Reading Ulysses

Ignore the jokers who tell you to just go with the flow and let it all wash over you like tonic wine over a drunk's vest, unless you're really sure you know where the cruise-control is on your psyche. I'd recommend reading it in conjunction with a good guide. Harry Blamires' 'The New Bloomsday Book' is very good. Almost everything is much more fun when you understand what's going on and, as Joyce was far smarter than you, me, and everyone we know put together, it's nice to have someone to tell you exactly what you understand and why, and to take that knitting needle out of your ear immediately.

I suggest you just read the entire thing aloud on June 16th, which will be exactly 100 years after the day on which the book takes place. And I am told it takes about 24 hours to read aloud. So.

But Ulysses does have these meta structures and it is fun and instructive to learn what they are. Joyce might not be that much smarter than us, as Casuistry says, but he's shart as a whip, funny as can be and maybe too clever by half. So after you've read it the first time then get the books the DM suggests and go through it again.

Curiously, this is not quite true. I have now spent almost twice as many years reading it as JJ spent writing it.

You might say that I did not spend them 'solidly' reading it. That would be partially true. But really, I have spent a lot of time reading that book; and when I wasn't reading it I was usually thinking about it, or about whether Pat van den Hauwe was worse than Terry Fenwick or vice versa.

1. Joyce takes his lavish revenge on the English language and aspects of English culture, in a project which casts a steelpencold critical eye on history yet also abounds in utopian promise.

2. Van den Hauwe is worse.

I'm not suggesting that Joyce wasn't smart, though. Just that he wasn't intimidatingly smart, as far as I can tell. Or, I mean, no smarter than several of the people on ILX.

Well, I found it funny. Despite all the fun stuff for lit-majors and such the tone is generally pretty light.

I look forward, to finding out.

I wonder if anyone has tried to count the words in Finnegans Wake.

i have reread parts w/o a companion text, but i can't imagine figuring it out on the first go round

Of course, I am reading Ulysses as part of my own literary death match, put forth by Engineering Sux. Taking the contenders in alphabetical order, I read Gravity's Rainbow for the first time a few weeks ago. I may read other Pynchon in the future, but I can't imagine picking up that puerile, slapstick work for pleasure ever again. Ulysses won the match in the first 50 pages.

Which raises an interesting question - how much of a book do you need to understand for it to be enjoyable? I suspect this is largely a question of temperament: Reader A can understand 80% of a book and find it a pleasurable read; Reader B understands 90% and finds it frustratingly obscure.

But he / she is slightly and understandably wrong on one count. The Citizen borrowed Garryowen from Giltrap, who is Gerty's grandfather. The narrator of 'Cyclops' tells us the first of those two facts.

Yes that's my point - I just can't do that. I'm not saying I need to understand a book 100% before I can enjoy it but I have a relatively low tolerance of obscurity.

he did give himself a good long while to write Ulysses, more than any of us have given to reading it, you know?

Curiously, this is not quite true. I have now spent almost twice as many years reading it as JJ spent writing it.

Someone told me that Joyce once said (I paraphrase) "all that I ask of my readers is that they devote their lives to the understanding of my work". I've never seen it written anywhere, but the guy who told me this wouldn't have made it up (it's just possible he had been misled himself).

I'm not entirely sure "meaning" or "understanding" can be quantified. But even if you do understand "80%" of a text, what if it's the wrong 80%? What if you understand 100% of a text, but your understanding diverges with everyone else's, including the author's? A text like "Lolita" you can read all the way through and feel as though you "understood" it and then go back and reread it and discover there was a whole secret code going on during the novel that you might not have known to see the first time.

Finepox: Jaq is a lady-style person.

I don't disagree with any of that & in fact anticipated the objection. But I decided I could spend long enough trying to refine what I'm saying to remove this kind of ambiguity, probably still without total success. If we get into philosophical discussion about semantics none of us will ever get out again. I think my basic point is clear enough.

So to "understand" Ulysses in the common sense of the word is impossible. All you ever do is get better acquainted with it. The fact that it points you at other facts, that you can learn about it from outside of it, is just a fact of the intertextuality of knowledge. Which is an interesting and often overlooked point about knowledge, I think.

Dublin is obscure, in a sense, possibly, the first time you go there. Especially, perhaps, if you don't take any guide books or maps. But less so if you live there, I imagine.

Maybe something somewhat parallel can be said of the book.

Some people, for example steve, find that not understanding large chunks of a novel are not a barrier to enjoyment: others, myself included, generally do. This is surely obvious enough. What interests me more particularly is that people will tend to assume that if steve likes the novel better than I did he must have understood it better. That obviously doesn't necessarily follow: but as I say the assumption is frequently made.

My point is a general one and not specific to Ulysses, a book I incidentally feel very ambivalent about.

As I recall the story, Joyce was in a social situation and another guest complained to him about the convolution and opacity of Finnegans Wake, asking, (I paraphrase) "Do you really expect me to spend my whole life puzzling this out?"

Joyce answered, "Yes."

A better-educated friend of mine read Ulysses around the same time as I did and understood much more of it. He said he thought it was basically garbage (which is what I think of Gravity's Rainbow).

Joyce was so deeply involved in his own work that he honestly thought WWII occured because not enough people read his book (FW).

i like steve's remark about unknowing.

I can empathise with this, having felt similar things around the same age when I started to get interested in "literature" (not having been interested in much except girls, beer and playing in bands in my late teens). Ulysses was definitely part of that: I was quite dazzled and slightly obsessed by Joyce for a time and read everything about Ulysses I could get my hands on - although there were other infatuations that hit me just as hard or harder (Rilke, Wordsworth, Lawrence). I think at bottom though there was the idea that if only I could grasp this stuff properly there would be an almost spiritual enlightenment at the end of it (I was fascinated by neoplatonism and similar rubbish). Joyce, more a aesthete and less of a would-be sage than the others, probably looks like a slightly awkward fit here, but he was pressed into service all the same.

Also, 'You will', and 'I will'?

