Difficult Books

"The greater part of [Ulysses] I like, I have no humour with episodes which are deliberately farcical... and as episodes grow longer and longer and you try to tell every damn thing you know about anybody that appears or anything that crops up, my patience oozes out."

-- Stanislaus Joyce (August 1924), James Joyce's brother

Is Ulysses a work of genius or is it the most over-rated novel ever written?

When I started this project, I was leaning toward the latter. A superficial reading of this book as a novel can be painful. As a story, very little happens; and, as a single work it seems pretensious, disjointed, and boring.

But naturally, I'm starting to come under its spell.

The big difference has come from slowing down. The format for this website forces the reader to slow down and look closely at all the reference and allusions, at the story being told in a single paragraph, and at the meaning of single sentences.

I'm finding that this book becomes more interesting when it is nestled in the context of all the allusions that James Joyce put into the book. When reading Ulysses page by page, the story is reduced to a fraction of the whole, but it also expands to include all of the references included on that page. And from this perspective, the whole book about a single day in Dublin expands to include all of Western culture.

I've spent some time this weekend reading Thomas Carlyles lecture on Heroes and Hero Worship because of an observation he made that great people in history have cast huge shadows over everything that comes after them. This seemed relevant to a phrase that page 26: "Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine."

Now I'm starting to suspect that Carlyle posits an idea about history that might be relevant to this whole chapter. But the concepts of history in this chapter are complex, and I'm looking up information about Aristotle, Homer, Hegel, and the philosophy of history in general.

For me that's exciting. At the same time, slowing down enables me to spend time with Joyce's prose. And my god the man could write.

I'm not a professional academic and have no interest in perpetuating the Ulysses-Industrial Complex. But still, I'm becoming convinced the book is really quite good. At least that's how I'm feeling today.

What do you think? Genius or charlatan?