Ulysses has been on my reading list since I finished reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, especially because I found Portrait to be a vitally refreshing read. I finally found time for this book which has been endorsed as "the most prominent landmark in modernist literature" and now I know why it's considered such a challenge and why it can leave a lasting impact on people's lives. Well, if you were trying to make sense out of a seemingly nonsensical and endless array of diverse knowledge systems, it would definitely have an impact, at least on the heretofore untarnished state of your mental health if not your life. It's been 15 days since I started reading this book and I'm still miles away from finishing it. I've now begun to wonder if Ulysses is going to join Emma as the second book in the list of books I've deserted reading midway.
It is not the technique that I have difficulty grappling with, it's the infinite layers of references that each sentence, each phrase seems to be extravagantly encrusted with. Irish history, world history, Shakespeare, Greek mythology, Irish mythology, you name it, Joyce has referenced it. There is a limit to how many terms and names one wikis while still on the same goddamn page. Gah!
While it's understandable how this book is considered revolutionary in its style and approach to writing, but sometimes it looks like Joyce is trying too hard. You almost want to shout at him, "Yes, Joyce, we have figured out you are a genius. Can you please stop showing off like a strutting peacock, now?" There are pages that are full of only names. That's it, just names! And I kid you not, in each of these pages I've always forgotten what the list of names is signifying in the book, even though I was fully conscious of the significance before I started reading the names. I mean, why in the name of all things worth reading, would anyone want to go through two full pages that consist of just names.
Apart from the copious amount of background knowledge, I would remember Ulysses as that book that I read on a train journey, while high and "dopey". I had waited for a full hour (which felt like at least six hours because of...erm..you know..) for my train to arrive, battling 40+ degree Celsius temperature and an annoying stranger who would keep standing uncomfortably close to me even though I was continuously moving around in my silent vigil for the train. Needless to say I was veritably peeved by the time I settled into my seat. And then this family with a three year old kid settles around me. Not a very auspicious start to my journey (I hate kids, absolutely and thoroughly). It hadn't been a quarter of an hour from the commencement of my journey when this kid, like every single one of his infernal species, started up a raucous racket. All because he wanted some ice-cream and wanted it right then, on a friggin' moving train. Kids, sigh... Neither his mother's pampering nor his father's glaring could pacify the pest. Well, I had a weapon of my own. I released a volley of verbal reproaches, to the astonishment of the indignant parents. But hey, the kid didn't make a sound for a few hours after that; offended parents is an insignificant price to be paid for that kind of bliss. And right after such an adventurous start to my journey, I began tackling Ulysses. Aaaand I stumble across this passage, "..the father who has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same token, never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection." I was nonplussed for a moment before I broke into giggles of inconsolable mirth, again to the wide-eyed astonishment of the family around me. And this continued for the entire span of my journey, by which time the unfortunate family was convinced that I had a serious mental problem.
Honestly, the book does have its merits. There were times when it amused me and wowed me even though I was completely sober. But for that to happen, I need to get the effing references, and that was a rare phenomenon. And in my opinion, if you bore someone with an interminable monologue on some obscure Irish custom and slip a joke in between, the joke is bound to precipitate more hilarity than it deserves. Sheer genius, Mr. Joyce!
Ulysses is not the first classic that I've read. I love classics, I adore classics but in assessing Ulysses I will side with Virginia Wolf's judgement that "Ulysses was a memorable catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster." Because when I want to read a book, I would rather read a book, not an encyclopaedia. If that makes me a literary n00b, then so be it. If that makes me one of T.S. Eliot's "uneducated and undisciplined coxcombs", then so be it; and James Joyce can go fuck himself.
It is not the technique that I have difficulty grappling with, it's the infinite layers of references that each sentence, each phrase seems to be extravagantly encrusted with. Irish history, world history, Shakespeare, Greek mythology, Irish mythology, you name it, Joyce has referenced it. There is a limit to how many terms and names one wikis while still on the same goddamn page. Gah!While it's understandable how this book is considered revolutionary in its style and approach to writing, but sometimes it looks like Joyce is trying too hard. You almost want to shout at him, "Yes, Joyce, we have figured out you are a genius. Can you please stop showing off like a strutting peacock, now?" There are pages that are full of only names. That's it, just names! And I kid you not, in each of these pages I've always forgotten what the list of names is signifying in the book, even though I was fully conscious of the significance before I started reading the names. I mean, why in the name of all things worth reading, would anyone want to go through two full pages that consist of just names.
Apart from the copious amount of background knowledge, I would remember Ulysses as that book that I read on a train journey, while high and "dopey". I had waited for a full hour (which felt like at least six hours because of...erm..you know..) for my train to arrive, battling 40+ degree Celsius temperature and an annoying stranger who would keep standing uncomfortably close to me even though I was continuously moving around in my silent vigil for the train. Needless to say I was veritably peeved by the time I settled into my seat. And then this family with a three year old kid settles around me. Not a very auspicious start to my journey (I hate kids, absolutely and thoroughly). It hadn't been a quarter of an hour from the commencement of my journey when this kid, like every single one of his infernal species, started up a raucous racket. All because he wanted some ice-cream and wanted it right then, on a friggin' moving train. Kids, sigh... Neither his mother's pampering nor his father's glaring could pacify the pest. Well, I had a weapon of my own. I released a volley of verbal reproaches, to the astonishment of the indignant parents. But hey, the kid didn't make a sound for a few hours after that; offended parents is an insignificant price to be paid for that kind of bliss. And right after such an adventurous start to my journey, I began tackling Ulysses. Aaaand I stumble across this passage, "..the father who has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same token, never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection." I was nonplussed for a moment before I broke into giggles of inconsolable mirth, again to the wide-eyed astonishment of the family around me. And this continued for the entire span of my journey, by which time the unfortunate family was convinced that I had a serious mental problem.
Honestly, the book does have its merits. There were times when it amused me and wowed me even though I was completely sober. But for that to happen, I need to get the effing references, and that was a rare phenomenon. And in my opinion, if you bore someone with an interminable monologue on some obscure Irish custom and slip a joke in between, the joke is bound to precipitate more hilarity than it deserves. Sheer genius, Mr. Joyce!
Ulysses is not the first classic that I've read. I love classics, I adore classics but in assessing Ulysses I will side with Virginia Wolf's judgement that "Ulysses was a memorable catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster." Because when I want to read a book, I would rather read a book, not an encyclopaedia. If that makes me a literary n00b, then so be it. If that makes me one of T.S. Eliot's "uneducated and undisciplined coxcombs", then so be it; and James Joyce can go fuck himself.
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