Ulysses - have you/will you read it poll!

buck65

Trying to read this again - got 200 pages into it last year and abandoned it but picked it up yesterday and to be honest I'm enjoying it!
Thoughts?

DublinWriter

I read some and gave up

It's hard work but worth it. I took me five years on and off to read it completely. Now I like just dipping into sections of it.

Initially it's a bit like being dropped off in a foreign country and not having a clue what is going on.

I did try and read Finnegan's Wake, but I found it impossible and thought it was a very, very self-indulgent piece of work and a bit like trying to do a crossword that's a mile-wide.

The Mad Hatter

DublinWriter wrote: »

It's hard work but worth it. I took me five years on and off to read it completely. Now I like just dipping into sections of it.

Initially it's a bit like being dropped off in a foreign country and not having a clue what is going on.

I did try and read Finnegan's Wake, but I found it impossible and thought it was a very, very self-indulgent piece of work and a bit like trying to do a crossword that's a mile-wide.

Finnegans Wake. (Most commonly misspelt book title ever?)

I'm reading Ulysses at the moment (though I have recently been sidetracked by easier books). I love it. I know I've missed out on a lot because I haven't read everything Joyce had before writing it, so many of the references are somewhat lost on me. To make a cheesy analogy, I find it a little like watching a stream or river: what I see is beautiful, but I know that there's a great deal more going on that I only get a vague notion of.

turgon

Keep that rubbish the hell away from me

I really only started reading proper recently, and Im going to wait for a few months or years until I have read other books. By all accounts its hard to tackle. Would it be fair to say that a lot of people read it just to say they have read it? DublinWriter??? el_tiddlero???

godspal

Keep that rubbish the hell away from me

I will read it in the next 2-3 months. (Having read parts of the book as part of college courses.)
The prose style is amazing from what I have read.

deadhead13

I will read it someday

Tried, but failed.

rovert

I read some and gave up

Read it first time round. I accepted from the beginning that I was going to get every reference and when from there.

Permabear

I read some and gave up

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zesman

I read some and gave up

Read Ulysses twice, but the first time didn't really count and was about 15 years ago. Will agree with donegalfella, you really need guides to negotiate your way through Ulysses. Was it worth it? Yes. It took me about six months to read. Had to leave it aside at times. but glad I finshed it. At times tedious, at times hilarious. Intend to read it again sometime.

el_tiddlero

I read some and gave up

@ turgon: About 2 summers ago i was given a gift of Ulysees by someone who had seen me reading Dubliners. Read it on the train (30 mins each way per day). Took me the whole summer, and some days i sat there reading the same sentence over and over before snapping it shut in disgust.
I got through it though, and found it relatively easy (aside from train rage) to read and enjoy (not too sure you need guides etc for a casual read of something). Some parts are just mental and should be read as such imo. Sure, if you're going to write a thesis on it then you'll need to understand every nuance and reference, but if you're just having a read then you don't need to know EVERYTHING about it: it does stand alone as a story in its own right.

I wanted to read Joyce (not just ulysees) as one of my favourite authors, Flann O'Brien, cited him as his main influence. Same way after i'd read Fear and Loathing i went looking for The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald as that was where a lot of Hunter S. Thompson's influence came from.

Still haven't gone for the big bad that is FW, but maybe someday when i'm old and brain addled - i presume it will make perfect sense at that stage..

BossArky

I read some and gave up

Use the net to recap on each chapter once you have read it. Else, you may end up pretty lost.

It took me a few months to get through it. I found I enjoyed it more when I was slightly tipsy and skimmed rather than got bogged down in the detail.

Check out this chapter by chapter overview.

Crucifix

Anyone ever read his letters to Nora Barnacle? I'll never be able to take him seriously after that.

randomguy

I read some and gave up

Read it when I was 19 or 20. Took me 6 months - didn't use annotations and probably only got about 20% of it. Some parts were fun, some easy reading, but a lot of it was really heavy going. I only finished it out of deep-rooted obstinacy. The last few pages were pure pleasure, though.

Sir Gallagher

Keep that rubbish the hell away from me

Crucifix wrote: »

Anyone ever read his letters to Nora Barnacle? I'll never be able to take him seriously after that.

He was a sick sick man

buck65

I will read it someday

BossArky wrote: »

Use the net to recap on each chapter once you have read it. Else, you may end up pretty lost.

