Ulysses by James Joyce

Well, here we are. It's finally time to read Ulysses.

I've always known that I wanted to take this monster on one day, and the Back to the Classics Challenge prompt to "read a classic that scares you" was the push of encouragement I needed to give it a try. Ulysses is a legendary novel--it's considered to be one of the best modern classics of all time. It's also considered to be an extremely difficult read. In it, Joyce describes a day in the life of a man named Leopold Bloom as he travels through Dublin. Utilizing many different literary styles from chapter to chapter, stream of consciousness writing, and multi-layered allusions to other works and time periods, this 783-page tome is a challenge for readers to understand and appreciate. The rewards, however, are said to be worth the time and struggle.

Modern literature is not my favorite genre. While I can appreciate its importance to the literary cannon, I tend to not enjoy the experience of reading it. Accordingly, I've only read a small handful of modern classics. Ulysses is everything that frustrates me about books to the nth degree, so I was very reluctant to start in on it. I had serious concerns about my ability to understand the text, so I sat down and made a reading plan. I thought that might make it easier.

The first thing I did was determine where the chapters were. Ulysses is based on The Odyssey, and contains 18 chapters that roughly correspond to The Odyssey's 24 books. However, Joyce chose not to label any of them in the actual text, so I had to find a website that listed where the chapters started and stopped so I could break up the novel into sections. Once I accomplished that, I decided to read the novel a section at a time, alongside a study guide with chapter summaries, so I could hopefully keep track of what was going on. What follows are my impressions as I read, three chapters at a time.

Fair warning - this is probably going to be super-boring. For my overall impression of the entire book, just skip to the end of my review.




Section 1: The Telemachiad (Chapters 1-3)

The first three chapters of Ulysses introduce us to one of the novel's main characters, Stephen Dedalus. The story opens with him having a conversation with Buck Mulligan, a roommate of sorts that lives with him in a tower he is renting that overlooks Dublin Bay. No real detail is given about who these characters are or what they are doing, and their conversation rambles from topic to topic, as real conversations between acquaintances do. One matter that does feature prominently, however, is the recent death of Stephen's mother. Buck gives his a hard time about it because Stephen refused to pray at her bedside as she was dying. The two eventually go down to breakfast where they meet up with an Englishman named Haines, who Buck has invited to share the tower with them. Haines shares some opinions about the relationship between England and Ireland, which annoy Stephen.

The trio converse some more and leave the tower to bathe in the bay. Stephen eventually splits off to go to work. He vows not to return to the tower that night. Both Buck and Haines are irritating him and he is feeling like he has been usurped in his own home.

Stephen teaches history at a local school. At work, Stephen teaches a class of rather dull children for a little while, then meets up with his boss to collect his pay. His boss comments that he doesn't believe Stephen will last long as a teacher owing to his lack of enthusiasm for it, to which Stephen replies that he is more of a learner than a teacher. His boss continues on to make several patronizing speeches about saving money and then details a column he has written about Hoof-and-mouth disease, which he asks Stephen to help him publish. He also makes several derogatory comments about Jews, which Stephen gently pushes back against.

Eventually, Stephen leaves his boss's office and wanders along the beach for a while. His thoughts drift randomly from thing to thing. He thinks about him mother some more and it is obvious he is struggling with her death and his decision not to pray at her deathbed. Eventually, he gets up to leave and notices a ship approaching.

I quickly learned that people weren't kidding when they said that Ulysses is a difficult read. Without my chapter summaries, I would be missing about half of what's going on (sometimes more). Joyce's stream-of-consciousness style is quite realistic to how peoples' minds randomly hop from thought to thought throughout the course of a day, but it is very difficult to understand. There are references and allusions to things I don't recognize at all. There are lots of sentences in different languages with no translations. It's tricky to tell when someone is speaking vs thinking as no quotation marks are used and phrases like "he said," are omitted as well. Dashes and paragraph breaks are used to denote dialogue, which helps, but it's still confusing. There are whole paragraphs that I couldn't make heads or tails of, and basically all of chapter three (which takes place entirely in Stephen's mind) was unintelligible to me.

Despite these struggles, I am beginning to grasp why people consider this novel to be great. Joyce is able to give a true illustration of what goes on in a person's mind throughout the course of a day. I don't doubt that if someone could read a running record of every single thought I had over a number of hours, they would be really confused as well. It's interesting to consider what all of these random thoughts people have look like written down. I get that. It's just not going to be an easy task to finish this book.

