What do you think?
Rate this book
Ulysses
Often described as the twentieth century’s greatest novel, Ulysses, first published in 1922 and modelled on Homer’s Odyssey, is an account of one day in the life of Dublin, focusing on the humble Leopold Bloom and his sensuous wife, Molly. An earthy story, a virtuoso technical display and a literary revolution all rolled into one, Ulysses is one of the few books everyone has to read.
1084 pages, Hardcover
First published February 2, 1922
33 people are currently reading
193 people want to read
About the author
James Joyce
1,697 books9,440 followersJames Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his pioneering mastery and popularization of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the Rathgar suburb of Dublin in 1882, Joyce spent the majority of his adult life in self-imposed exile across continental Europe—living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris—yet his entire, meticulous body of work remained obsessively and comprehensively focused on the minutiae of his native city, making Dublin both the meticulously detailed setting and a central, inescapable character in his literary universe. His work is consistently characterized by its technical complexity, rich literary allusion, intricate symbolism, and an unflinching examination of the spectrum of human consciousness. Joyce began his published career with Dubliners (1914), a collection of fifteen short stories offering a naturalistic, often stark, depiction of middle-class Irish life and the moral and spiritual paralysis he observed in its inhabitants, concluding each story with a moment of crucial, sudden self-understanding he termed an "epiphany." This collection was followed by the highly autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a Bildungsroman that meticulously chronicled the intellectual and artistic awakening of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, who would become Joyce's recurring alter ego and intellectual stand-in throughout his major works.
His magnum opus, Ulysses (1922), is universally regarded as a landmark work of fiction that fundamentally revolutionized the novel form. It compressed the events of a single, ordinary day—June 16, 1904, a date now globally celebrated by literary enthusiasts as "Bloomsday"—into a sprawling, epic narrative that structurally and symbolically paralleled Homer's Odyssey, using a dazzling array of distinct styles and linguistic invention across its eighteen episodes to explore the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus in hyper-minute detail. The novel's explicit content and innovative, challenging structure led to its initial banning for obscenity in the United States and the United Kingdom, turning Joyce into a cause célèbre for artistic freedom and the boundaries of literary expression. His final, most challenging work, Finnegans Wake (1939), pushed the boundaries of language and conventional narrative even further, employing a dense, dream-like prose filled with multilingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and layered allusions that continues to divide and challenge readers and scholars to this day. A dedicated polyglot who reportedly learned several languages, including Norwegian simply to read Ibsen in the original, Joyce approached the English language not as a fixed entity with rigid rules, but as a malleable medium capable of infinite reinvention and expression. His personal life was marked by an unwavering dedication to his literary craft, a complex, devoted relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, and chronic, debilitating eye problems that necessitated numerous painful surgeries throughout his life, sometimes forcing him to write with crayons on large white paper. Despite these severe physical ailments and financial struggles, his singular literary vision remained sharp, focused, and profoundly revolutionary. Joyce passed away in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1941, shortly after undergoing one of his many eye operations. Today, he is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and challenging writer of the 20th century. His immense, complex legacy is robustly maintained by global academic study and institutions such as the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which ensures his complex, demanding, and utterly brilliant work endures, inviting new generations of readers to explore the very essence of what it means to be hum
His magnum opus, Ulysses (1922), is universally regarded as a landmark work of fiction that fundamentally revolutionized the novel form. It compressed the events of a single, ordinary day—June 16, 1904, a date now globally celebrated by literary enthusiasts as "Bloomsday"—into a sprawling, epic narrative that structurally and symbolically paralleled Homer's Odyssey, using a dazzling array of distinct styles and linguistic invention across its eighteen episodes to explore the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus in hyper-minute detail. The novel's explicit content and innovative, challenging structure led to its initial banning for obscenity in the United States and the United Kingdom, turning Joyce into a cause célèbre for artistic freedom and the boundaries of literary expression. His final, most challenging work, Finnegans Wake (1939), pushed the boundaries of language and conventional narrative even further, employing a dense, dream-like prose filled with multilingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and layered allusions that continues to divide and challenge readers and scholars to this day. A dedicated polyglot who reportedly learned several languages, including Norwegian simply to read Ibsen in the original, Joyce approached the English language not as a fixed entity with rigid rules, but as a malleable medium capable of infinite reinvention and expression. His personal life was marked by an unwavering dedication to his literary craft, a complex, devoted relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, and chronic, debilitating eye problems that necessitated numerous painful surgeries throughout his life, sometimes forcing him to write with crayons on large white paper. Despite these severe physical ailments and financial struggles, his singular literary vision remained sharp, focused, and profoundly revolutionary. Joyce passed away in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1941, shortly after undergoing one of his many eye operations. Today, he is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and challenging writer of the 20th century. His immense, complex legacy is robustly maintained by global academic study and institutions such as the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which ensures his complex, demanding, and utterly brilliant work endures, inviting new generations of readers to explore the very essence of what it means to be hum
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
June 17, 2023
Who is this about?