Ulysses isn't that mysterious to me anymore, but it retains a place of significance in my life because it forever changed my relationship to my own ignorance and confusions. Since then I have tended to embrace things I don't get (but feel vague attractions to), rather than feeling defensive about them. Sometimes a massive waste of time (the economics/politics of Ezra Pound fr'instance), but often rewarding. It's not limited to works of art either (I learned how to fix cars mostly because it was so out of my aesthete-type character).

Substituing pot, etc. for beer my experience was like frankiemachine's.

oh yes, so OTM and well put.

except that now i'm filled with unknowing again since, for some reason, i can barely follow the plot of a TV show. novels are much easier though.

Well done with your reading, Jaq.

I can extend the similarity a bit, Steve - I could easily have written the following sentence after ploughing through Kenner and and the rest:

Sometimes a massive waste of time (the economics/politics of Ezra Pound fr'instance),

Maybe the difference is that I'm much, much less likely nowadays to be interested in self-consciously "difficult" art (although define-yer-terms may be a fair riposte to that because, for example, Cecil Taylor's Conquistador is on constant rotation on my cd player as I speak). The enthusiasm of Jaq, Pinefox and others, and the thread on favourite sentences, has even got me semi-interested in re-reading Ulysses, although perhaps not.

I, too, have found myself less interested in difficult-because-it-aspires-to-be art as well, but to me there's a distinction between that which arrives at difficulty organically (like Cecil, Ulysses-era-Joyce, or Messiaen) and the I'm-so-clever kind. As a phase of development, Kenner was important to me. I'm glad I did all that, not from what I took from it in terms of substance, but that it gave me confidence in sharpening my critical apparatus enough to understand the difference between complexities that proceed from expressive neccessity and those which are deliberate -and maybe pointless- displays of mental agility (kind of how I feel about FW, even though it makes me laugh).

http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1091216,00.html

does anyone know anything about a japanese film from a couple years ago: ulysses relocated to the red light district in tokyo except with an underpinning of japanese paganism replacing the classical references? i remember reading about this but people keep saying "that sounds like something you'd make up"

now, how would you film chapter sixteen?

xpost: like a 70s home movie with skronky film, jumpy edits and a final "flick flick flick flick" as it comes off the projector. Chapter 14 would be super duper fun.

Has anybody else seen the 1969 (?) version? All I can say is - it stays faithful to the story.

honestly, it'd be a great miniseries.

i remember 'bloom' being called 'bl.,m' on the website. or was that another one? regardless it's a useless title, guy gets to be called like twelve names, yo. VOICEOVERS. eahrrh.

i want someone to make a case for chapter sixteen as not being alarmingly uncharitable! please!

(I have just reread it, coincidentally.)

I am happy to agree quite strongly with the people who think Ulysses should be on TV, in a series. I remember saying so, enthusiastically, to a bloke at a bus stop, about 10 years ago, maybe more, and he unleashed his spleen against me. I did not use the word 'miniseries', though. Maybe that would have helped.

how would you televise it?

we also discussed whether "miniseries" would be the correct term.

Yes, I've seen it. It's, um, bad.

Reading Ulysses, enjoying it immensely and not having a terrible time with it, and then I got to the Scylla (Shakespeare) chapter. Good lord. Not only did I have a terrible time following it (I'm not using any notes this first time through), but I found it incredibly dull.

Is this usually regarded as one of the difficult chapters? I always hear about Oxen of the Sun, but I haven't gotten there then. Does anyone else find this chapter dull? It gets better again, right?

oxen of the sun is hi-larious.

So Gabler's edition is pants? I should just go back to the Random House edition?

who says that? I found the Gabler edition to be quite good. although some editions are missing a crucial punctuation mark on the last page.

I'd take the Random House over the Gabler, which might've been rooted in good intentions but seems to be mainly fucking with the text for the sake of it.

strangely upset i can no longer remember the publishing history of ulysses :(

i prefer the wikipedia summarisation version.

i say that, i mean i never actually managed to finish it.

dyao, <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_%28novel%29#Publication_history'>;Wikipedia sez</a>. (Third paragraph in that section.) Also, <a href=http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/#editions>;Robot Wisdom</a> sez Gabler is a pompous German with a tin ear, but seems to have backed off criticism since I last looked.

I'll say this: RH edition is easier to read in bed.

Url, ups. And double ups, guy who writes RW is apparently a wingnut crank.

Just read joseph collins' og 1922 review of ulysses on a whim. He makes a big deal of bloom being vile and depraved and having no moral compass. This was strange to me because one of the main points of the book, for me, is that despite the vagaries and trials of ordinary human existence, in a world that is at all turns hostile to the flowering of individual personality, Bloom manages to be a decent man. I wonder if early reviewers actually couldn't recognize that bloom is a remarkably generous and kind spirit or if they were afraid that noting these qualities would "excuse" his sexual irregularities, which reviewers wanted desperately to distance themselves from. Or is Bloom maybe not that admirable and I am misreading him. Despite his numerous anxieties, the frantic and confused quality of his interior life at times, there is something very open about his orientation toward others that -- to me at least -- seems extremely spiritual. I think he was intended as a model for a way to live without belief, god as a "shout in the street" and all that. I don't think he is in any way an "everyman"

i never noticed anything being wrong with him, except his being an ad salesman

also on a whim, on a few train rides this weekend i re-read the telemachiad. the stuff with mr deasy is wrenching. i love how stephen is already not impressed with his own pseudo-profundity but can't bear to view himself on an equal level with the people around him. also what other author can just make up words and make it seem like the most natural thing? is there a better novel?

Try 2666 sometime, that's better.

oof no

Coincidentally two weeks ago I was telling a friend (who has tried to read this five times now, and has not finished) to start with the last chapter (which is what the 'reading difficult novels' link above tells you to do). I did the 'sequential, only got 10% thing' about 5+ years ago, but looking back the important thing was getting to Molly.

Although I nearly also said that Thomas Bernhard has taken the one para thing on and improved on it and you should read Old Masters instead but actually hearing about her struggles and work (she is reading bits of the Odyssey plus a guide too) I found myself quite interested in re-reading Ulysses. Might do it over the World Cup acually, starting with the last chapter.

