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I have a theory that everyone (or at least every bookish person) knows somebody who is just really insufferable about Ulysses. Like, has read it multiple times and looked up every reference and has memorized Joyce's biography and just sort of takes a creepy ownership over the book. This person makes us feel inferior for either not having read Ulysses at all or not understanding a lot of it. This person makes us suspect that anyone who says they like this book must be posturing in some way. Of course, it may be possible that, to certain people, on certain days, when discussing certain topics, we ourselves might come across as a variation of this person.

In any case, I certainly knew a Ulysses stan, and he was certainly a genius (now studies Comparative Literature at an Ivy League school), but he also was hard to talk to, and, whether he meant to be or not, condescending and kind of bullying. When I started Ulysses, I couldn't get him out of my head. (It doesn't help that the book's first three chapters focus on Delicate Genius Stephen, who would totally be a Ulysses stan if he wasn't a character in Ulysses.)

But as I continued reading the book, as I got to know Leopold Bloom in all his gross glory, as I consulted guides*, as I talked it through with friends of mine, that dude's voice was slowly drowned out by all the others. And Ulysses started to feel less like a Difficult Work--one we all need to tiptoe around as we discuss it in reverent, hushed tones--and more like a fun, messy celebration of life and love. Yes, Joyce is smart, and yes, he wants to show you how smart he is, but he also wants to offend you and make you laugh and move you.

(*I would definitely recommend a guide, unless you're the type of person who's cool with just swimming around in language and not really caring if it makes a lot of sense. For me, having a guide kept me from exerting all my mental energy while reading on figuring out what the hell was happening. I used Blamires' The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, but was surprisingly great, too, and would probably be fine as a stand-alone if you don't have access to or don't want to pay 30 bucks for the Blamires.)

The scene I keep returning to happens somewhere around the middle of the book. Bloom is in a bar surrounded by these short-sighted Irish nationalist bros who are all about violence and domination and patriotic fervor. Although Bloom has lived in Ireland all his life, the men don't consider him a True Irishman because of his Jewish heritage. When he's told Jewish folks ought to "stand up to [injustice] with force like men," he responds:

But it's no use... Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows it's the very opposite of that that is really life... Love... I mean the opposite of hatred.

He's of course ridiculed for his notion, but it's only because these men are incapable of considering love as anything but a simple, closed-off, preachy concept. Ulysses blows love wide open, considers it from a plurality of angles, shows us what it means to different people, finds it in the disgusting and the tedious and the comic and the tragic.

I can't help but feel like Ulysses stans have become so caught up in knowing everything there is to know about this text that they've inadvertently sucked the life out of it. Sure, part of the pleasure of reading Ulysses is noticing the allusions, connections between characters, what a certain thought refers to, etc. But to make the experience of reading it only about that is to ignore that it's also about presence, compassion, attention, and experience. It's to ignore that in the middle of this notoriously Difficult Work, an ordinary person stands up for himself by asserting with quiet, absolute sincerity the necessity of love.