June 16. Just another pretty spring day in Dublin.
Ah, but ….
Today is the day (minus one hundred and four years) that Stephan Daedalus leaves his tower by the sea and Leopold Bloom the warmth of his bed to engage in their epic journey
Every English-degreed person has their list of shame. You know, the “classics that I should have read because I have a degree in English.” I am no exception (Moby Dick, War and Peace — where I can’t get beyond the first freaking chapter) but Ulysses is actually not on my list. I read it — OK, basically because I had to for class — and then I read it again for fun and then I read it again for my book club. And you know what? I really, really like it. It’s probably one of my favorite books. Which, of course, sounds terribly pretentious.
But that’s the beauty of Ulysses. It isn’t pretentious at all. It’s a couple of guys walking around Dublin. There’s Buck Mulligan, a funeral; a guy in a mackintosh; a visit to a newspaper; a visit to the outhouse; some masturbation on the beach; Blazes Boylan; a visit to the pub; a visit to a hospital; a visit to a brothel (which is frankly the most horrific and impenetrable (ha!) chapter to get through and is, in fact, pretty damn pretentious; and then they go home. It’s kind of the Sienfeld of literature … a book about nothing much at all.
And, at the same time, it’s about what all great literature is about — fathers, sons, isolation, exile, religion, art, death, love, sex.
But I have to warn you: it is not for the faint-hearted. It is long, dense, packed with allusions, written in at least seven or eight different prose styles and incredibly difficult to read. You shouldn’t do it without a friend, or maybe a semester-long class, or at the very least, a set of comprehensive guides and compendiums.
Did I scare you off a little? Don’t feel like diving into a dense, multi-layered, modernist work over the summer? Here’s the simplified, stick-figure version instead. Don’t need the pictures? Then try this very nice summary from the BBC. But then try to read the book itself. And seriously, read it with a friend. I’ll read it with you if you want.
And then, the best ending ever in English literature:
… and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes
3 responses so far ↓
1 Alkelda // Jun 18, 2008 at 11:06 am
I was just thinking about “Ulysses for Dummies” but never got around to posting for Bloomsday this year. I tried reading it 4 times before I got Blamires’ The New Bloomsday Book. I read a chapter of Blamires, a chapter of Ulysses, and then the same chapter of Blamires again to find out what I had just read. People ask, “Is it really worth it?” Yes! It is. And sure, it can sound pretentious to say that Ulysses is a great book, but it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. After I read it, I told my friends that I had read the book for them, because I completing it made me “everywoman” and therefore they had read it as well. I was a little giddy at the time, I admit.
2 Alkelda // Jun 18, 2008 at 11:12 am
P.S. I had to laugh when I read Stephen Fry’s comment that “it is less pretentious than a baked bean.”
3 urbanmenno // Jun 18, 2008 at 2:16 pm
That’s almost exactly how my book club did it … a chapter of Blamires, a chapter of Ulysses, and then we met and I talked them through it (because I had read it twice by that point) relying heavily on notes from class.
You should feel giddy … it’s a worthy accomplishment. You get to the end and you are practically shouting “yes” yourself.
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