Of course Old Masters' content is a whole different thing to Molly. Nastier, misanthropic, more my thing.

Treeship, I am sure you are correct - Mr Bloom is good, unusually for a complex fictional character. Collins was basically wrong. Your thought that reviewers avoided stating the goodness because they were scared of the kinks is a nice one. Though I feel that the truth was, they just couldn't yet see the goodness. And even today, in a way, there is a 'banality of goodness' that can make one swerve away from it.

never had any interest in reading this

kudos

keep us updated

Still don't care

He had no use for ulysses, but posted here anyway.

Hey I just checked--still don't care about this

I read it once front-to-back with very minimal support about 15 years ago and tackled it again last year in conjunction with a (somewhat corny and condescending) guide and honestly I still got a lot more out of the second experience. The guide was useful for keeping track of the mythical and theological elements but even without it I appreciated the human (and comic) dimension so much more the second time round. It's the difference between reading it as an adult and reading it as a gauche and overconfident student I suppose. It's still possible to get a lot out of Ulysses even if you're only following two-thirds of it.

I still dislike the underworld section though.

I like that one but dislike Oxen of the Sun

it's funny that someone isolated the history of english prose he was using for oxen

man ilb is ~controversial~ today

waterface, why don't you care about this

It just seems not my thing. I respect what he did--he tore the novel wide open with this. But it's not my thing. Too wordy. Too complicated?

Matt DC otm

I'm definitely one of those proponents of "read it the first time unaided and drunk and let it flow", but obviously people read in different ways. I refuse to read introductions before I've finished a novel, for instance - it's important for me to have my own thoughts before comparing notes with others.

I like Treeship's comments.

Heh, I read it unaided and didn't even realize out that it was about adultery.

*realize out

Read it twenty-two years ago w/the help of Cliff Notes. Have reread chunks and chapters since. My favorite is still Hades.

Just finished reading this for the first time a few weeks ago. On-and-off project over the past several months. I used The Bloomsday Book as a guide and I'm thankful I did. Kept me well grounded.

I think the hallucinatory brothel visit (Circe?) was my favorite chapter. Was surprised at how much I enjoyed Oxen of the Sun, considering its reputation. My opinions would probably be significantly different if I attacked this unaided though.

Second time through is way easier. You need to know what's happening in advance to really enjoy all of the other stuff, which idk, I could see how someone could think that's a flaw in the writing or just something they don't want to deal with.

Still don't care about this book

16 iBooks pages in and it's weirdly enticing. I'm assuming that people who say this is not that difficult mean it in the same way that Webern is "not that difficult"?

its difficulties don't necessarily stop your progress, i would say. it's not overly disorienting. there's a lot of relatively straightforward prose inbetween the firework sections. at the beginning what might be as difficult as anything is recognizing the very specific period Dublin words/references

The early narrative chapters are pretty seductive, it's the abrupt shifts into e.g. pseudo-Middle-English which aid the reader in much the same way as shifting from 4th gear into reverse aids highway driving.

Ha, well, it already doesn't really seem like an easy ride.

It just manages to be, as you say, seductive despite this.

Read it in high school as part of a report on Joyce for my English class, which first reading was a tough slog. Read it again many years later out loud as part of a book group and needless to say got a lot more out of it.

"Let my country die for me."

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Back in the early days of the Covid-19 lockdown there was a tendency to talk, hopefully, about the many opportunities for self-improvement confinement would provide. One suggestion was that people would start reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, the most brilliant, and brilliantly difficult, novel of the 20th century.

So how did that work out? Anyone get past “fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury’s hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries” before collapsing into the sofa cushions, overcome by the urge to read Tintin in America?

The big thing about Ulysses – other than being more difficult to engage with than, say, Friends – is that it’s about everything. Joyce presents the entire human condition in a stream of consciousness, the streets of Dublin as a microcosm of the universe.

Which is all very well, but after six weeks of brain freeze even glancing at its pages is likely to produce feelings similar to being stabbed through the eye with a knitting needle dipped in industrial glue.

It's from this bit of the brain damage

https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2020/may/25/world-cup-questions-why-did-england-not-beat-argentina-1998

different people's brains work very differently, but never let that stop us writing a quick thinkpiece

Um, who wrote that?

i was gonna say "do we have a thread for people boasting about the limits of their interests?" but lol do we have *one thread* what was i thinking?

My post was xpost, in case you are wondering

I read (or actually mostly listened to) Ulysses during lockdown, and loved it.

wrote a few thoughts about it here - https://centuriesofsound.com/2020/04/13/james-joyce-ulysses/

I'm reading a good ton of stuff over the last couple of months. Imagine just putting on old football matches where your side lost on penalties and boasting about it.

The irony is that Ronay overwrites like mad and he could do with reading Ulysses.

i find it hard listening to other people read for some reason but thanks for that link to the RTE broadcast, accents definitely add important layers to Joyce

I like Barney on the football weekly podcast, but that article is a classic example of "here are 500 words as requested"

i don't even hate Ronay but the tone of those opening paragraphs, the shit-eating faux norminess, the unchallengeable assumption that everybody would find Friends "easier to engage with" than Ulysses

it's just lazy bullshit wordcount stuff but the fact that there's no need really grinds my gears

Has he weighed in on seeing the Picassos at the modern art museum yet?

the unchallengeable assumption that everybody would find Friends "easier to engage with" than Ulysses

my last stab at the cantos was prompted by an episode of x files so bad it made me dissociate. i still didn’t get past about the fifth or sixth but it felt better on some level or other

Was that when we had a book club thread for them?

I mean, isn't that true about Friends vs Ulysses, at least for people who have reference points for 90s American culture? It's easy to dislike Friends (which is still engagement) but surely it asks less of you in terms of being able to watch and understand?

