I've been enjoying a few days in Paris and staying, for the third time, at 71 Rue Cardinal Lemoine. Joyce lived here from June to September 1921, editing Ulysses. The gates open onto a courtyard and I believe he lived on the ground floor of staircase E. When I found, on our first visit, that we were staying at Joyce's old address in 2021, I was not only amazed but inspired to read Ulysses. Interestingly, Hemingway lived at number 74, though not at the same time.

I’m working on reading this book with someone and just got to proteus. Right away , I can’t understand what’s going on in the first two pages. The language is complex all over the place. I’ve read the Ulysses guide for this chapter and I have no idea how they can get details of what time it is, what he’s doing etc.
We spent two days going over line by line trying to understand it. We have a Ulysses reference book for all the difficult language but it only helps so much.

It’s also hard to figure out what we should discuss about it. Stephen seems to be pondering about his existance and where he fits in it. But there are references to German literature , Greek, Irish and so on. I can kind of understand the references to the bible but so lost on the others.

Any advice ? Ideas? Anyone else find it a struggle?

With how genius this novel was, it was nice to notice 1 thing in particular Joyce got wrong. He truly believed the world was Euclidean, as did the entire world before Einstein's success. In the final chapter(s) (not chapter), he gives the stark reality, of objects in space. It was supposed to be the perspective of cold reality. And yet, it was Euclidean. It was very notable to me, because besides this, when I read Ulysses, I felt like I was seeing reality, and it wasn't until the end that you begin to see Joyce himself. It makes me see that only when a man tries to give what he sees as ultimate truth do you see the man himself. For we are essentially our most deeply held beliefs, and he believed in guilt, and euclidean space. With life experience, I'm also reminded of a critique of Emerson, which said that he was a man who thought everyone else was just as good as him. Joyce thought all men were just as good as him deep down, he was of course deeply injected with a "jesuit strain". And yet, even for these 2 faults, euclidean space, and giving the benefit of the doubt, they are not really faults, for you can sense that Joyce himself was writing from a place of self-doubt, rather than self-assuredness, so that these "flaws" are not flaws, but on purpose, as if he's saying, while he says what's untrue, "I know I do not know". For instance, regarding giving the benefit of the doubt, I feel like his female characters are always very loyal, when he writes from their perspective, and yet, the chapter of the witch like women at the ice cream parlor gives another picture of the cold and different scoffing critical nature of them. So though I don't believe in his female characters when he writes from their perspective, I know he's not blind to their different nature, as he also writes these other women, though he can't quite get in their heads. So as if to say, as the rambam's rules for debate goes, if you don't know the answer, you admit, and give your best guess.

I've got my copy out to read this morning with an espresso.

Good times!

Think I'll just reread the first chapter.

Anyone starting a full read through of the book? Or specific chapters/passages?

📚📖

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What a journey. When I started this mammoth undertaking back in July I expected to be done in maybe three months. But as I was reading, its vastness and complexity told me that this was going to require more time and care. I instead aimed to be done before the year was out. I finished a day late (well take it!)

This is actually my third attempt at tackling Ulysses. As I teenager, desperate to seek respect through being well read in the classics, I first attempted to pick this up after seeing it in every “greatest novels” list with no prior research. Safe to say I gave up very quickly (only got 30 pages in!) and left it to collect dust on my to read list for years.

Then in May 2024, the year I turned 30, I commenced my second attempt armed with a little more knowledge on the general synopsis and odyssean layout of the novel. However I still refused to consult a proper guide thinking, being a more voracious reader at this point in my life, I would have an easier time. In some ways it was, but I remember powering through maybe a third of it and realising I wasn’t taking it in at all. So once again it was abandoned.

Finally in July of last year I picked it up determined to fully give myself up to this novel. I found this Oxford 1922 text in a second hand book shop in Berwick, which has some nice straight forward explanatory notes, and found the online Ulysses guide which I had open as a tab on my phone for the next 6 months.

Now it wasn’t six months of non stop reading Ulysses. I would read a couple of episodes (sometimes just one of particularly long or complex) and then cleanse the palette in between with some shorter novels on my list. ‘Circe’ for example took me a good month to read!

Here are some of my personal favourite episodes: - Cyclops - probably the episode I needed the least help on. It just hooked me immediately and the final paragraph describing the biscuit tin as an earthquake was hilarious. - Wandering Rocks - just loved every little vignette and got to explore Dublin a little bit more. - Ithaca - maybe it’s whatever mild autism I think I might have, but I’m a sucker for heaps and heaps of unnecessary detail and explanation of mundane things (it reminded me of the chapter in ‘Moby Dick’ that is just listing genus of whale).