Poldy the horny goof and Stevie the pisshead and Molly the WAP and the chap in the brown Macintosh and Throwaway and Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell and Rose of Castille and Hamlet the Dane and Everyman and Noman and Outis and Metis and Ulysses and Odysseus and the Wandering Jew and Madam Psychosis and met him pike hoses and Sinbad the Sailor and Sinbed the Sickbed and Sinbid the Tinlid and Sinbod the Greensod and Sinbud the Thinbud.
What is this about?
A shaving and remembrances of a dead mother, a history class, a blank period of time including a walk along the shore and a dead dog, an offal breakfast, a duodenal stuffing and purposeful faeces discharge newspaper in hand with trumpet accompaniment, a bath and the contemplation of the “limp father of thousands”, an advertisement, a burial, a quick stinky snack, a visit to a museum, a book hunt, some music, an acrimonious exchange with a feisty proto-alt-right antisemitic yobo, another blank period of time including a car drive, a wanking firework elicited by a lame young exhibitionist, the prolonged delivery of the English language, a set of miscellaneous genderfluid and scrotumtightening met him more foes’s, a nocturnal stroll, a “heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit”, the meeting of the wife in bed after she has been well ploughed by her lover’s “tremendous red brute of a thing”, a kiss from the husband to “the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump”, and a yes.
Where does it take place?
The Martello Tower, Sandycove, 7 Eccles St, the National Library of Ireland, Bedford Row, Merchants’ Arch, Wellington Quay, the Ormond Hotel, the disorderly house of Mrs Bella Cohen, 82 Tyrone St, Beaver St, a Cabman shelter, Butt Bridge, Dublin, Dubh Linn, Dyfflin, Polyphemus’s pub, Ithaca, Gibraltar.
When does it take place?
Over 24 hours, on the 16th June 1904, the same day James Joyce fell in love with Nora Barnacle.
What’s the writing style?
No style at all and all styles at once. As per the Gilbert schema: narrative (young), catechism (personal), monologue (male), narrative (mature), narcissism, incubism, enthymemic, peristaltic, dialectic, labyrinth, fuga per canonem, gigantism, tumescence / detumescence, embryonic development, hallucination, narrative (old), catechism (impersonal), monologue (female). Added to this, some legalese, medicalese, journalese and various pastiches of Roman incantations, Latin prose, Anglo-Saxon alliterative prose, Middle English, Medieval travel stories, Arthurian legend, Elizabethan chronicles, Miltonian prose, John Bunyan’s allegorical prose, Samuel Pepys’s diary, Daniel Defoe’s journalism, Jonathan Swift’s satires, Laurence Sterne’s novels, Oliver Goldsmith’s poetry, Edmund Burke’s reflections, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s plays, Edward Gibbon’s histories, Horace Walpole gothic tales, Charles Lamb’s tales, Thomas de Quincey’s confessions, Thomas Henry Huxley’s scientific disquisitions, Charles Dickens’s novels, Walter Pater’s essays, John Ruskin’s critiques, Thomas Carlyle’s satires, various dialects and barroom slang and Rabelaisian scatology and retrospective arrangements and intrusions and self-parody.
Should I read this?
U.P.: UP to you and sonnez la cloche and Heigho Heigho and Cuckoo Cuckoo and pprrpffrrppfff.
Are there further readings?
No. Reread the damn thing or riverrun.
Is there a bonus track?
Yes. https://youtu.be/rtDy0xQKhBs
Poldy the horny goof and Stevie the pisshead and Molly the WAP and the chap in the brown Macintosh and Throwaway and Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell and Rose of Castille and Hamlet the Dane and Everyman and Noman and Outis and Metis and Ulysses and Odysseus and the Wandering Jew and Madam Psychosis and met him pike hoses and Sinbad the Sailor and Sinbed the Sickbed and Sinbid the Tinlid and Sinbod the Greensod and Sinbud the Thinbud.
What is this about?
A shaving and remembrances of a dead mother, a history class, a blank period of time including a walk along the shore and a dead dog, an offal breakfast, a duodenal stuffing and purposeful faeces discharge newspaper in hand with trumpet accompaniment, a bath and the contemplation of the “limp father of thousands”, an advertisement, a burial, a quick stinky snack, a visit to a museum, a book hunt, some music, an acrimonious exchange with a feisty proto-alt-right antisemitic yobo, another blank period of time including a car drive, a wanking firework elicited by a lame young exhibitionist, the prolonged delivery of the English language, a set of miscellaneous genderfluid and scrotumtightening met him more foes’s, a nocturnal stroll, a “heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit”, the meeting of the wife in bed after she has been well ploughed by her lover’s “tremendous red brute of a thing”, a kiss from the husband to “the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump”, and a yes.
Where does it take place?
The Martello Tower, Sandycove, 7 Eccles St, the National Library of Ireland, Bedford Row, Merchants’ Arch, Wellington Quay, the Ormond Hotel, the disorderly house of Mrs Bella Cohen, 82 Tyrone St, Beaver St, a Cabman shelter, Butt Bridge, Dublin, Dubh Linn, Dyfflin, Polyphemus’s pub, Ithaca, Gibraltar.
When does it take place?
Over 24 hours, on the 16th June 1904, the same day James Joyce fell in love with Nora Barnacle.