(Full disclosure: I'm pretty sure the reason I have this thread bookmarked is bc I found Ulysses hard to engage with last time I tried.)

i don't think that's a fair meaning of "engage with" and it's a stupid generalization. i've thought about picking up Ulysses a bunch of times during the last 2 months, i've never thought that about Friends in my life. i haven't thought about rereading Ulysses as a challenge but because it's a comfort and a pleasure in a way that Ronay is suggesting only Friends can "truly" be

(a stupid generalization by Ronay, sorry Sund4r :D )

glancing at its pages is likely to produce feelings similar to being stabbed through the eye with a knitting needle dipped in industrial glue.

Very strange.

For one thing, what is industrial glue? Has BR seen it? Why would it make a knitting needle worse?

For another, being stabbed in the eye with a knitting needle would (supposing you lost your sight) be so bad that comparing anything to it is tasteless.

For another, Ulysses has nothing do with any such feelings. I am going to be participating in a 2-hour close reading of it later today, as I do frequently. It will be quite nice to read as it always is. It can raise ambiguities, but it's mostly not very difficult.

The quotation gives a general impression that BR knows nothing - either about reading or about industrial glue.

I should probably read his actual article to check, though.

I feel that way about Pierrot Lunaire but I'd still say it's more difficult to engage with than "Wonderwall" for a new listener (in the sense that I described, not in the sense that it would make someone collapse on the couch and crave "All Star" by Smash Mouth). That said, the excerpt is totally idiotic otherwise so yeah. I was just thinking about the obstacles and ways into Ulysses more than about a stupid sports column, I guess.xp

I was actually just thinking that as my concentration is coming back I might have another go at Ulysses this year. I am not up on Joyce at all really, only read DUBLINERS for the first time pretty recently. I dip into Finnegans wake pretty often tho as it’s very easy to engage with in quite a superficial way, its pleasures are obvious and immediate. Actually reading it all the way through and making meaning from it would be trickier for me.

I always loved the line from Harold Nicolson’s diary about when he met JJ: “he has the loveliest voice I know — liquid and soft with undercurrents of gurgle” this quote has always been in my mind when I’ve read any Joyce

xp

ulysses is demanding but it is beautiful and humane and anyone who thinks it is an example of a "punishing" kind of modernism doesn't know what they are talking about

there is art that is meant to shock or provoke discomfort. ulysses isn't an example of that.

being stabbed in the eye with a knitting needle
Somewhere in this video which I can't watch I believe there is an impression of this sensation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCenwG3iUVU

I did love Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist btw.

Haven't changed my position since this post: Reading Ulysses

This unabridged RTE dramatisation is excellent, if anyone wants it in that form

https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook

Thanks. I have the version read by this guy

I've now read the Ronay article itself.

Odd thing is it's hard from this to tell whether he has actually read Ulysses. You would think he has, but nothing he says about it gives that impression.

There are three apparent 'quotations' spaced through the text. The first is not a real quotation, more a paraphrase of (or gloss on) what's in the book.

His whole conceit would have been a lot neater and more meaningful if the match had been played on 16th June - as of course many World Cup matches have been.

I was in Dublin on 16.6.2002 and watched Ireland vs Spain in a pub. This was almost certainly even mentioned on ILX at the time.

the last time i was in a room with him i tried teasing the always very teasable zappa&joyce fan b3n w4tson by saying that i much prefer reading finnegans wake as a twitter account and he totally owned me to saying "twitter is the best way to read it, yes"

I dm’d james joyce and he agrees

does he say ulysses is bad and he wishes he hadnt written it? thats what he told me

😮

I mean, isn't that true about Friends vs Ulysses, at least for people who have reference points for 90s American culture? It's easy to dislike Friends (which is still engagement) but surely it asks less of you in terms of being able to watch and understand?

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r), Tuesday, 26 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Different medium and all but the striking thing about Friends is how it asks absolutely nothing of you? You can put it on for hours and not remember a thing after, or barely move a muscle. It's quite an achievement btw.

Only other thing that seems like it is Big Bang Theory.

YOU WERE ON A BREAK

BBT eventually - sooner rather than later - asks of you, the viewer, why you put up with and engage in laughing at some deeply unpleasant characters*, Sheldon first and foremost. It's probably bcz the audience laughter out of a tin directed you to do so. You'll stop doing it yourself once you realize you're being had.

* Not remotely in any way like Seinfeld btw

I don't think I would have made it to the end of Ulysses if I hadn't taken a class on it as an undergrad. Then again, I was too immersed in a Darkly Tragic mental paradigm at the time to even begin 'getting' it.

xp this is also my problem with Friends, I cannot stand them, therefore it is bad background TV for me.

Friends has almost ruined friendship for me tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Iwmcs1hps

+1 for the RTE audio dramatisation. I would listen to it all day at work then switch to the text when I got home. The mix of mediums kind of felt like the perfect way to absorb it, one of my favorite reading experiences.

I've never listened in anything like full to the RTE, but BBC radio 1991 is my own gold standard for this.

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

perfection.

Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night's oncoming. Of Israel's folk was that man that on earth wandering far had fared. Stark ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house.

Sirens?

Oxen of the Sun i think

yes indeed.

ICYMI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1WwK92kT3c

A terrific review of Ulysses from Edmund Wilson, July 1922.

https://newrepublic.com/article/114325/james-joyces-ulysses-reviewed-edmund-wilson

I think he really gets to the heart of the matter in his critique of both Cyclops and Circe, which I found as tedious as he does. Maybe I'd feel differently now. BUT he admires the book immensely, for all that and feels humbled by it:

Ulysses has the effect at once of making everything else look brassy. Since I have read it, the texture of other novelists seems intolerably loose and careless; when I come suddenly unawares upon a page that I have written myself I quake like a guilty thing surprised.

Yes, I like that last statement a lot. It points to something important.

But 'Cyclops' is one of the least tedious things I've ever read.

#OtD 26 Aug 1934 Karl Radek denounced James Joyce's Ulysses at the Soviet Writers' Congress as a "heap of dung, crawling with worms, photographed by a cinema apparatus through a microscope". It was here that Socialist Realism was adopted as the official literary style of the USSR pic.twitter.com/RtrqT4JhVz

— Working Class Literature (@workingclasslit) August 26, 2020

xp cyclops and circe are the funniest chapters in a funny book

I thought something on a run the other day about the two modernist novelists I think about the most.

