Admit it.
We all have a list of books that we'll tackle "some day." Well . . . some day is here.
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The first time I read Ulysses, it kicked my butt. I took the standard advice of reading out loud, which proved that it was beautifully written--but it still made no sense. This time I hope to correct some of my mistakes from the first time. This time I'll read it with a dictionary and I'll look up foreign phrases and try to work out some of the allusions. But most of all, I don't plan to read it alone. This text is broken into small chunks. The page numbering refers to the standard pages of the original edition (so, the first page is Page 4). I will insert hyperlinks whenever it seems helpful, and I'm enabling comments on each entry in an attempt to create a dialogue. Once this is up and running, I'm also hoping to start a forum that will address specific issue that spring from the book, such as themes, characters, James Joyce, etc. I'm not reading Ulysses alone this time; I'm reading it with the Internet community. Come and join the fun. I'm still figuring out where to put introductory information. For now, I'll keep it below the fold. It's not surprise that Ulysses closely follows the structure of Homer's The Odyssey. Like The Odyssey, the book is separated into three large parts Telemachus, The Adventure of Odysseus, and Coming Home (these aren't the traditional titles, but it will work for now.) Likewise, Ulysses is broken into three sections focusing on actions of the three key characters: Stephen Deadelus, Leo Bloom, and Molly Bloom. Since this is the case, it might be helpful to read the Odyssey in parallel with Ulysses. Here is the Projet Guttenburg version of the Bulter translation of the Odyssey. I will break this up further as we go along. |
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