What’s the writing style?
No style at all and all styles at once. As per the Gilbert schema: narrative (young), catechism (personal), monologue (male), narrative (mature), narcissism, incubism, enthymemic, peristaltic, dialectic, labyrinth, fuga per canonem, gigantism, tumescence / detumescence, embryonic development, hallucination, narrative (old), catechism (impersonal), monologue (female). Added to this, some legalese, medicalese, journalese and various pastiches of Roman incantations, Latin prose, Anglo-Saxon alliterative prose, Middle English, Medieval travel stories, Arthurian legend, Elizabethan chronicles, Miltonian prose, John Bunyan’s allegorical prose, Samuel Pepys’s diary, Daniel Defoe’s journalism, Jonathan Swift’s satires, Laurence Sterne’s novels, Oliver Goldsmith’s poetry, Edmund Burke’s reflections, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s plays, Edward Gibbon’s histories, Horace Walpole gothic tales, Charles Lamb’s tales, Thomas de Quincey’s confessions, Thomas Henry Huxley’s scientific disquisitions, Charles Dickens’s novels, Walter Pater’s essays, John Ruskin’s critiques, Thomas Carlyle’s satires, various dialects and barroom slang and Rabelaisian scatology and retrospective arrangements and intrusions and self-parody.
Should I read this?
U.P.: UP to you and sonnez la cloche and Heigho Heigho and Cuckoo Cuckoo and pprrpffrrppfff.
Are there further readings?
No. Reread the damn thing or riverrun.
Is there a bonus track?
Yes. https://youtu.be/rtDy0xQKhBs
June 16, 2021
After several laps, I’m done with it for now, which is to say, not exactly finished, but ready for Finnegans Wake.
What is the point of it all? Perhaps the point of Ulysses might be that understanding in general is shaped by the lives we lead, by the books we read, and by the actions we take. In fact, misunderstandings are likely to such an extent that getting complex ideas across to another mind seems to be a statistical miracle. – How do we perceive our own thoughts and streams of consciousness? – Who is telling whom the story? Sometimes it’s Leopold, Stephen, Molly, but occasionally it’s an omniscient narrator or God-knows-who. By the time Bloom and Dedalus sit at Bloom’s kitchen table at night, the book asks questions and gives technically true answers; it feels like the reader is given all the information he needs to form the narration himself in his own mind along the way.
Joyce and Beckett are often accused of nihilism. The esteemed Nobel committee, an institution of high ideals and low consistency, was split in half by this question. However, I cannot find a trace of it anywhere in Ulysses. What I found was a celebration of life despite the damage we give and take. Even bits of happiness in simple things paint the shadowy corners of their minds in bright colours. Joyce’s humour – at times scholarly, at times churlish – leads the way through labyrinth-like chapters which portray existence through a rather regular day. – Ulysses relishes being.
My personal reading experience spans over decades, but that story belongs somewhere else. Long story short: My reading speed increased exponentially. Literally, years were needed for the first pages; months were spent somewhere in the middle; but over time, chapters were read in weeks, consumed in days, binged within hours, and finally, Molly’s soliloquy took only minutes of hysterical laughter.
A feast of a book! Absolutely invigorating.
What is the point of it all? Perhaps the point of Ulysses might be that understanding in general is shaped by the lives we lead, by the books we read, and by the actions we take. In fact, misunderstandings are likely to such an extent that getting complex ideas across to another mind seems to be a statistical miracle. – How do we perceive our own thoughts and streams of consciousness? – Who is telling whom the story? Sometimes it’s Leopold, Stephen, Molly, but occasionally it’s an omniscient narrator or God-knows-who. By the time Bloom and Dedalus sit at Bloom’s kitchen table at night, the book asks questions and gives technically true answers; it feels like the reader is given all the information he needs to form the narration himself in his own mind along the way.
Joyce and Beckett are often accused of nihilism. The esteemed Nobel committee, an institution of high ideals and low consistency, was split in half by this question. However, I cannot find a trace of it anywhere in Ulysses. What I found was a celebration of life despite the damage we give and take. Even bits of happiness in simple things paint the shadowy corners of their minds in bright colours. Joyce’s humour – at times scholarly, at times churlish – leads the way through labyrinth-like chapters which portray existence through a rather regular day. – Ulysses relishes being.
My personal reading experience spans over decades, but that story belongs somewhere else. Long story short: My reading speed increased exponentially. Literally, years were needed for the first pages; months were spent somewhere in the middle; but over time, chapters were read in weeks, consumed in days, binged within hours, and finally, Molly’s soliloquy took only minutes of hysterical laughter.
A feast of a book! Absolutely invigorating.
September 4, 2024
Niet gedacht dat ik dit ooit effectief zou lezen. En goed zou vinden?
Read
June 11, 2024I have no idea how to review this book
May 2, 2015
Reading Ulysses is a life experience, an odyssey if you like.
This is the description of any heroic tale stripped bare from any misguiding suggestion of glory. In Ulysses, life is not glorious, it's trivial. Should there be such a thing at all as heroism, look for it in the muddy context of ordinarity. A heroic deed is surrounded by and emerges from everyday life.