Stream of consciousness is not a good way to describe the narrative style of this book. It is language, not consciousness, that contains the poetic mystery, that is always moving in a “stream,” that keeps reality always in a state of becoming. Consciousness, in the book, where it is represented at all, is a numinous presence, behind the thoughts, which are made of language. Consciousness is intersubjective too, that’s why the narrative moves among minds.

Faulkner is more of a stream of consciousness writer. For him, the human mind is the source of depth, mystery, and misery—guilt that reaches beyond the self and into history. Joyce locates this stuff in language more so than the individual mind.

Consciousness, in the book, where it is represented at all, is a numinous presence, behind the thoughts, which are made of language.

FWIW I don't think I see this, as it seems to me that the distinction between language and cs 'cancels all the way through'.

That is, as this is a book made wholly of words, cs can *only* be visible to us in language, so even if JJ does think there's a cs behind language, he couldn't really show it to us.

A good way to pursue this might be to think of the distinction between say episode 8 and episode 13.

Episode 8 contains 3rd person narrative, dialogue - and interior monologue (which I take to be a representation of cs).

Episode 13 contains that in its 2nd half (so come to think of it you don't even need to look at episode 8 for comparison), but in its 1st half it contains an ornate, excessive, stylised language (Gerty, romance, etc). It is often said that this depicts Gerty's 'consciousness'. But this seems to be half-true at best -- because we must actually assume that, as a human subject in the same place and time as eg: Mr Bloom, she really has an interior monologue similar in form to his. So 'her' language is really something else: an openly artificial literary projection playing on the kinds of thing that affect her cs.

The use of this is that it gives us a point of comparison and contrast, within the book, between something that is notionally real (interior monologue, directly representing cs), and something that isn't, and isn't to be taken as such (ornate parody, 'representing' cs at a distance). That leads me toward the sense that for Joyce, the basic interior monologue (as in episode 8) *is* to be taken as, let's say, 'as close to consciousness as we can get'.

As for the narrative 'moving between minds': well, it can show *different* minds, by different interior monologues -- though it rarely does this, ie: we rarely get one character's cs and then cut into another, and back again. For instance we don't see Haines' or Mulligan's interior monologue at all in episode 1, and we don't see Josie Breen's, during her conversation with Bloom in episode 8; we only see his, thinking about her.

If you mean something like 'blurring the difference between minds', which sounds closer to 'intersubjectivity', then the one very good example of that I can think of is episode 11, where there is a real and challenging sense of this. (Woolf had notions of group consciousness that may be relevant here.) I don't so much recall that in other episodes, except 15 which is rather a special case as it mostly doesn't purport to show anything real but rather a vast re-projection of the contents of the text.

Your quote of the "Woodshadows" passage, and treeship re use of language, had me thinking of Joyce using language as painting---in oils, say: nothing that would dry very quickly, and still look wet/ready for another go x years later, like the Van Goghs I very eventually saw in person----but then I also started remembering the context, and thought of him as painting on scenes from the novel-as-novel, frames of the movie----I saw the 1967 movie: on VHS, across the bedroom, it was alright, walking around downtown and going out to the Baily Optic (She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out, the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth…
Champlin and Ebert loved it, though Kael and Kaufman found it reductive. I'd like a re-do, more imaginative (getting more inside my head on laptop and headphones?), but mainly it's probably better to make your own movie, as the story comes through the painting process (with the "classical" starting points as storyboard, or parts of it).
Also maybe better to read it aloud---thinking of the film Passages From Finnegan's Wake, and how Joyce's eyes were so bad, and he was known to some extent early on for his musical talents, so that sonic properties of his imagery, and use of dynamics, counterpoint, fugue, characters as instruments---? I haven't seen that flick, but always read good things about it, maybe overall better regarded than Strick's Ulysses, anyway I read some of this:
https://www.filmcomment.com/article/mary-ellen-bute-passages-from-finnegans-wake/
Looks like at least some of her film can be streamed here and there; Ulysses too.
I'll try some of those passages aloud when they're at hand, local library no longer has FW though. (Feel more motivated to continue w Faulkner at this point.)
Oh yeah, also seemed like something painterly about Dubliners and Portrait, the former more in placement of figures in shading, planes, but nothing static about any of this, or if/when so, well-timed.

How weird re this thread revive. I reread Chapters Two and Six last weekend.

Also, that article starts with a quote from the old folk song about Finnegan's wake, so this film, from 1966, could be seen as the 60s art-roots thing, like Dylan, The Band, Beefheart, Art Ensemble of Chicago's "Ancient To The Future" theme, ditto Sun Ra etc.---which is a roots thing itself, going back to early 20th Century development of jazz, also Picasso's fascination with African masks etc., also Joyce going beyond Dubliners, back to folk and even more ancient world classical elements, towards something new.

(The film, as described in this article, incl. scenes from folk song and book, also it was released in '66, so that's why I related it to Dylan etc.)

of course, all art is "an art-roots thing," in various ways---no doubt the Babylonians, Homer, Gospel-writers and (maybe especially King James's) translators were thinking to some extent, "Hey, cool material, all in the Public Domain---how can I bring out, what can I do with the best qualities?"---audiences to some extent "Go man Gogh!") But I'm trying to stay with thread-relevant specifics, however speculative.
Also, Joyce's eyes got even worse, and he came to rely on dictation, pressing his friends into service---Beckett, setting the record straight re being J.'s "secretary," which sounds like something you might get paid for, told his biographer Dierdre Barr that during one such session, another guy dropped by, and Joyce said, "Hello, Joe. Put that in: 'Hello Joe,'" and Beckett found this unnerving. But that kind of going with the flow, to whatever overall extent, might be another reason for reading it aloud, getting into it that way, in your own surroundings.

"It" being FW especially, but not only.

