Cheat's Guide To Joyce's Ulysses

[user123]

Wednesday 16 June 2004 marks the 100th anniversary of "Bloomsday", the day celebrated by Irish author James Joyce in his controversial Dublin-set novel Ulysses.
The book has fascinated scholars and baffled readers for decades with its dense prose, obscure puns and allusions to the characters and events of Homer's epic Greek poem The Odyssey.

It has also outraged censors with its choice language and graphic descriptions of basic bodily functions.

However, for all its renown and notoriety, it is a book that few have read and even fewer comprehend.

To rectify this, BBC News Online presents an irreverent simple chapter-by-chapter guide to the key events, characters and Homeric parallels.

Source & chapter-by-chapter guide (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3810193.stm)

[chalice]

I just posted this five minutes ago.

http://filesharingtalk.com/index.php?showtopic=114612

[user123]

My apologies, i missed it ;)

Hopefully someone will delete this for me :D

[chalice]

Originally posted by user123@16 June 2004 - 13:36
My apologies, i missed it ;)

Hopefully someone will delete this for me :D
No probs. Maybe someone will read it if its posted twice. :D

Doubt it though. :rolleyes:

[uNz[i]]

Originally posted by chalice@16 June 2004 - 23:07

No probs. Maybe someone will read it if its posted twice.  :D

Doubt it though.  :rolleyes:
Well, I'm intrigued, so Ulysses is now next on my reading list. :P

If anyone else is curious, they can download Joyce's Ulysses (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4300) from Project Gutenberg.

[chalice]

Originally posted by uNz[i]+16 June 2004 - 15:01--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (uNz[i] @ 16 June 2004 - 15:01)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-chalice@16 June 2004 - 23:07

No probs. Maybe someone will read it if its posted twice. :D

Doubt it though. :rolleyes:
Well, I&#39;m intrigued, so Ulysses is now next on my reading list. :P

If anyone else is curious, they can download Joyce&#39;s Ulysses (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4300) from Project Gutenberg. [/b][/quote]
Nice one, uNz[i]&#33;&#33;

Our work is not in vain. :)

[Alex H]

There is a theory (a good one I believe) that nobody has ever actually finished Ulysses.

Ask anyone, "Have you read Ulysses?" and they say yes, ask them what it was about.

If they say "It&#39;s just a random string of crap", you know that they have at least made an attempt.

I&#39;ve made 6 attempts at it, and it is a bitch of a book.

Personally, I think Joyce just got drunk for a a few years and scribbled.

[MagicNakor]

I&#39;ve actually finished Ulysses. ;) But pieces of it lend to stronger stuff than alcohol.

:ninja:

[Alex H]

Originally posted by MagicNakor@17 June 2004 - 03:33
I&#39;ve actually finished Ulysses. ;) But pieces of it lend to stronger stuff than alcohol.

:ninja:
Ok, what was it about?

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[chalice]

Originally posted by Alex H@17 June 2004 - 00:52
There is a theory (a good one I believe) that nobody has ever actually finished Ulysses.

Ask anyone, "Have you read Ulysses?" and they say yes, ask them what it was about.

If they say "It&#39;s just a random string of crap", you know that they have at least made an attempt.

I&#39;ve made 6 attempts at it, and it is a bitch of a book.

Personally, I think Joyce just got drunk for a a few years and scribbled.
Ulysses is nowhere near as difficult as people make out. &#39;Random string of crap&#39; is uber-harsh. Are you sure you don&#39;t mean Finnegan&#39;s Wake? Now that is a difficult novel and more easily applied to your epithet.

Why must every novel meander obediently to serve the reader&#39;s idea of completeness? Ulysses was a work of experimental fiction which changed the novel forever.

You don&#39;t need to be clever or Irish (though it helps) or pretentious to get through it. Simply patient with a love of good prose.

It is hugely phonetic (and groundbreaking for it) and much more rewarding read aloud.

[MagicNakor]

Ah...Finnegan&#39;s Wake. That&#39;s a book that can be enjoyed only under certain conditions. For myself, it was 3 weeks of insomnia. ;)

However, both these novels can&#39;t be summed up in a sentence or two. They aren&#39;t like Old Yeller. I could try to give synopsis on both, but it would be a very pale shadow of the books themselves.

:ninja:

[Alex H]

Hey, don&#39;t get me wrong, I liked reading Ulysses. Once I had been reading it for a while it was easy to get lost in. I think there are very few authors around nowadays who are willing to write what they like and then let their readers figure out how to interpret it. It is way to easy for a writer to dumb down their book and push it to a wider audience, who also have media crying out for their attention that was not arount in Joyce&#39;s time.

I have not read Finnegan&#39;s Wake - It&#39;s still on my list...