Like Nietzsche dismantled the existence of a living God, and encourages us to confront the seeming horror of His death in order to set ourselves free, Joyce with Ulysses is filleting our delusional hope for The Exceptional. Whether struggling with the wrath of Olympians, searching for a Holy Grail or just out on the town for the length of a day, we all think our silly, disturbing, unrelated thoughts. We can be generous, compassionate, involved and loving. And we know violence, prejudice, narcissism, altruism and a whole range of petty egotistical and shortminded sensations from within; we all need to relieve ourselves in more than one way and we all just go on with whatever it is we were doing once we were finished. Joyce is the first to wonder why all the trivialities were left out from the stories of old. How can anyone ever really relate to a hero lacking the most primal human idiosyncracies, let alone live up to his standards?
I noticed that a lot of people who've read it encourage us to read Ulysses as a sort of literary comedy. I disagree with that. Yes, it can be quirky, it has wit, irony and sarcasm, funny, creative wordplay and it is not hard to find something to smile about on every page if that's what you're looking for (just looking at yourself struggling to make sense of it all should crack you up), but in it's core it is a profound book about compassion and love for mankind. With all its flaws. If that's too raw for you, if you are not prepared to let go of the Heroic Dream that our tradition has carefully been constructing ever since the tale of Gilgamesh up to his modern day equivalents, the idols of popular culture, than Ulysses can't be anything but obscene.
With that regard I noticed a straight line from James Joyce to contemporary story tellers like Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino, whose (anti-)heroes are perpetually encountering the trivialities of life, be it the constant neurotic babble and a (poorly masked) libido with Allen or the insignificance' of Tarantino's tough guys' fascinations as well as the world they live in.
Can't say I loved reading this book at all times. I've cursed it too. But I did love living in it. Sometimes it was torture, and I felt so lost. I combined reading a dutch and an english copy and kept the internet at hand, which made this into something of a study really. I had to take heed not to get lost in the labyrinth of annotations and hold course. But I also wanted to make sure not to miss out on too much of the subtext. Navigating between Scylla and Charibdis. Exploring footnotes and episode reviews enhanced my experience and helped me to catch my breath when necessary. Reading Ulysses is really like being out on your own, caught in a literary variation of Odysseus travels. Like your fellow exile, you will find yourself seriously considering to give in or give up, telling yourself you're probably too stupid to pull this off or coming up with a thousand better reasons to spend your precious time. These are the temptations you're dealing with on this quest you've embarked on: sirens calling you from every corner to keep you from finding your way home and bringing in your ship. But when in doubt, always remember, if a two-dimensional hero can do it, why not you? And lo, there is joy, waiting at the close!
To Leopold Bloom, to Molly and Stephen and to early 20th century Dublin: I'll be missing you terribly.
This is the description of any heroic tale stripped bare from any misguiding suggestion of glory. In Ulysses, life is not glorious, it's trivial. Should there be such a thing at all as heroism, look for it in the muddy context of ordinarity. A heroic deed is surrounded by and emerges from everyday life.
Like Nietzsche dismantled the existence of a living God, and encourages us to confront the seeming horror of His death in order to set ourselves free, Joyce with Ulysses is filleting our delusional hope for The Exceptional. Whether struggling with the wrath of Olympians, searching for a Holy Grail or just out on the town for the length of a day, we all think our silly, disturbing, unrelated thoughts. We can be generous, compassionate, involved and loving. And we know violence, prejudice, narcissism, altruism and a whole range of petty egotistical and shortminded sensations from within; we all need to relieve ourselves in more than one way and we all just go on with whatever it is we were doing once we were finished. Joyce is the first to wonder why all the trivialities were left out from the stories of old. How can anyone ever really relate to a hero lacking the most primal human idiosyncracies, let alone live up to his standards?
I noticed that a lot of people who've read it encourage us to read Ulysses as a sort of literary comedy. I disagree with that. Yes, it can be quirky, it has wit, irony and sarcasm, funny, creative wordplay and it is not hard to find something to smile about on every page if that's what you're looking for (just looking at yourself struggling to make sense of it all should crack you up), but in it's core it is a profound book about compassion and love for mankind. With all its flaws. If that's too raw for you, if you are not prepared to let go of the Heroic Dream that our tradition has carefully been constructing ever since the tale of Gilgamesh up to his modern day equivalents, the idols of popular culture, than Ulysses can't be anything but obscene.
With that regard I noticed a straight line from James Joyce to contemporary story tellers like Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino, whose (anti-)heroes are perpetually encountering the trivialities of life, be it the constant neurotic babble and a (poorly masked) libido with Allen or the insignificance' of Tarantino's tough guys' fascinations as well as the world they live in.