Think I might try reading some later Henry James aloud--the parts where he seems to be chanelling something and/or remixing on the fly, automatic writing? (Proust too, although he was one who might revise up to the last second, scribbling on galleys, layers on the fly, in search of time regained again and again, so the sense of seeming all fresh and inspired in the moment, the thing you're supposed to go for, gets screwed with, which is also an or the art thing in Modern times, to some extent: oooo, subversion!---Xgau on punks/rock&roll: "bored enough to fuck with it.")

But a form of idealism too! And sheer cussedness. Never just the one thing, which certainly seems true of Joyce.

Dow, I think the Beckett story was just that JJ said 'Come in' to a knock on the door. Maybe you read a different version. But I've also heard that this is a myth and no-one can find the relevant moment in FW.

I like both films but I couldn't quite follow your initial statement about Strick's. Both films are worth watching anyway. I never 2004's film BLOOM.

I saw the 1967 movie: on VHS, across the bedroom, it was alright, walking around downtown and going out to the Baily Optic (quote here seemed relevant re painting)...Champlin and Ebert loved it, though Kael and Kaufman found it reductive. I'd like a re-do, more imaginative Did you have a question about these comments?

The basic black & white, shades of grey realism of the film , enhanced by seeing it across the room on VHS, vs thinking of a more fluid approach, streaming on laptop and headphones, maybe more involving that way (as Strick's film might be if taken in that way)

Had a dream last night in which a friend told me that a major feature of Ulysses is "the objectification of voices" so if I ever need an English lit thesis, I'm set.

Heart the 1967 film, but obviously doesn't come close to doing justice to the book. Really liked how updating to a 1960s Dublin setting has no effect on the believability of story, characters or general atmosphere- a quietly withering take on the de Valera republic.

Sally Rooney on Ulysses.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/12/07/misreading-ulysses/

The ineluctable modality of the risible

good piece, not sure her general thesis re: ulysses debt to austen is as out there as she seems to think it is, but she's much better versed in lit crit than i

"We might propose that, or we might not."

"Let’s return for just a moment to the plot summary I tried to offer at the beginning. Leopold Bloom does this and that, I explained, while Stephen Dedalus does that and this."

Chapter 9, which is mostly Stephen putting forth an elaborate theory on how Shakespeare's work is deep down all about his uncle having fucked his wife, and when asked "do you even believe this yourself?" answering with a content "no", felt very ILX.

Chapter 12, a character expresses the worry that Ireland become "as treeless as Portugal". Portugal's pretty densely forested, I mean we have horrible forest fires every Summer for a reason! Googling the phrase only turns up Irish sources worried about deforestation, anyone know if this is some erudite joke that's going over my head?

alls i can think is that most of the characters in Cyclops are talking bullshit of one form or another

Both countries underwent serious deforestation in the 18th and 19th centuries. The new independent Irish state started reforestation efforts (around the time of Ulysses's publication), and Portugal was reforested (more successfully) after WWII.

this is right in the middle of talk about fenians (john wyse and the other guy are nationalists?) so i believe this is a reference to "the hanging tree". idk enough about irish or portugese politics but from 1834 - 1920ish portugese are having wars of "republicanism" (starts w/ "charterist rebellion" etc) and lots of executions happening right around when the book is written and set

according to the gifford concordance i bought because prof jon bishop i bought

CYCLOPS — ORGAN: muscle ART: politics SYMBOL: fenian TECHNIQUE: gigantism

so the other part of the story is that this chapter deals with deliberate exaggeration, and worries about the health of the homeland, referencing inisfail the fair, "the eugenic eucalyptus", tristan and isolde, etc. so it's also partly about irish and broader romantic literature, seeing our internal states mirrored in the outside world — these guys thesis is that that's what connects ulysses to other "novels of everything" (like don quixote), here its a literal "catalogue of styles (as noodle vague says, its all kinda bullshit, every chapter is in assumed voice except i believe the beginning and end internal dialogues of stephen and leo)

i bought because prof jon bishop MADE ME*

i don't think there's a specific line reference here but i'd need a line # to match it to an annotation because i'm too lazy to reread it right now. i'm too lazy to even grab it. but they do detail every execution listed and every romantic lit reference (and a lot of cyclops stuff from the iliad) so i'm guessing this particular reference is not about the literal health of the land in portugal (also isn't portugal a different type of tree? more like mediterranean cypress / coastal pine type stuff?)

"is the land strong enough to support our struggle" / "do its fortunes mirror ours" ... that's the broad tenor of the romantic works referenced

like to illustrate the theme: this is the one that ends with blazes boylan bragging about boxing, i think there's a sort of pynchon-esque fantasy about him punching someone (leo?) super hard. some ridiculous physical comedy thing. or maybe it's the idea of bloom punching boylan (cyclops). but there's a similar thing: this local boy / hometown hero, muscular studly and virile (sleeping with bloom's wife) gathering this primal energy and rising up like a force of nature to revenge himself on the foreign invader (i think it's leo?)

Both countries underwent serious deforestation in the 18th and 19th centuries. The new independent Irish state started reforestation efforts (around the time of Ulysses's publication), and Portugal was reforested (more successfully) after WWII.

I think this explains it, thanks.

idk enough about irish or portugese politics but from 1834 - 1920ish portugese are having wars of "republicanism" (starts w/ "charterist rebellion" etc)

Haha, interesting to see it smushed up like that, I guess it's true but I'd never thought of this as one continous historical moment. There was a very bloody civil war between absolutist and liberal monarchists between 1832 and 1834, who were supporting different members of the royal family for succession of the throne. After that you the rest of the 19th century goes by under a relatively stable constitutional monarchy, until the country's progressively worse economic position (and failing to stand up to the big dogs in the colonial plunder game) leads to a regicide in 1908 and a republican revolution in 1910. This regime failed to change the nation's fortunes however, and of course then WWI comes in, leading to the 1926 coup that started the process of turning Portugal into the facist regime it remained until 1974. Doesn't strike me as a very good parallel for Ireland's problems, though I guess blood is blood.

i think there's a sort of pynchon-esque fantasy about him punching someone (leo?) super hard. some ridiculous physical comedy thing. or maybe it's the idea of bloom punching boylan (cyclops). but there's a similar thing: this local boy / hometown hero, muscular studly and virile (sleeping with bloom's wife) gathering this primal energy and rising up like a force of nature to revenge himself on the foreign invader (i think it's leo?)

