"What the fuck have i just read" is the usual honest reaction of those that glance , yet alone read , James Joyce Ulysses.So it is no surprise the response "What the fuck have i just watched" is the stock reaction from those who have just seen the stage adaptation of the Novel.
Reading Ulysses is a tough shift.
More famous for its experimental groundbreaking tryouts than actual substance.Joyce dictated a lot of his work to a third party later in his life , so if you get bogged down a bit then try reading it out loud until you find the rhythm again.
If its any consolation the last hundred , well 50 pages, are very free flowing.
I may be wrong but i wouldnt be surprised if the later pages contain the longest unbroken sentence in literature , there is no punctuation at all your eyes read the words faster than you can catch them in the brain which makes for quite an effect.
In saying that the novel is a bit experimental topheavy and is generally only appreciated by career writers for its innovations rather than being a rewarding read in its own right.You would be hard pressed to find anyone who actually enjoys it , rather than most who "appreciate" it.
You could say it is the Citizen Kane of novels with the same type of cult likers and loathers.
One admirer of the work states "Once you get used to the rhythms of the prose and the weird technique Joyce uses it's laugh-out-loud funny in parts, and just jaw-droppingly good for the rest of the time.
The first 50 pages are tough going right enough. In fact, the first 4 chapters (which are all Stephen Dedalus's interior monologue) are dull and difficult, but then they're supposed to be because Stephen's supposed to be a bit of a prig.
Stick with it, though, and in ch. 5 the action switches to Bloom who is much better company."
Optimists call it , euphemistically , "experimental" with such devices as Wagnerian musical notation formatted to the written word canvass and things like stream of consciousness , but even regarding that this novel was the first sustained attempt at it , it is not by any means a particularly good example and has been surpassed by many better attempts since.
Its what you might call a pioneering work and has its place in literature as the inspiration of many Authors afterwards.
It is always a sign of bad art when one has to read several articles to get a grip on what the artist is trying to say not because the subject metaphor is deep and complicated but rather the method of technical delivery is such , it takes some other party to explain what the artist is trying to say.
All in all one could say the Book dogmatises itself into self-worshipping needless complicated complexity.What we might call Elitist Art for Arts sake.
Anyway , the play itself takes advantage of copyright expiry which will allow Ulysses to be brought out into other artistic formats.The Play version was actually written way back in 1994 but can only now be given a theatrical staging.You can find out the whole story background from a brilliantly detailed dedicated bl;og for this production.
As one can imagine a staging of such a complex book is no easy task , this article tells of the adapters challenges and dilemmas in this staging whose every word is taking from the Book itself.
This review by the writer for the Scotsman Newspaper and this one from the Stage are fairly accurate and give the playwright a backhanded compliment of sticking to Joyces own words in handling of the script.
To help with the narrative the blog also gives a short synopsis of the scenes of the play and their relation to the Book.It is best followed by reading it from the bottom up.
And the second portion , again read from the bottom up corresponds to the second part of the play after the interval.
As a guide here is a ten point plan to get your head round the Book
1. Think of it as an A-Z.
Think of it as something more like a map than a novel, like a Dublin A-Z. Some streets, districts, pubs will be more familiar than others at first, but your awareness will increase in ever widening circles. You can follow the wanderings of the characters on Google Maps. (Google ‘The Boston College Guide to Ulysses’). If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in Dublin the people at the James Joyce Centre in North Great George’s St are very helpful.
2. Think of it as a vocal performance
Read it aloud, alone or with friends, or listen to it. The musicality, humour and pathos come out better that way. There’s a very good recording by Jim Norton (Bishop Brennan in Father Ted) available on iTunes and Audible, and podcasts available of the recent Bloomsday broadcast on BBC.
3. Think of it as a book of short stories.
Feel free to skip. The second and third chapters in particular can be hard going, and many a would-be reader takes leave of the book when Stephen Dedalus, an intense, difficult young man, is going on about the Nacheinander and the Nebeneinander and the Ineluctable Modality of the Visible. Go on to chapter 4 where you get to know Leopold Bloom, his curiosity and kindness, and his relish for the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday life. Each of the 18 episodes can be read independently. The ones called Hades and Nausicaa are good places to start. (Annoyingly these titles, though used by everyone, are absent from the text, but they can be found easily enough either in the notes or online.)
4. Think of it as poetry.
Read it one sentence at a time. Open it at any page and you will find something wonderful going on. Joyce notices everything, and never wrote a bad sentence.
Actually that’s not true: there is one episode, Eumaeus, which is deliberately and some would say perversely composed of nothing but bad sentences. It’s very skippable.
5. Think of it as a play.
You will be able to see the play at the Tron, but one episode, Circe, is the most brilliantly surrealist cartoon psychodrama ever written, featuring the hilarious trial of Bloom for mostly imagined sexual misdemeanours. Its cast of thousands includes a singing bar of soap, some warbling kisses, and The End of the World, who is (of course) a twoheaded octopus in gillie’s kilts, busby and tartan filibegs.
6 Don’t think of it as a marathon.
Take your time. No one is going to sponsor you. It’s more a morning stroll, and an afternoon stroll, and an evening stroll, and a nighttime stagger, and so to bed.
7. Don’t think that it’s full of classical allusions.
You are mistaking it for The Waste Land. (Don’t be ashamed of that – T.S.Eliot also mistook it for The Waste Land.) Yes, it’s built round the scaffolding of Homer’s Odyssey, but that needn’t present any difficulty. Many of the allusions in the book are to popular song, or adverts, bits of news or gossip, the ephemera of city life. They are not there to make you feel stupid.
8. Take a guide.
Harry Blamire’s The New Bloomsday Book is handy for keeping in touch with what is happening in the story beneath all the verbal pyrotechnics, and there are many other resources online, to help you with the bits you’ve skipped for the time being.
9. Don’t boast about having read Ulysses.
People will know exactly what you’re up to and you’ll end up looking and sounding like a self-satisfied eedjit.
10. Don’t boast about not having read Ulysses.
People will know exactly what you’re up to and you’ll end up looking and sounding like a self-satisfied eedjit.
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