Can't say I loved reading this book at all times. I've cursed it too. But I did love living in it. Sometimes it was torture, and I felt so lost. I combined reading a dutch and an english copy and kept the internet at hand, which made this into something of a study really. I had to take heed not to get lost in the labyrinth of annotations and hold course. But I also wanted to make sure not to miss out on too much of the subtext. Navigating between Scylla and Charibdis. Exploring footnotes and episode reviews enhanced my experience and helped me to catch my breath when necessary. Reading Ulysses is really like being out on your own, caught in a literary variation of Odysseus travels. Like your fellow exile, you will find yourself seriously considering to give in or give up, telling yourself you're probably too stupid to pull this off or coming up with a thousand better reasons to spend your precious time. These are the temptations you're dealing with on this quest you've embarked on: sirens calling you from every corner to keep you from finding your way home and bringing in your ship. But when in doubt, always remember, if a two-dimensional hero can do it, why not you? And lo, there is joy, waiting at the close!
To Leopold Bloom, to Molly and Stephen and to early 20th century Dublin: I'll be missing you terribly.
Read
January 28, 2023The epiphany of snobbish intellectualism both in terms of content and hype.
Knowing it will be an unlikely read on my part (despite owning a physical copy) I listened to an audio version, out of curiosity, to see why this is the Holy Grail of books aficionados. And have to say Audible did a fantastic job with the chosen actors.
Still, much of the book’s content exited one ear as quickly as it had entered the other. Leaving zero marks on either mind or heart.
Yet there were parts that did make an impression. Interesting enough, exactly those narrated from female perspectives: the Gerty episode as well as Molly’s final monologue. I think Joyce absolutely nails them and I have to say I was really impressed. Yes, while men get lost in useless debates over Shakespeare’s works and life, women do think of practical things and gossips etc. It would seem Joyce does fall in the misogynistic mindsets of the period. But while I did feel irony and sarcasm towards his male characters, there’s a certain kindness towards his female protagonists, Gerty in particular. And I was also impressed by the insights regarding female pleasure and sexuality he shares through Molly.
I was also surprised by the fact that the episodes I enjoyed the most were also the ones coresponding to chapters I remembered best from Odyssey.
I know there is a lot I missed from the book. And I can’t think of a rating fitted for my experience with it.
But I do now know the book is worthy of its place in literature.
Knowing it will be an unlikely read on my part (despite owning a physical copy) I listened to an audio version, out of curiosity, to see why this is the Holy Grail of books aficionados. And have to say Audible did a fantastic job with the chosen actors.
Still, much of the book’s content exited one ear as quickly as it had entered the other. Leaving zero marks on either mind or heart.
Yet there were parts that did make an impression. Interesting enough, exactly those narrated from female perspectives: the Gerty episode as well as Molly’s final monologue. I think Joyce absolutely nails them and I have to say I was really impressed. Yes, while men get lost in useless debates over Shakespeare’s works and life, women do think of practical things and gossips etc. It would seem Joyce does fall in the misogynistic mindsets of the period. But while I did feel irony and sarcasm towards his male characters, there’s a certain kindness towards his female protagonists, Gerty in particular. And I was also impressed by the insights regarding female pleasure and sexuality he shares through Molly.
I was also surprised by the fact that the episodes I enjoyed the most were also the ones coresponding to chapters I remembered best from Odyssey.
I know there is a lot I missed from the book. And I can’t think of a rating fitted for my experience with it.
But I do now know the book is worthy of its place in literature.
November 26, 2025
James Joyce’s Ulysses: The High Mass of Modern Literature
Kindly remove your hats — and if you’d be so good, your insolence along with them — take a seat, and show the requisite deference, for today is no ordinary day. Today, we turn our attention to one of the grandest literary edifices of the modern age, even if we define said age as beginning the moment Alexandrian grammarians began fussing over breathing marks and accents.
Now that I’ve either secured your attention or sufficiently offended your sensibilities — both acceptable outcomes — let us plunge headlong into the deep end. Let us admit, without prevarication, that Joyce’s Ulysses is not a mere “book” (and I’m not speaking solely of its considerable bulk); it is not, heaven forbid, some chirpy page-turner (a term I have, quite staggeringly, seen applied to it in a “review”) that concludes with a murderous butler or redemptive bromide for sins not worth confessing. No, this is a rite, a mystery, an initiation — and, dare I say, demanding labour. It is not to be read at bedtime, two pages today and five tomorrow. It is to be read with sleeves rolled, with a ban on any individual in heels perambulating noisily about the house, with a carafe of coffee of such potency it would cause a Neanderthal to squint — and an ashtray of a size sufficient to cradle the bones of both Patroclus and Achilles.
How, indeed, to describe a work that is not merely read, but experienced? That eschews narrative in favour of realising an entirely new mode of consciousness, of language, of life itself? Ulysses is not merely a novel; it is a literary megalith, an Odyssean ramble across the psychic map of the human condition, an eighteen-part symphony wherein each note reveals a fresh aesthetic and philosophical unveiling.
Form: The Architecture of Chaos
Ulysses simultaneously deconstructs and reanimates narrative form. From the initial, almost Ibsenian rigour of the first chapter to the untrammelled, torrential consciousness of Molly’s final soliloquy, Joyce redraws the very flow of narrative. Each episode is a stylistic laboratory — now a piece of journalistic reportage, now a mock-theatrical script, now a parody of textbooks, now the thrum of unfiltered thought. Form does not serve the story; form is the story.
