Ulysses
7 pages and nobody's mentioned Ulysses yet?

I like all sorts of books - ranging from mindless fun to classic fiction. I devour books and treat each on its own terms. I enjoy thrillers (John Grisham, for example) as much as anyone, but also classics, especially the Russians. I loved War and Peace, not for the pose value but because I think it is one of the most beautiful books ever written, save for the author's unnecessary and banal philosophising at the end. So I'm not one of those readers who gets bored if there isn't an explosion or car chase on every page.

And so to Ulysses. Several years ago I decided it was time to give this mammoth work a try. I knew it would be a difficult book and that I probably wouldn't understand all of it, but I was looking forward to the challenge. I love playing around with words (I'm a crossword nerd) and I am an amateur linguist (I have more enthusiasm than talent). So I bought a copy and got started.

I'll read a Grisham novel in a night. Oliver Twist took me a few days. With Ulysses, I limped up to the 100 page mark after about three months. I could see that the writing is very clever and I did enjoy some of Joyce's plays on words. But as a novel, I found it unreadable. Not boring, exactly, in the way that I found Moby Dick boring (too much obsessive detail and too many digressions). It was like reading a text in a foreign language I don't know very well. I won't dismiss the book, as some do, as pretentious rubbish or the Emperor's new clothes. I don't think that it's the literary equivalent of unmade beds or exhibitions of canned turds. This may be a poser's choice of book but I think the book itself probably is a masterpiece and I'm just too thick to appreciate it. After I got to page 100, at which point the only thing I really understood was that Leopold Bloom had fed his cat, I gave up. I could have struggled on for another 100 pages to read about him feeding his dog, but I decided life's too short.

Who here has read, finished, and most importantly enjoyed, this book?

Apologies for length (unlike James Joyce!).
(eesnahk, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 12:27, 16 replies)

You can't read Ulysses to yourself.
You have to read it out loud.

Try it. You'll look like a proper mental if you try it in public but it's the only way to make any sort of progress or any sort of sense.

In fact ... I suspect that about 40% of those we assume are homeless people with mental health and addiction problems are actually commuters who've got stuck on a particularly difficult passage.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 12:33, closed)

There's no such thing as meth amphetamine
only people trying to get through Finnegan's Wake
(leviticus no longer likes the cut of your gib on, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 12:37, closed)

Agreed.
The only way to get through Ulysses is to get a decent audiobook of it.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 12:55, closed)

Which is a task in and of itself!
I've downloaded two now, where the person speaking cocks up a few times and didn't re-record. If I wanted to hear someone screw up the reading of Ulysses I'd do it myself!
( guffguff fuckes your gradeds balls!, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 13:29, closed)

Or to shred it and use it as hamster bedding.

( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Wed 11 Jan 2012, 16:22, closed)

I've not read my copy of Ulysses
which has been sat on the shelf for several year, looking daunting.

But I'm honestly shocked by the anti-Moby Dick sentiment on this qotw. Moby Dick is a long but easy read. The digressions are all part of it - by the end of the book, you feel like a crew member, because you learn so much about the time period and whale hunting and the characters. Ishmael is one of the best narrators ever, he's witty and interesting and his curiosity carries you through the novel. It's one of my favourite books, and I'm very surprised that anyone found it boring.

If I could possibly convince you to give it another go I would.

(OK, so the chapter about different types of rigging is a bit much, but, you know, everything is interesting.)
(leviticus no longer likes the cut of your gib on, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 12:36, closed)

I read it
Took me a week. I was commuting by train for a week and had two hours a day to kill so wanted something to occupy my time. "Ulysses" was my companion that week and on the Friday afternoon I finished it. Did I enjoy it? Some parts were just fantastic, but others were crushingly dull. It's more a book to admire than like, I think.
(nasalhair The Twix guy!, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 12:38, closed)

I tell people I've read it
In reality I skimmed it and read particular bits. Some bits I enjoyed, but there were chapters I just found annoying. I reckon I probably read 80% of it (and quite enjoyed it), and found about 20% unbearable.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 12:40, closed)

I tell people I've read it (even though I've not), and make up quotes from it
Safe in the knowledge that no one else has.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 12:54, closed)

I abandoned Ulysses
after only a handful of pages (stream of consciousness writing is not my thing) - given the lack of punctuation, perhaps fluffybunnykiller is chanelling the spirit of Joyce, on this very board?

By contrast, I read Moby Dick when I was 9, and don't recall it being particularly difficult.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 13:13, closed)

I got about half way through
didn't give up, just stopped and didn't get restarted, I really enjoyed what I read, and keep meaning to pick it up again.

[Edit] I think you've just supplied me with the trigger to restart - thanks!

Moby Dick though, Christ, I've tried a number of times but find it's like wading through mud and never get more than a score or so of pages in before losing the will to live.
.
( lord bofingham, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 13:24, closed)

Nope
Dear Diary, we have camped on the perimeter of this brutish looking book and intent to venture forth on the morrow.
Day 2: We only made a brief exploratory foray into it.
Found impenetrable vines and stinging nettles.
Backed out.
Went home.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 14:42, closed)

67
pages. Utter bollocks. Gave up and took it to the charity shop.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 18:15, closed)

I tried Ulysses and only got a handful of pages in. I read Burroughs The naked lunch out loud. Well not quite out loud but the trick I found was to never reread anything. Read fast like it's someone else talking and keep going even if the sentence doesn't make sense. If you want to get to know Joyce and can't be arsed trying you should definitely get yourself some Flann O'Brien. The Dalkey Archive, At swim two birds and The third policeman are all great reads. Definitely not Joycean but definitely a genius in his own right and with the same roots and a sense of humour as well he's much less pretentious and much more enjoyable than Joyce. I read the Dubliners and didn't think much of it tbh. Joyce does have a part in The Dalkey Archive if that helps.
(apaulinthought, Sat 7 Jan 2012, 20:24, closed)

Finished it. Enjoyed it.
Like Proust, I reckon it's best not to read any other books whilst reading it.
( Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 19:56, closed)

I would have finished it when I was 21
If I hadn't met the future Mrs Grimsdale.

It's now falling apart from sheer age, and every 10 years or so I pick up where I left off - about four fifths through it.

Do try 'Dubliners' though - a bit like Picasso's early works, it shows the true genius of the craft/art before he over-took his contemporaries by 30 years. After Dubliners, you may want to go back to Ulysses.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Mon 9 Jan 2012, 14:30, closed)