Yes, it's Bloom, who previously claimed Ireland as his country too. The depictions of anti-semitism in the novel are another thing that I feel like I should read a few essays on before venturing any opinion at all.

idk if it's interesting. it's just the lack of knowledge about the details of this time and place. i know the basics of the history of france and italy in that century and i know everywhere else it's broadly a similar story

but i didn't mean to try to give you a definitive answer. i was more just describing my experience of "reading ulysses". i know my teacher (who was an adherent of gifford) is just describing one critical view, but i always thought it was interesting one.

bishop called it joyce's "polytropism", and he thought it was the extension of stephen's search for meaning. it wasn't so much about whether one reference or another was more apt, but rather to try to pile on denser and desner layers of reference and analogy and simile to reflect a sort of idea of what modernism and our experience of modern living is like. so the idea (that these guys had) is that it's not about the details or 1:1 correspondences of any particular parallel, but just the compulsive act of doing them over and over again, and broadly organizing chapters in thematic clusters ... in cyclops it's the cyclops, but also the idea of repelling invaders or usurpers by force, and then more generally about tests of strength, and so on. he actually lists several other "categories" for each chapter (like symbol, color, etc) but aside from following the odyssey, the idea of dividing into bodily systems and also rhetorical techniques as organizing principles resonated with me. i guess another example would be that this chapter has millions of plant references, though gifford himself doesn't list "plants" or "trees" as an overriding symbol scheme here (unless i'm missing something, the notation is a bit cryptic)

but yeah, that's just the experience i personally had of "reading ulysses", and the critical framework (one of many no doubt) that i learned, didn't mean to be presciptive

i do remember almost having an aneurysm in class because early on another student asked why we had to buy the annotations if understanding the details of any given annotation didn't matter (and i thought fair point because then by induction not knowing the details of any of the references is also okay) and the professor replied "it's like a boooofayyyy, you take what you like"

Your head it simply swirls.

yeah so that’s calypso, and the dog in proteus (i think ch 3) that runs down the strand toward stephen sort of shimmers like a mirage and changes through many forms.

my term paper ( i’m a science major ok) was an argument that that and other druggy imagery was foreshadowing the thematic structure of the novel (we’re going to try on every set of tropes for explaining our experiences until we find one that restores whatever we lost when we had a crisis of faith / became exiles / entered modernity)

iirc the path stephen takes along the strand (beach?) itself is a sort of “spiral jetty” and the prof said if you filmed the walk as a pov and sped it up it would be as if dublin was spinning around you

great moments in regurgitating back yr professors lectures! i think i have told this story before on ilx, this time i should add that although i got full credit and my paper had good mechanics etc my focus on psychedelic imagery is now personally embarrassing because i was also really into op art and strobe lights and lucid dreaming and reptilians at the time

If you can shimmy past the 'ineluctable modality' brain-riff (and you're fine that a major character, pretty much an avatar of J.J. himself, is supposed to be an irritating pseud) then the Oxen of the Sun chapter (14) is the next guardian on the threshold. It'll stamp on your foot and call your mother a drug-dealer. This is the doldrums of the bookmark where most assaults on the text short of the kamikaze end up.

I have arrived here and the first couple of pages were indeed "oy vey" but once I sussed out it's just a medieval style used as a metaphor for some more of the usual drinking and discoursing it got easier, like I've read Dave Sim's Cerebus I know how this works. Think that while a lot of what makes Ulysses obscure now was less so in its time (starting with the Roman mass for instance) some other stuff is probably more accessible now, namedropping commercials, pastiches of different styles. Bloom hasn't said "well that just happened" yet but it's surely only a matter of time.

Nowhere near the end of the chapter though and I might still have plenty of challenges ahead.

the dog in proteus (i think ch 3) that runs down the strand toward stephen sort of shimmers like a mirage and changes through many forms

still not read it. did just see this which puts it slightly higher on my to read list
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl2jiVzKmTg
outline of the story done for children. It was in the Arts Festival which just ended.
Reminds me of the 70s Paddington though no puppets used just still paper figures

we’re going to try on every set of tropes for explaining our experiences until we find one that restores whatever we lost when we had a crisis of faith / became exiles / entered modernity

all of these work ... and none of them do

yeah exactly!! the home ulysses returns to is not the home he left, even when he clears it of suitors and restores his throne, because the odyssey has changed him etc. there’s also the metaphor of … i believe the boat from the ulysses? like the farmer who’s had the axe for five generations, the handle has been replace three times and the blade twice …

that was the professor’s take anyway, without getting into too much depth the professor’s take was that “what worked” was when leo and stephen glimpse a new possibility for “restoration” when they sort of experience this brief ersatz father / son relationship (leo saving drunk stephen)

even though their crisis is different, the recognize each other as fellow travelers, kindred spirits, because they are both preoccupied with internal exile, that search, and yes love of humanity and love of language

sorry the ship of theseus

Trigger's broom, like

I'm reading the Odyssey at the moment, and thinking about rereading Ulysses afterwards, to understand how the parts match. I used to just think that Ulysses was taking an archetypal epic and turning it into everyday modern life, but wow, the Odyssey is much weirder than I thought. The Proteus story, for instance, is a weird little tale inside a tale.

the ending is very different - bloom chooses compassion and empathy, seeing the excitement of the early stages of romance with molly - mirrored in molly’s exciting infidelity with blazes boylan (does she notice his exemplary humanity? idk depends how you interpret the last bit of the last chapter)

odysseus goes john wick

frederik the “tale within a tale” thing is what the professor called “novel of everything”

other examples are like divine comedy, decameron, canterbury tales, arabian nights (ayyo pier paolo), don quixote, balzac’s books, moby dick etc

i think the idea is it’s purporting to show “the broad sweep of humanity” through these episodes. idk if that idea has any traction but it’s key (or was in my prof’s mind, rip) to why he chose a story about a spectrum of human folly vs something like oedipus rex, which might be focused on just hubris etc

he* being joyce, choosing specifically odyssey over say iliad or antigone

so for him it was not just an archetypal epic but a very specific certain sort of one.