Dionysian Linguistics
Language in Ulysses is no mere vehicle — it is the subject of inquiry itself. Joyce stretches English to its absolute limit and then a bit further, coining words, shattering syntactic propriety, and infusing his prose with Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Irish, and sundry tongues, with not a whiff of affectation. His prose is not “difficult” — it is dense, opulent, resonant, a polyphonic terrain demanding the reader’s full engagement. Joyce compels us to ask: what, after all, is Language?
Leopold Bloom: The Ultimate Anti-Hero
Bloom is the modern Odysseus, not because he returns to an Ithaca, but because he survives the indignities of everyday life through a quietly majestic inner generosity. A Jew, an Irishman, a husband — but above all, a human being — Bloom becomes a kind of existential archetype. His day, traced in near-real time, ascends to the level of epic. The morning pork kidney is as sacred as Athena’s spear.
Stephen Dedalus: The Intellectual Prometheus
If Bloom is the heart of Ulysses, Stephen is its feverish intellect. Philosophical, arrogant, vacillating, frightened — Stephen is Joyce’s introspective vessel. Through his monologue we glimpse not only personal trauma but a wider cultural malaise: what does it mean to be Irish after the death of one’s language? To be European after the death of God? To be an artist in a world that demands a bankable skill?
Dublin as Cosmography
Dublin, in Ulysses, is no passive backdrop; it is a protagonist. As London is to Dickens and St. Petersburg to Dostoevsky, so Dublin becomes not merely a city but a multidimensional organism. Joyce does not depict a city — he maps it ethically, psychologically, mythologically. Every alley, every street, every pub, is laden with memory, history, and yearning.
The Mythology of the Everyday
Perhaps Joyce’s most audacious achievement lies in the elevation of the quotidian to the mythic. As Homer sang of kings and warriors, Joyce exalts the petty bourgeois, the stranger, the pedestrian. Bloom is no less heroic than Odysseus (and I’ll not tolerate mutterings about his conduct in the Iliad, where — yes — he was a slippery little bastard). His labours are not martial but psychological, ethical, cultural. The grandeur of Homer is replaced by the humanism of the modern — with no loss of lustre.
The Penelope Chapter: Climax, Catharsis, Liberation
Molly’s voice is the most liberating passage in Western literature. Sans punctuation, sans restraint, sans the pretentious niceties of “literary refinement,” Penelope is the book’s true epiphany. It is a hymn to acceptance, to embodiment, to female experience, to the near-mystical lyricism of yes. Yes I said yes I will Yes — a line that distills the cosmogonic force of desire, love, and presence. Yes, Joyce’s “Penelope” is the first woman in non-“erotic” literature to possess a clitoris.
Conclusion
Ulysses is not merely the greatest work of Anglophone literature — it is the Renaissance of language, the Metamorphosis of form, the Theogony of the modern mind. Each page a mirror of consciousness, each phrase a rite of passage. To read it is not an accomplishment; to reread it is an awakening.
Ulysses is not for everyone. But if one surrenders to it, one is never quite the same again.
P.S. The standard reading time is approximately three months. If you finished it in three days, you have almost certainly missed the point. Kindly begin again — and this time, do try harder.
Kindly remove your hats — and if you’d be so good, your insolence along with them — take a seat, and show the requisite deference, for today is no ordinary day. Today, we turn our attention to one of the grandest literary edifices of the modern age, even if we define said age as beginning the moment Alexandrian grammarians began fussing over breathing marks and accents.
Now that I’ve either secured your attention or sufficiently offended your sensibilities — both acceptable outcomes — let us plunge headlong into the deep end. Let us admit, without prevarication, that Joyce’s Ulysses is not a mere “book” (and I’m not speaking solely of its considerable bulk); it is not, heaven forbid, some chirpy page-turner (a term I have, quite staggeringly, seen applied to it in a “review”) that concludes with a murderous butler or redemptive bromide for sins not worth confessing. No, this is a rite, a mystery, an initiation — and, dare I say, demanding labour. It is not to be read at bedtime, two pages today and five tomorrow. It is to be read with sleeves rolled, with a ban on any individual in heels perambulating noisily about the house, with a carafe of coffee of such potency it would cause a Neanderthal to squint — and an ashtray of a size sufficient to cradle the bones of both Patroclus and Achilles.
How, indeed, to describe a work that is not merely read, but experienced? That eschews narrative in favour of realising an entirely new mode of consciousness, of language, of life itself? Ulysses is not merely a novel; it is a literary megalith, an Odyssean ramble across the psychic map of the human condition, an eighteen-part symphony wherein each note reveals a fresh aesthetic and philosophical unveiling.
Form: The Architecture of Chaos
Ulysses simultaneously deconstructs and reanimates narrative form. From the initial, almost Ibsenian rigour of the first chapter to the untrammelled, torrential consciousness of Molly’s final soliloquy, Joyce redraws the very flow of narrative. Each episode is a stylistic laboratory — now a piece of journalistic reportage, now a mock-theatrical script, now a parody of textbooks, now the thrum of unfiltered thought. Form does not serve the story; form is the story.