Section 2: The Odyssey (Chapters 4-6)

In chapter 4, we finally meet the main protagonist of the novel, Leopold Bloom. We follow him as he prepares breakfast for himself in the morning. He makes a quick trip to a butcher's shop for some kidneys for breakfast, places them on the fire at home, then brings some breakfast up to his wife Molly, who is still in bed. He speaks to his wife for a while about a job she has lined up performing as a singer and notices that she quickly hides a letter under her pillow during their conversation. It is clear he suspects her of having an affair. He eventually leaves her to use the bathroom, where he thinks a bit about a funeral for an acquaintance he has to attend that afternoon.

When he is finished with the bathroom, he begins a walk around Dublin to take care of some errands before the funeral. He visits the post office first, where he picks up a letter addressed to a pseudonym he uses, Henry Flower. The letter is from a woman who he seems to be carrying on an erotic correspondence with. The woman in the letter scolds him for being "naughty" in their last exchange and then asks him to meet her in person. Leo muses that he won't meet up with her ever, but will enjoy pushing the envelope a bit further in their next exchange. He then visits a church for a bit, where he thinks about women and the hypnotizing effect of religion. He then visits a chemist to obtain a skin lotion for Molly. He puts in his order, picks up a bar of soap and heads to a bathhouse while musing about the sight of his penis floating in the water.

Later on, Leo attends the funeral he was thinking about earlier. He travels to the church in a coach with three other men, none of whom he seems to be particularly close to. They make polite conversation on various topics as they travel. Later on, as he views the church service and the burial, Leo thinks about several topics, including burial rituals, paternal relationships, and the idea of being buried alive. When the service is over, he is relieved to leave the cemetery, as it makes him feel closer to death.

I did a bit better with this section, as most of the chapters contained enough action and dialogue for me to string together some meaning. The stream of consciousness writing was still very challenging, but I felt like I was starting to get used to it. One bit I thought was realistic was Leo's thoughts during the funeral. They were random and not entirely appropriate to the situation, but they definitely mirrored the way anyone in the real world would try to occupy their time during a heavy (and usually boring) event. He thinks about how horrible it would be to be buried alive, muses about how coffins should have phones installed in case of accidental live burials, deduces that it would save space if people were buried standing up, and imagines what a good fertilizer all the people in the cemetery must be for the plants, among other things. I could mostly follow what he was thinking about and was almost amused by it. Progress!


Section 3: The Odyssey (Chapters 7-9)

Chapter 7 takes place in the Freeman newspaper office, a publication that Leo sells adds for and a place where Stephen hangs out with his friends. The chapter is broken up by several newspaper headlines, which section off the text. Both Leo and Stephen appear here; Leo comes to work on selling an ad and Stephen comes to drop off his boss' letter about Hoof-and-mouth Disease, which the editor says he will publish. Stephen sticks around to chat with his buddies that work in the office, and they ask him to write something fresh for the paper. Stephen never gives a clear yes or no to that question, but instead tells a cryptic story about two old virgins who climb to the top of a tower to eat plums. Eventually, the group goes to a pub.  Stephen ends up splitting off from the group and goes to the National Library.

Chapter 8 leaves the newspaper headlines technique behind and follows Bloom as he walks around Dublin. He thinks about some random topics, then heads to a restaurant for lunch. He is immediately disgusted by the gross eating habits of the customers inside, so he changes his mind and goes to a different pub for a snack instead. He gets himself a light vegetarian meal and chats with a few acquaintances he runs into. He eventually leaves and helps an old blind man cross the street outside. Back inside the pub, his acquaintances talk about him, showing that they believe quite a few ridiculous rumors concerning him.

Eventually, the story shifts back to Stephen, who is chatting with a few friends in the National Library director's office about Shakespeare. Stephen has a theory that Shakespeare modeled his most famous characters and plays off of his real life family and friends. He goes through several characters and relates them back to different relations of Shakespeare. His friends disagree, and propose different theories. Buck Mulligan (from way back in chapter 1) reappears and joins the conversation, providing some silly comic relief. Leo Bloom shows up too, requesting help looking up an old ad. Eventually, Stephen's group sets off in search of a drink.

