Book Review: Ulysses
I have a distinct memory of being about sixteen years old and combing the shelves of the Plainview-Old Bethpage library looking for something substantial to read. I had hit a time in my life when I wanted to "seriously" start reading. Pop novels and comic books wouldn't do anymore. I felt that I needed to make smarter choices—I wanted to feel like I was someone who read intelligently, who had something meaningful to think about. In the age of the internet, it doesn't take long to go from typing "best books all time" to being inundated with the same, familiar titles: The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, 1984, etc. And because the bulk of those lists are compiled from people who style themselves as book reader extraordinaires™, invariably books that were notorious for their length and complexity would pop up: Gravity's Rainbow, The Brother's Karamazov, and Ulysses. The latter of which I remember picking up off of the shelf, peering into it, and thinking, "I'm not fucking reading this!"
About a decade later I reneged on that expletive. I have since entered into a depraved phase of a book reading addiction that has led me to only the most tortured and trying novels. Nothing less will spark anything in me1. Naturally, the surest avenue to all encompassing, self-imposed psychic pain would be to crack open what is often considered one of the most difficult novels to read, let alone understand or enjoy. Ulysses rings the dinner bell at a frequency only true masochists will hear and come running for.
Unsurprisingly, it's as difficult as everyone in the past one hundred years has claimed it to be. There's no shortcuts for getting through its 750+ pages. It takes a pigheaded personality to get through all eighteen "episodes"—Joyce being too good for chapters—which range from readible, but a bit dull (Lotus Eaters) to wholly incomprehensible without secondary material (Oxen of the Sun). It isn't too presumptious to say that only those with a compulsive personality could possibly finish the novel2.
Like with many works of art with serious historical importance, it feels meaningless to say whether or not it was "good" or if I "liked" it. The short answer? In parts. For me, Joyce shines when he's at his most lyrical, when he's suppressing the overwhelming need to be clever and allows his words to conjure an ecstatic beauty. This comes across best in Proteus:
"Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, DIEBUS AC NOCTIBUS INIURIAS PATIENS INGEMISCIT. To no end gathered; vainly then released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters."
The episode spans around thirty pages and is full of the most luscious and singular prose I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Unfortunately, Joyce is far too smart for his own good and isn't interested in keeping that up. His desire to challenge himself has him pumping out highly conceptual, metatextual lines like the following from Oxen in the Sun:
Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.
Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.
Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!
To those concerned: No, you did not just experience a stroke. These are real sentences in one of the most respected works of 20th century literature. Once you hit about here in the book it more or less stays this way—at least in terms of formal experimentation. Clever? Yes. Enjoyable? No.
Ulysses is full of contradictions and idiosyncrasies. The themes and topics range from the sacred to the profane, the cosmic to the everyday, the metaphysical to the physical, and everything in between. Joyce is at all times bashing the reader in the skull while screaming, "A NOVEL IS ANYTHING I WANT IT TO BE! IT CAN BE A GUY SHITTING IN A PUBLIC BATHHOUSE AND IT CAN BE A META-COMMENTARY ON THE GENESIS AND EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!" It's hard to say he's wrong—the guy wrote Ulysses. All I know is it gets to feel like homework after the fiftieth inventive play on form.
To readers who are obsessively licking the baggie for nightmare books that challenge their patience, you already knew you were going to read it eventually. To readers who like the idea of enjoying a book, might I suggest something a bit lighter? Perhaps a Gravity's Rainbow? Or an Infinite Jest? No? Well, there's always The Cat in the Hat. Maybe that's more your speed.