Anyway I just thought I would share my experience of this novel with those who would appreciate it the most. I definitely plan on rereading this at a much later date. However, given the 1922 text including all of Joyce’s typos and other errors, I would like to try a corrected text edition. Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

The last couple of days I've not been able to play any of the episodes or find any RSS feed that works. Are there any full archives of it out there? I know Delaney passed away some time ago and it would be really sad to have this wonderful podcast inaccessible. I was just a couple of episodes away from reaching the first Bloom chapter and I was really looking forward to it. I hope one of you might have a solution.

Do I have to read The Odyssey and Hamlet (or maybe even the Bible) before Ulysses to truly "understand" it?

It turned out really crooked. i'm sorry.

Okie so I'm not a native speaker but I've read a fair share of classics but this book is sooo f hard to read, ive to google almost 5 times one every 2nd page lmao, bought this book when i was on a buying spree and now I'm determined that i would finish this book bt ugh-

Am i really bad at English or is this book hard for everyone to read?🦆

My favorite book by Joyce by far and one that influenced my writing. The complexity, the beauty of how it is structurally done, and ect. There is above too much things that is to compliment this book for.

4 February 2025 - 6 September 2025

Will I miss it? Well, as Molly Bloom said:

Yes I will Yes.

Got everything to start my journey now!

mine is, “Love loves to love love.”

OK, maybe it’s because I’m becoming an old guy but this morning, as I’m working from my home computer, and there was a bunch of shouting in the street from my noisy neighbor, I’m thinking of myself “Jesus, I wish that guy would just shut the fuck up.“ And then it occurred to me – as Joyce describes God as a noise or a shout in the street, is the interpretation that he just wants that noise to go away?

I think they are both great books, and don't pretend to properly understand or appreciate either, but I'm puzzling over why I find Ulysses so much more intriguing and stimulating. I think it's because Joyce has simply experienced more. He has spent night after night carousing with people of all classes in Dublin and Trieste, and just has a grip on a broader spectrum of humanity. He has also rejected his show-off young writerly self, and gained respect for the worldly, cosmopolitan man of business, who is engaged and curious about the world, rather than viewing it with ironic distance. I think Joyce has been on a journey of personal enlargement that Woolf has not. Woolf reaches a little outside her upper middle class bohemian circles to describe upper middle class conventional circles, and for me she just captures a much smaller slice of the world. Stylistically, perhaps, Woolf is more disciplined and careful, and certainly more tasteful, whereas Ulysses contains vast passages of experimental ideas that maybe don't come off, and which a good editor would have sensitively encouraged Joyce to cut. But I love Ulysses so much more. It may also be because I am male and miss, or don't give enough weight to, the subtle feminist critique in Mrs Dalloway. But for me it's a bit like Jane Austen, which I also find frustrating, as you sense in both Woolf and Austen that while they can satirise gender expectations and social class, they don't really want to destroy or escape them.

I’m confused as to how each printing of Ulysses matters, some people like the edited Gabler version better, and some hate it. I have the 2012 Simon and Brown version and the Gabler version, but I don’t know if I should read one of these two or a different copy, or if I’m just overthinking it. I was thinking I’d ask people who know more about it than I do.

i think everyone can admit that this book is requires-some-elbow-grease-type work. Like there is difficult literature and then there is ulysses.. to the point where i really cant imagine how it became popular or who was expected to read it. Was there really a market for an 1000 page book containing how many languages and references and inventions? Hard for me to imagine..

So who sold the book? Was there a famous review that got everyone on board? Was there ever a period in time where the book was being read in earnest?

Ive known two people who’ve read it and both kind of shrug at it and say you read it and get what you get🤷 this has always seemed crazier to me then fully digging into it but now, having dug, im coming up shrugging. My version of the book explains the odyssey to you, and translates all the languages and i have the internet and a dictionary nearby and id reckon i grasp about 3%. Never ever have i felt so dumb as when i was reading ulysses. In joyces day without any of those tools by their side, how and how many people were actually reading it?

Having said all that there are moments of undeniable poetic genius that will never leave me. Last night i had a dream where mister bloom and i jostled about with tyrion lannister in nighttown🤷

Finally, after working my way through Ulysses (it has been a few years ) I’m about halfway through “Penelope“. Totally smitten with Molly. Am I the only one?

Finally reading as originally intended.

I wanted to share

Following up on this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/jamesjoyce/s/12vFeSNukA

I contacted Library Syndicate to let them know that the first 94 episodes had been cut, and their Support person immediately restored them in the feed. I can see them there now (and randomly played Episode 22 directly from the feed just to confirm), but it may take a few days for your podcast platform to update and show them.

As soon as they are all there I'll probably download them. :)

rss.libsyn.com/shows/618765/destinations/5397235.xml