This section of the novel was a significant stumbling block. I had extreme difficulty understanding anything. My reading guide was my savior, as I was almost totally lost during most of these chapters. The inside jokes and references, lines in different languages, and the randomness of the conversations left me very confused. Things like place names, relationships between characters, and professions of the characters are completely omitted. Things just happen in Ulysses. People and places seem to just drift in and out with no explanation. I honestly don't know how a casual reader is supposed to figure out what is happening without help. With everything being so confusing, it was very difficult to keep my mind from wandering while reading. I also struggled to stay awake. I took nothing away from this section. When I went to write this part of my reflections, I could barely remember what I read and had to rely on Sparknotes for help, which was especially disappointing because I had felt like I was getting better with my comprehension during chapters 4-6. This seemed like a step backwards. In other words, this was not a great set of pages for me.


Section 4: The Odyssey (Chapters 10-12)

Chapter 10 is written as a series of interludes showing the thoughts and actions of several characters as they make their way throughout Dublin. The text hops from person to person and focuses on both major and minor characters. In one section, Leo is shown browsing for books for his wife, and settling on a sexy romance. In another, Stephen, also browsing for books elsewhere in the city, runs into his sister Dilly. He has several younger sisters, and all are struggling to survive at home since their mother died and their father spends all their money on alcohol. Stephen is shown to feel torn at the encounter; Dilly shows a spark of intelligence that reminds him of himself, and he considers stepping in to help support his sisters. At the same time, he wishes to escape from the rest of his family and the misery they represent completely. He chooses the latter option and walks away.

Later, the action shifts to a bar where several characters, including Leo, are hanging out and flirting with the barmaids. This chapters contains lots of fragments and random words sprinkled throughout these are all lines and words that will repeat towards the end of the chapter, like echoes of things to come. Interspersed with the conversation in the bar are sections that show a man's car speeding towards Bloom's house - presumably to sleep with Molly. Bloom knows that this person is headed to his house and his wife, and is very anxious at the thought. He begins composing an erotic letter to the women he was corresponding with way back in the beginning of the novel and leaves the bar to mail it.

In chapter 12, the narration shifts to a random, unnamed narrator who is meeting up with some friends in a pub. Before long, Bloom enters the same establishment for a meeting with another character who hasn't arrived yet. He joins in on the conversation the narrator is having with his buddies, and things do not go well. Bloom doesn't fit in with the group, and comes off as boring, wimpy, and arrogant. Things deteriorate throughout the chapter until one of the men makes several antisemitic statements towards him, threatens to fight him, and throws a biscuit tin at the car he flees to.

Reading this section was absolutely exhausting. Chapters 10 and 11 were so impenetrable that I had no idea what I was reading. When I got to chapter 12, I made the decision to read my chapter guides before trying to read the actual text, just so I would have some sense of what was going on. I honestly don't know how anyone is able to figure out what anything means in this novel on their own. I admit that some of the different techniques Joyce is employing are cool - that idea of fragments of text previewing what will come later in the chapter was neat, and in one of the chapters, he switches between drastically different styles (Renaissance, court reporting, religious service, etc.) to convey the action, which I thought was really interesting. However, the reading is getting harder instead of easier and I'm finding myself longing to go back to reading books I can understand.


Section 4: The Odyssey (Chapters 13-15)

Chapter 13 is written in a sappy style, reminiscent of a romance novel. It focuses on three girlfriends relaxing on a beach. Two of the girls have brought young siblings to play while the most beautiful of the trio, Gertie, is there on her own. Before long, they spot a man watching them further down on the beach. This is Leo, although none of them know who he is. Gertie notices the man staring at her and begins a long series of fantasies about him, pretending that he is a lonely widower that has fallen in love with her. Eventually, Gertie's companions move further down the beach to watch some fireworks that have started in the distance. Taking advantage of their absence, Gertie pulls up her dress and flashes Leo her legs and thighs. Leo, watching, masturbates. After the girls leave, Leo notices that Gertie is lame and thinks it's a shame for a pretty girl like that to have such a defect. He then takes a short nap on the beach.

Chapter 14 takes place in a maternity hospital, where Leo has wandered to check up on a friend of his, Mina Purefoy, who has been in labor for three days. He meets up with some other acquaintances there, one of whom is Stephen Dedalus. The men talk about several different topics, ranging from pregnancy to fatherhood, to contraception methods. After a bit of time has passed, the news is announced that Mina has given birth to a healthy baby boy. The men decide to head to a pub for a drink. The chapter is meant to represent the gestation of the English language and is broken up into nine different styles, beginning with Latinate prose and progressing up through the modern slang of the day.

