestrygonians”).
Overall, I appreciated the humanity and relevance of the story today: the urbane outsider dealing with parochialism; a troubled marriage; and the death of a child.
I will not be reading this book again. I barely understood it. But I’m glad I took it on.