Dionysian Linguistics
Language in Ulysses is no mere vehicle — it is the subject of inquiry itself. Joyce stretches English to its absolute limit and then a bit further, coining words, shattering syntactic propriety, and infusing his prose with Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Irish, and sundry tongues, with not a whiff of affectation. His prose is not “difficult” — it is dense, opulent, resonant, a polyphonic terrain demanding the reader’s full engagement. Joyce compels us to ask: what, after all, is Language?
Leopold Bloom: The Ultimate Anti-Hero
Bloom is the modern Odysseus, not because he returns to an Ithaca, but because he survives the indignities of everyday life through a quietly majestic inner generosity. A Jew, an Irishman, a husband — but above all, a human being — Bloom becomes a kind of existential archetype. His day, traced in near-real time, ascends to the level of epic. The morning pork kidney is as sacred as Athena’s spear.
Stephen Dedalus: The Intellectual Prometheus
If Bloom is the heart of Ulysses, Stephen is its feverish intellect. Philosophical, arrogant, vacillating, frightened — Stephen is Joyce’s introspective vessel. Through his monologue we glimpse not only personal trauma but a wider cultural malaise: what does it mean to be Irish after the death of one’s language? To be European after the death of God? To be an artist in a world that demands a bankable skill?
Dublin as Cosmography
Dublin, in Ulysses, is no passive backdrop; it is a protagonist. As London is to Dickens and St. Petersburg to Dostoevsky, so Dublin becomes not merely a city but a multidimensional organism. Joyce does not depict a city — he maps it ethically, psychologically, mythologically. Every alley, every street, every pub, is laden with memory, history, and yearning.
The Mythology of the Everyday
Perhaps Joyce’s most audacious achievement lies in the elevation of the quotidian to the mythic. As Homer sang of kings and warriors, Joyce exalts the petty bourgeois, the stranger, the pedestrian. Bloom is no less heroic than Odysseus (and I’ll not tolerate mutterings about his conduct in the Iliad, where — yes — he was a slippery little bastard). His labours are not martial but psychological, ethical, cultural. The grandeur of Homer is replaced by the humanism of the modern — with no loss of lustre.
The Penelope Chapter: Climax, Catharsis, Liberation
Molly’s voice is the most liberating passage in Western literature. Sans punctuation, sans restraint, sans the pretentious niceties of “literary refinement,” Penelope is the book’s true epiphany. It is a hymn to acceptance, to embodiment, to female experience, to the near-mystical lyricism of yes. Yes I said yes I will Yes — a line that distills the cosmogonic force of desire, love, and presence. Yes, Joyce’s “Penelope” is the first woman in non-“erotic” literature to possess a clitoris.
Conclusion
Ulysses is not merely the greatest work of Anglophone literature — it is the Renaissance of language, the Metamorphosis of form, the Theogony of the modern mind. Each page a mirror of consciousness, each phrase a rite of passage. To read it is not an accomplishment; to reread it is an awakening.
Ulysses is not for everyone. But if one surrenders to it, one is never quite the same again.
P.S. The standard reading time is approximately three months. If you finished it in three days, you have almost certainly missed the point. Kindly begin again — and this time, do try harder.
June 10, 2025
Although I have already read other books this year after reading this one, I feel like I would not blame myself even if I hadn't. Reading this book was my biggest task for this year and after having read it I feel like there is nothing I cannot read.
When I was studying foreign literature and very often hearing Ulysses references from my professors, I could not bring myself to read it as I knew I am not ready for it. And I am glad I didn't do it back then. Cause believe me I would not get it back then. I am not claiming I got it now, making that statement would be a fallacy. But as a literature nerd I enjoyed it soo much; all these literary styles, this power of language exercised by the genius of Joyce is just too good to be true.
When I was studying foreign literature and very often hearing Ulysses references from my professors, I could not bring myself to read it as I knew I am not ready for it. And I am glad I didn't do it back then. Cause believe me I would not get it back then. I am not claiming I got it now, making that statement would be a fallacy. But as a literature nerd I enjoyed it soo much; all these literary styles, this power of language exercised by the genius of Joyce is just too good to be true.
December 20, 2016
I give this both a one star and five stars. One star because it could only take someone high on their own vanity as a writer to make the reader wade through some of this text. Because I only understood a fraction of what was going on and was ready to throw it out the window a few times. Five stars because there is nothing else like it. Because it forces you to think outside of thought. Because it's bursting full of humor - it's like a 900+ page running joke about lit. And it ends with a Yes. I don't think a person can be of one mind with this book, and so I'm not.
January 13, 2021
I finally made it!!
By far, the most difficult yet most remarkable book I have ever read.
At first, I was amused and intrigued by it, and as I continued, I realized that 'Ulysses' wasn't like anything else I have read before. Specially, for its narrative style and his word-play use... rebellious on one hand, but extraordinary on the other. I particularly loved how Joyce set out to create life through only the expression of a city and its people.
Despite its difficulty, I do feel this is a book of a lifetime
By far, the most difficult yet most remarkable book I have ever read.
At first, I was amused and intrigued by it, and as I continued, I realized that 'Ulysses' wasn't like anything else I have read before. Specially, for its narrative style and his word-play use... rebellious on one hand, but extraordinary on the other. I particularly loved how Joyce set out to create life through only the expression of a city and its people.
