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Geoff's Reviews > Ulysses
Ulysses
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Reading Finnegans Wake is a vastly different experience than reading Ulysses but it does pull one's thoughts back, riverain, to this, perhaps the single richest and most rerereadable book in the English language. (Shakespeare's corpus is an analog; one can revisit it endlessly and dig and dig and continue to unearth the rarest minerals, gems, fossils, strange stones and fresh human bones; one can always feel the newness even after a dozen readings). Though I'm reading the Wake right now, I've been daydreaming again of Bloom and Dedalus and Molly and Blazes Boylan and the Citizen and Gerty MacDowell and Buck Mulligan and The Man in the Macintosh and the winds blowing through the offices of the Freeman's Journal and Circe's phantasmagoria and Hamlet and there have been rocks wandering and ships amast and Osip Mandelstam's "Insomnia. Homer. Taut Sails... To an alien land, like a phalanx of cranes- foam of the gods on the heads of the kings- where do you sail? what would the things of Troy be to you, Achaeans, without Helen?" (or Penelope or Molly or Anna Livia Plurabelle who haveth childers everywhere) or the sea or Homer all moves by love's glow and the black sea thundering its oratory- and lying down among rocks or submerging in shoals to ponder the visible and the invisible and the sun spinning round one infinite day only. Time halts. It's a shame so many people consider this book unreadable or unendurable or that there is not time for books such as these. Time is all laid out already and already everything has happened and will happen again, but still the moment of each meeting is sweet. Return to books like these, take on books like these and live with them; Homer is still alive and so is Joyce and life is too like these books to not read them while you are able. Say yes.
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Quotes Geoff Liked
“Come on, you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J. Christ Dowie, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from 'Frisco Beach to Vladivostok. The Deity ain't no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that he's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in king Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his backpocket. Just you try it on.”
― Ulysses
― Ulysses
“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
― Ulysses
― Ulysses
“He is gone from mortal haunts: O'Dignam, sun of our morning. Fleet was his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the shaggy brow. Wail, Banba, with your wind: and wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind.”
― Ulysses
― Ulysses
“Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks. They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.”
― Ulysses
― Ulysses
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
(Other Paperback Edition)
Finished Reading
June 28, 2007
– Shelved
January 30, 2010
– Shelved as:
favorites
June 3, 2010
– Shelved
(Other Paperback Edition)
November 15, 2013
– Shelved as:
infinite-books
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Kiof
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rated it 5 stars
Jan 25, 2013 12:39PM
I hope some day you can make it to Bloomsday....Great review, as always. For the people who don't like this book or think it's a waste of time or think it a pretentious joke- those people couldn't be more wrong. They're probably wasting their time by not reading it :)
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Thanks for the good words, Kiof. There was a time in my twenties when I was absolutely obsessed with Ulysses. Read it many times through and some sections of it over and over... I'm reading the Wake now and it is just reiterating how Joyce was and is just leagues beyond everyone... which Bloomsday celebrations are you speaking of, by the way?
The one in Dublin- is their really any other? Might get the chance to go it this summer (emphasis on might)- it would be a dream realized. May just have to go to one in the US. Have you been to the one in Dublin? If so, a few details, please.
Gorgeous. You make me want to reread the book, even though the first time gave me a migraine. I shall be sure to pull this review out before I go round two with the text, it'll be good encouragement.
@Kiof- I figured you meant the legitimate one in Dublin. Here in DC the bookstore Politics and Prose organizes city-wide events, reading different places like pubs and theaters and stuff. There's supposed to be some pretty good Bloomsday happenings in Philadelphia, too. There's also a James Joyce pub in Baltimore that has some readings on and off. But yes, Dublin would be the place to go...
@Aubrey- Merci! Do not fear Ulysses. It takes some time within it, and on the first reading some annotations and perhaps a guidebook to help orient you, but once you are into its rhythms and language and its world, I promise you, there is no more generous book. It gives and gives and gives. At a certain point you will probably just find yourself reciting passages like song or scripture. This here is the book I would take to life imprisonment or desert isle.
I think if I return to Ulysses, I will probably dip into individual sections one at a time. As if the book were the collected works of a band, and I just want to listen to one album, because it's what I feel like at that particular moment.
Ian wrote: "I think if I return to Ulysses, I will probably dip into individual sections one at a time. As if the book were the collected works of a band, and I just want to listen to one album, because it's ..."That is certainly a great way to do it. I've reread specific sections on and off since my first complete reading of the book. I've read the entire thing twice, and some sections many many times. The Burgess study has got me all fired up to do an entire reading again, but for now I'm chipping away at the Wake, little by little....
David wrote: "Yes.":)
Rereading your favorite author is a chance for self discovery. Mark how you have changed, though the book has remained the same.
That is so true, Krishna. It remains a challenge to know when to return to a great book and when to forge ahead to discover new masterpieces. I have read and re-read "Ulysses" four times since college and this novel is so substantive that each time I rediscover new nuances. And it is because of my own growth that the new aspects of the masterpiece come into focus.
Krishna wrote: "Rereading your favorite author is a chance for self discovery. Mark how you have changed, though the book has remained the same."Mark how the book changes with me; mark how the book and I grow old together. (Some marriages do last--)
Did I mess up by reading the Wake first and then this? The times when this book would fade in and out of making sense, I would be reading it thinking: stop teasing me with half making sense, either commit to flagrantOff the Deep End -edness, or have something I can follow. What's your thoughts? I spent a lot of time reading it thinking, I liked the Wake.
Both are required reading for lovers of high literature. You can't unread a book. If you go forward with the masterpieces, then how can you go wrong?
I've read it, Geoff! and with the leftovers of my brain I've managed to write a review...
Fernando wrote: "I've read it, Geoff! and with the leftovers of my brain I've managed to write a review..."Congrats Fernando! You've ascended the mountain!
And I descended it with no brain. Anyway, a fair trade...
Probably the best review on this site, your infinity reads shelf is a godsend!
