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A review by story_404
Ulysses by James Joyce
5.0
One of the best novels I've read, this year, ever…
Everybody's always talking about how to finish [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1346161221s/338798.jpg|2368224] in the first place. I had no difficulties, but I took some precautions to finish this superbly written, extremely funny and intensely meaningful novel: before starting every chapter I read a 2 or 3 sentence summary so I had a firm grip on the (sometimes difficult) text. I can recommend this to every reader; it absolutely didn't reduce the reading experience. It didn't spoil at all (it's not a case of whodunnit or something like that). Beside the summaries I used this little site dedicated to [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1346161221s/338798.jpg|2368224]: LINK. The map with locations and characters added to the reading experience; especially as it brought back memories to my Dublin visit some years ago.
This really might help those who failed to finish [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1346161221s/338798.jpg|2368224] before. Still, even than, there's a group of people that won't finish it, or will fully appreciate it. That's not the group of people who are not smart enough (a popular unjust opinion), it's instead a group of people who think they know it all and are smarter than the novel, itself. They're not. I firmly believe that one of the basic creeds of the novel is instead: you don't know nothing, but you live everything. So: turn down the conception of A truth. It's exactly for this reason that the novel is anti-racist, anti-nationalistic etc.
In the brilliant Chapter 17 there are many indications of a mobile, ever changing, state of life, so to speak. "That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators had entered actual present existence."
In a way, Bloom's one-day-journey, although obviously 'done before' ([b:The Odyssey|1381|The Odyssey|Homer|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1349112871s/1381.jpg|3356006]) is just another life story in a long row of journeys (of heroes); just told differently (read the tough but impressive Chapter 14); it's about you and me of course. But remember: " No-one is anything." (Chapter 8).
It's incredible that an obviously very much constructed piece of art, which [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1346161221s/338798.jpg|2368224] is, reads like the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps because it's life itself.
4.6 / 5
Everybody's always talking about how to finish [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1346161221s/338798.jpg|2368224] in the first place. I had no difficulties, but I took some precautions to finish this superbly written, extremely funny and intensely meaningful novel: before starting every chapter I read a 2 or 3 sentence summary so I had a firm grip on the (sometimes difficult) text. I can recommend this to every reader; it absolutely didn't reduce the reading experience. It didn't spoil at all (it's not a case of whodunnit or something like that). Beside the summaries I used this little site dedicated to [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1346161221s/338798.jpg|2368224]: LINK. The map with locations and characters added to the reading experience; especially as it brought back memories to my Dublin visit some years ago.
This really might help those who failed to finish [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1346161221s/338798.jpg|2368224] before. Still, even than, there's a group of people that won't finish it, or will fully appreciate it. That's not the group of people who are not smart enough (a popular unjust opinion), it's instead a group of people who think they know it all and are smarter than the novel, itself. They're not. I firmly believe that one of the basic creeds of the novel is instead: you don't know nothing, but you live everything. So: turn down the conception of A truth. It's exactly for this reason that the novel is anti-racist, anti-nationalistic etc.
In the brilliant Chapter 17 there are many indications of a mobile, ever changing, state of life, so to speak. "That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators had entered actual present existence."
In a way, Bloom's one-day-journey, although obviously 'done before' ([b:The Odyssey|1381|The Odyssey|Homer|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1349112871s/1381.jpg|3356006]) is just another life story in a long row of journeys (of heroes); just told differently (read the tough but impressive Chapter 14); it's about you and me of course. But remember: " No-one is anything." (Chapter 8).
It's incredible that an obviously very much constructed piece of art, which [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1346161221s/338798.jpg|2368224] is, reads like the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps because it's life itself.
4.6 / 5