Chapter 15 is written in the form of a play. It is the longest chapter in the novel, but not much action occurs in it. Most of the pages describe detailed hallucinations that both Leo and Stephen have as they visit a brothel in Dublin's red light district. Stephen decides to visit the brothel after hanging out at the pub for a bit, and Leo follows him there out of concern for his safety. They both drift in and out of hallucinations that touch on their deepest anxieties. Leo's center on his sexual habits and insecurities while Stephen's center on intellectual worries and the guilt he feels over his mother's death. Eventually, Stephen becomes so drunk that he breaks a chandelier in the brothel and passes out in the street. Leo helps him avoid an arrest for public drunkenness. As he bends over Stephen's body at the end of the chapter, he thinks he sees the ghost of his son Rudy, who died as an infant. This shows that he is beginning to see Stephen as his son.

This set of chapters (with the exception of the beginning and end of chapter 14) weren't as tough to make it through as some of the others. That being said, they were pretty gross. The masturbating in public and the sexual hallucinations in the brothel were bizarre. I'm not used to seeing this kind of material in classic novels. Ulysses was famously put on trial for obscenity in the U.S. when it was first published there, and these chapters were my first real taste as to why. It was pretty shocking to me. And weird.


Section 5: Nostos (Chapters 16-18)

Chapter 16 is the first time our two main characters, Leo and Stephen, actually have a real discussion with each other. Stephen eventually regains consciousness and the pair head off to a bar to get something to eat. While Stephen continues sobering up, Leo tries to engage him in conversation on several different topics ranging from music, to travel, to politics. Stephen halfheartedly participates, making the meeting a boring affair.

In chapter 17, Leo takes Stephen back to his house for cocoa and further discussion. The chapter is structured as a series of questions and answers, and is written in formal, impersonal language. They continue to talk about various topics and Stephen continues to disappoint Leo with his noncommittal answers. Stephen tells an antisemitic story, which Leo pretends not to be offended by. Eventually they head outside, pee together, and Stephen leaves. Leo thinks over all of the events of his day and then climbs into bed with his wife Molly, who is already asleep. He notices small items and changes in the room that indicate another man has been there, as he suspected. He positions himself with his head towards the foot of the bed, opposite the way Molly is sleeping, and kisses her buttocks. This wakes Molly up, and he goes over the events of his day with her, lying about several details. Then he falls asleep.

Chapter 18, the final chapter in the novel, switches perspective to Molly as she thinks about Leo and her past sexual encounters. The chapter is written as eight extremely long sentences, omitting all punctuation. Molly's thought drift through several topics, including the adultery she engaged in earlier that day, while Leo was out and about in Dublin. Her descriptions are very graphic. She seriously enjoyed the encounter and can't wait to repeat it later. Her thoughts also reveal that she and Leo haven't had sex for ten years, that this was her first affair (contrary to what Leo assumed), and that she is aware of several affairs Leo has had with other women, including the erotic letters he thinks he is hiding from her. The chapter ends positively, with Molly eventually reminiscing about the time Leo proposed to her.

These chapters were at a medium difficulty for me. They weren't the hardest to understand, but they weren't the easiest either. The last chapter, with its lack of punctuation, felt very slow to get through. Even the frequent bursts of sexually explicit material weren't enough to keep me engaged. I was happy for it to end.


Final Impressions

In the end, the best thing I can say about Ulysses is that I actually finished reading it. I'm expecting my medal in the mail any day now. It was long, boring, and barely comprehensible. At the same time, it was different, experimental, and clever. The stream-of-consciousness writing, the different literary influences, and the varying styles combine to make something extremely unique. This novel is like a puzzle for lovers of modern literature. It invites careful study, lots of discussion, and multiple reads to even begin to grasp it.

I am not a fan of most modern literature, so this experience wasn't enjoyable for me. This is not a novel you can casually pick up and read; making time to get through it felt like a part time job. I am glad that I proved to myself that I could finish it, but I don't think I'll take anything significant away from the experience aside from just seeing what it was like. If I wasn't using an online study guide, I would not have understood anything I read. I was right to be nervous to read this. It was definitely a challenge.

But hey, with this novel finished, I have officially completed the 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge! I'm happy to have crossed this novel off my list and I'm ready to move onto reading something a bit less intense!

*But I understand the literary significance!

Challenge Tally
Back to the Classics (a classic that scares you): 12/12 - Completed!
Classics Club (#69 on my list): 33/100 

Total Books Read in 2018: 39