we talked a lot for example about about how it (ulysses, don quixote) is sort of like a bildungsroman (another “archetypal epic”) but also not actually a bildungsroman (that was portrait of the artist anyway)

Right, and the 'everything' in The Odyssey is a lot weirder then I suspected. The world is still steeped in trauma from the Trojan war - nobody can have a conversation without mentioning someone who died there, it seems - but it's also at the cusp of it becoming history. A new generation, including Telemachos of course, weren't there. They just still live with the aftermath, with Ithaca still being in chaos, and the whole thing begins with news that Orestes has FINALLY slain Aighistos and avenged the murder of Agamemnon. It's like a time of anarchy is closing, but also a time where the heroes saw wonders and magic in strange places - including Menelaos meeting and capturing Proteus.

My standard line has been that these sort of Modernistic 'everything' works - Ulysses, Proust, The Waste Land, The Cantos - are trying to put the world back in order after WWI, but Joyce seems more complex. I read Finnegans Wake last year, and I got the feeling that it was quite significant that it was begun at the time of the Irish Civil War. I'm wondering if it means something, that Joyce is writing Ulysses and FW while Ireland is going through it's birth, which is traumatic, but in extremely complex and evershifting ways as well. He never really makes order, he creates shapeshifting and ever-changing worlds, where order is always fleeting and still fought over.

That is, he seems more postmodern than modern already.

loling at repeated use of "hey, presto" in the bull chapter

xp to frederick that's getting into the part that they reserved for the follow up class. this was like an upper division "interest check" class for a senior seminar taught by the same guy that you might take if you are considering entering "joyce studies" or "irish lit" ... and so he really focused more on situating it in modernism vs getting in-depth into the cultural history parts (which i believe they did in the follow-up)

i do remember the professors pushed the line that it is not the "birth" of modern ireland, it is the "rebirth" of an irish heritage, in the same way that modern day zionism purports to be a rebirth of the original jewish state (and which, in their own ways, both bloom and stephen walk away from, then spiral back into)

or, if you prefer, spiral out of, into (yes) a world wider than our (his) experience of modernity

one of the big hurdles in oxen of the sun is wondering why all these young men have chosen to go on a massive bender in a maternity hospital.

Heh

A couple of them are students there iirc

yes, and on shift, and the others are paying them a visit. it's not wildly implausible, but still odd. it honestly was a factor in me giving up on my first attempt many years ago, without any online guides. sure the language was the main thing but i just didn't have a handle on the big picture. they're having a big piss up? but they're in a hospital?

I imagine the standards of the day were somewhat different

Lol

Boys but don’t think I don’t know what you are about in that hospital of yours!

I read it at 16 without any guides too and yeah, they are necessary for any number of reasons. But I still enjoyed the headiness of it all.
On my recent reread I availed myself of Harry Blamires, Jeri Johnson etc. Cleared up loads of mysteries.

Re the hospital, I don't know, my assumption is that as it's a teaching hospital there are facilities/spaces for the students to eat and drink (and even board as well?), and as NV indicates, the kind of status that male students had in those days, and the leeway they were given, is rather different from today; so the place feels halfway between a college and a hospital, essentially. I could look up what took place at Holles Street Hospital, but this is what i take from it, and I trust Joyce is not inventing it.

To me Scylla and Charybdis feels more incongruous, the other fellas are clearly not all that interested in what Stephen has to say, they have stuff to do, and yet they indulge him in his monologue. I very much doubt Stephen cannot see their bored or unamused expressions, but he ploughs on, probably trying to impress AE. I feel Joyce's desire to express his Shakespeare theory trumped his sense of the veridical, and he knows someone would likely have told Stephen to pipe down.

“After 10 attempts at reading and completing James Joyce’s magnificent ‘Ulysses’ and only making it to page 10 each time, on attempt number 11, I finally did it! Hallelujah! ‘Ulysses’ should be a real inspiration to anyone interested in breaking the rules in any art form.” -Ron📚 pic.twitter.com/m0Hhdavi6y

— S P A R K S (@sparksofficial) April 26, 2024

He finally made it to page 11. Now for the rest of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOO5S4vxi0o

well that may inspire me to pick it up again

"The Lady is Lingering" on Indiscreet borrows some lines from a Henry Miller book, Ron can make something out of literary inspiration.

Nearly done with Circe. Honestly a bit underwhelmed this time around. The connections to the Odyssey don't really add that much, without that the structure falls a bit apart. And without the structure, it seems like a bunch of experiments brought together, and some of them work a lot better than others. Those that work, though, are obviously incredible, I''m not hating. But reading Finnegans Wake two years ago was a bigger experience.

I've never managed to make it very far in the Wake.

tbf neither does the Wake

I keep finwake as an open window on my phone and re-read bits of it when I have time. The annotations are great. I like to read it aloud to myself, half the enjoyment is in the mouthfeel of it

what annotated version are you reading on your phone?

I told a Joyce professor I met that I was afraid of the Wake, he laughed and said "be afraid. I've spent 50 years programming myself to read this book." So that was encouraging.

Two things I took away from the Wake:

1) Even though all the words stayed mostly incomprehensible throughout, it's often easy to grasp the tone/discourse of the text. If it's a lesson, a flirty conversation, if it's satire, elegy, mystery, etc. So in some way you can just float along, and get an emotional experience out of it. And enough things recur to get a sort of grip on a sort of plot.

2) Nobody understands Finnegans Wake anyway, so you're free to just make up your own interpretation. While Ulysses seems a lot more settled, the meaning of Finnegan's Wake is still up for debate. To me, it seemed to be about the Irish Civil War in a lot of ways. Or something like that. About trauma, the way so much modernism is about trauma, but a very different trauma than WWI.

finwake [dot] com!

The book comes alive when you read it aloud to yourself, it’s as much music as it is text