#Ulysses book how to

The Blooms have a daughter named Milly (age 15) who is away, studying photography. While Joyce develops the character of the young student, most of the novel is focused on Bloom.īloom's wife Molly is a singer and she is having an affair with her co-worker, Blazes Boylan, and early in the morning of June 16, Bloom learns that Molly intends to bring Boylan into their bed later that afternoon. While Bloom is Joyce's 'Ulysses' character, the younger hero of the novel is Stephen Dedalus, the autobiographical character from Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I guess I felt that the time was right for a fresh voice to present the novel to a new generation of readers, and I wanted to package together for my readers lots of the scholarship that I’ve found really helpful to my own understanding of the book.Joyce's novel is set in Dublin on the day of Jand the protagonist, Leopold Bloom, is a middle-aged Jew whose job as an advertisement canvasser forces him to travel throughout the city on a daily basis. In this way, I hope for my readers to enjoy the story of the novel while also gaining an appreciation for the literary elements that make Ulysses such a masterpiece. In The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses, I sought to satisfy the reader’s desire for some clarity on what is actually happening in the plot in balance with succinct explanation of the innovative stylistic and allusive techniques. There are lots of great resources out there, and every reader will find the one that best fits the type of reading experience that they are pursuing. There are quite a few guides to Ulysses out there, did you feel they needed replacing? I never fail to discover something new every time I read a page in the text. Ulysses is emotionally moving, intellectually invigorating, and super funny. I’ve yet to encounter another work of art that so successfully and thoroughly represents the human condition in the modern era. Why have you dedicated yourself to this book? Is it really something special? Lots of readers will enjoy hearing the poetry of the language out loud, but those listening should check in with the physical text every so often to get their bearings and pick up some of the purely textual elements. In terms of using an audiobook, the RTE performance of the text is really fun, but there are many other fantastic renderings out there.

It is a bit larger than the Vintage 1961 edition, so you have larger font and more space in the margins for notes. I have keyed my guidebook to the Gabler edition, which seems to be the most widely used edition in scholarly writing. That is really up to what works best for each individual reader.Īny specific edition that we should be reading? Is the audiobook a good way into it (I ask this because one person I interviewed said that might be a solution)? Some readers might want to read the relevant Episode Guide in my book prior to reading the text itself others might want to read the novel cold and shore up their understanding by reading the explanations I offer in my book afterwards. So, perhaps you’ll want to carve out some time each week on Sunday afternoons or Wednesday evenings as your Ulysses time. If you try to read a page or two at a time, you’ll lose the thread and won’t get into the rhythm of the language or track the character development. In order to build momentum, I recommend reading at least one episode per week, and I think readers benefit from completing their reading of that episode within 24 hours of starting it.

#Ulysses book how to

We asked Patrick Hastings, author of The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses and a long-term teacher of Ulysses, for some tips about how to read Joyce’s modernist masterpiece.įor those of us who have tried to read James Joyce and failed-or haven’t yet tried but want to embark on our expedition well-prepared-can you explain how exactly to go about it? Foreign Policy & International Relations.