In August 1924, the long-suffering Stanislaus Joyce sent a letter of complaint to his brother, James, in which he mentioned his difficulties with Ulysses. “The greater part of it I like,” he wrote, before adding with characteristic bluntness: “I have no humour with episodes which are deliberately farcical… and as episodes grow longer and longer and you try to tell every damn thing you know about anybody that appears or anything that crops up, my patience oozes out.”
from here
I have been meaning to read Ulysses for quite some time now, so much so that the book has been lying on my bookself for the past year and half, but to be true the only thing that brings my enthusiasm down is that Joyce talks about anything to everything there, and often laced with puns, allusions and hidden meanings, so the fear being that I may not be able to understand and appreciate everything.
Well, let’s see, may be this summer.
Well, if I can do anything to help encourage somebody reading ULYSSES, I’m all in. We’ve been building a comicbook adaptation and interface for the novel that’s going to go live this week;
http://www.ulyssesseen.com/
Bloomsday, the yearly celebration of the novel, is coming up on June 16th, and for a week in advance we’ll be twittering a kind of readers’ guide that helps by breaking down the events and themes, with useful links, a couple of chapters each day. If you’re on twitter you can find us at UlyssesSeen.
It’s a really hard first time read, believe me, but really, really rewarding. Hardest novel you’ll ever read the first time and still want to enjoy over and over again.
-Rob