It took me a few months to get through it. I found I enjoyed it more when I was slightly tipsy and skimmed rather than got bogged down in the detail.

Check out this chapter by chapter overview.

Actually Wikipedia have a nice chapter by chapter summation on the book.

994

I read some and gave up

Read it last year ... but for most of Oxen of the Sun I was just looking at words in sequence, not reading...

John

I read some and gave up

I've read it twice and gone through the Naxos audiobook (22 CDs!) once. It's a fabulous book but definitely need a guide for the first readthrough. Helps if you're familiar with the layout of Dublin and the old names for the streets too. Since reading it the first time, I've gone on to read a lot of books about Joyce and this has made reading Ulysses a second time far more illuminating.

As for Finnegans Wake, I'm on my second read through that and while it is difficult, it is worth it in my opinion. Guidebooks for this are invaluable and the usual of advice of trying to read it out loud is sound advice indeed (pun intended). I don't think there's a complete audiobook of it but I have a few extracts/musical adaptations on tape/LP/CD and these help trying to get your head around the countless neologisms in the text.

Permabear

I read some and gave up

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buck65

I will read it someday

Jesus Joyce is hilariously filthy. When Bloom was browsing in the bookshop and ended up leaving with the porno book! Classic laughed out loud reading that pssage. This book is a revelation surprised it's not well known.
Fishgluey slime indeed!

John

I read some and gave up

Wait til he gets to the beach...

BaZmO*

buck65 wrote: »

This book is a revelation surprised it's not well known.

Not well known? It's probably the most famous pieces of fiction known, after the Bible of course.

buck65

I will read it someday

BaZmO* wrote: »

Not well known? It's probably the most famous pieces of fiction known, after the Bible of course.

I was actually being sarcastic!

tvbright

Keep that rubbish the hell away from me

Hi!
I'd like to read it.. even though i'm not a native english speaker..
hopefully it won't be that bad!

..I'm just finishing Dubliners now.. I know the two books are very different.. but I find it amazing the way Joice just paints with language... (it's hard to explain what I really mean.. don't blame me please! )

I'll let you know how will I get on it! ..if this forum will still exist by the time I will read page 3

Gaspode

I will read it someday

Tried it and gave up after a few dozen pages of rubbish.

The Mad Hatter

Gaspode wrote: »

Tried it and gave up after a few dozen pages of rubbish.

A well-informed opinion, to be sure. What makes you think it was rubbish?

herbieflowers

I just re-read it for the third time there, having read it first about a year ago. It's a fantastic text, part of the challenge is as a "modernist" text, it challenges the reader's approach to how they read, not really following narrative conventions (or at least exhuasting such conventions) that we've become accustomed to. If you're a reader interested in it, then pay attention to the small details, some of the references may seem obscure so I'd recommend Jeri Johnson's OUP edition. The Homeric parallel is also a good way to tackle the text, and accounts for some of the seeming absurdities in the text. The above edition I mentioned has the skeleton map of the text that Joyce himself composed.

But I highly recommend it, the only thing I'd say is stick with it, and read it over a certain period of time, as opposed to picking it up, leaving it for a few months, picking it up agian, etc. It's definitely my favourite text, it can be hard work, but it's worth it.

turgon

Keep that rubbish the hell away from me

Is that the Oxford World Classics edition then?

Anyone know of any good reader guides?

herbieflowers

turgon wrote: »

Is that the Oxford World Classics edition then?

Anyone know of any good reader guides?

Yep, that's the one. That's also the original 1922 text, as opposed to the slew of bastardised versions floating about.

dr oatker

I read some and gave up

Read it, but I have to say i only finished it for the sake of finishing it. Stupid really but i was young and self important. I didn't like it at all!

turgon

Keep that rubbish the hell away from me

From wiki (links myself):

Facsimile texts of the 1922 first edition

* Ulysses, The 1922 Text, with an introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson, Oxford University Press (1993). A World Classics paperback edition with full critical apparatus. ISBN 0-19-282866-5
...
Based on the 1960 Bodley Head/1961 Random House editions
...
* Ulysses, Penguin Modern Classics (paperback, 2000), with an introduction by Declan Kiberd.
...
Based on the 1984 Gabler edition

* Ulysses: The corrected text, Edited by Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior, and a new preface by Richard Ellmann, Vintage International (1986) - This follows the disputed Garland Edition.

Permabear

I read some and gave up

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