Despite its difficulty, I do feel this is a book of a lifetime
August 19, 2024
“The Irishman’s house is his coffin.”
“Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die.”
“Stephen affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the u known and a conscious rational reagent between a micro and macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void.”
“Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die.”
“Stephen affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the u known and a conscious rational reagent between a micro and macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void.”
April 27, 2014
Strange.
April 4, 2021
Will have to read it again. Absolutely a book that should require various reads before fully grasping every bit of it. Mixed emotions about the book
May 7, 2021
Well this was a book. That I read. Yeah, that’s that.
September 11, 2024
Simply perfection!
November 2, 2025
What can I say about Ulysses? I guess the first thing is that there are sections which are every bit as difficult as often suggested, but by no means all. The written style switches and changes throughout, some parts are definitely easier to follow than others. There is quite a bit that's obscure, and reading it straight through without (much) additional research I'm sure there's a fair bit I missed. On a bad day this makes it feel over complicated and too self consciously aware of itself. Too clever by half, if you like.
But there's quite a bit more to it. Despite the difficulty it remains a deeply interesting, intriguing, and affecting book. Leopold Bloom is a very real and sympathetic character (Stephen Dedalus less so). In many of the more interesting sections it gives a real sense of being inside Bloom's internal monologue in a way that I've never come across before (and at the end of the book, the same sense for Molly). Despite its focus on individual psychology there's also quite a bit here about Ireland and Irish nationalism running like a vein through the book (from the cyclops 'citizen' to the encounter with the arrogant English soldiers in nighttown, to Bloom's earlier wish to stand for Parliament).
This is definitely a book that would benefit from being read again (and again). There's much more to be mined here. Did I enjoy it enough to read it again? Possibly not. But I did enjoy it, and that's not what I expected when I started.
But there's quite a bit more to it. Despite the difficulty it remains a deeply interesting, intriguing, and affecting book. Leopold Bloom is a very real and sympathetic character (Stephen Dedalus less so). In many of the more interesting sections it gives a real sense of being inside Bloom's internal monologue in a way that I've never come across before (and at the end of the book, the same sense for Molly). Despite its focus on individual psychology there's also quite a bit here about Ireland and Irish nationalism running like a vein through the book (from the cyclops 'citizen' to the encounter with the arrogant English soldiers in nighttown, to Bloom's earlier wish to stand for Parliament).
This is definitely a book that would benefit from being read again (and again). There's much more to be mined here. Did I enjoy it enough to read it again? Possibly not. But I did enjoy it, and that's not what I expected when I started.
August 27, 2024
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
[ review ]
i have spent weeks lumbering through this book, and it started off with a bang as i was particularly drawn to the heavily detailed interactions between mulligan and dedalus, as well as joyce's neologisms which were so novel to me...
however the magic and novelty of Joyce soon wore off and detail descended slowly into indecipherable chaos. these include lengthy unconquerable passages of latin or italian or oblique literary and cultural references. the realism was difficult at times, refreshing at times.
ulysses seems like a more fleshed-out but less clear-cut version of raymond queneau's 'exercises in style'. I emerged at the end in a pyrrhic victory. molly's soliloquy was somewhat terrifying and exciting and mind-numbingly boring at the same time.
the novel functions well as an idea and if he had chopped off the last seven hundred pages i would have been more inclined to give it five stars.
[ ✮ 3 stars ✮ ]
[ review ]
i have spent weeks lumbering through this book, and it started off with a bang as i was particularly drawn to the heavily detailed interactions between mulligan and dedalus, as well as joyce's neologisms which were so novel to me...
however the magic and novelty of Joyce soon wore off and detail descended slowly into indecipherable chaos. these include lengthy unconquerable passages of latin or italian or oblique literary and cultural references. the realism was difficult at times, refreshing at times.
ulysses seems like a more fleshed-out but less clear-cut version of raymond queneau's 'exercises in style'. I emerged at the end in a pyrrhic victory. molly's soliloquy was somewhat terrifying and exciting and mind-numbingly boring at the same time.
the novel functions well as an idea and if he had chopped off the last seven hundred pages i would have been more inclined to give it five stars.
[ ✮ 3 stars ✮ ]
October 26, 2024
How reality is constructed from individual experiences?
“Ulysses” is a work of art of modern literature. Through a complex sophisticate narrative, it weighs ubiquitous themes of the human state showcasing the search for meaning in an apparently chaotic world. Joyce exploits the framework of Homer’s Odyssey to reflect on the journey of the modern man, pointing out the quest for identity and belonging in a contemporary urban context. It is not only a catalyst to readers reflect their own existence but also offers a vivid portrait of the human condition in its various dimensions
“Ulysses” is a work of art of modern literature. Through a complex sophisticate narrative, it weighs ubiquitous themes of the human state showcasing the search for meaning in an apparently chaotic world. Joyce exploits the framework of Homer’s Odyssey to reflect on the journey of the modern man, pointing out the quest for identity and belonging in a contemporary urban context. It is not only a catalyst to readers reflect their own existence but also offers a vivid portrait of the human condition in its various dimensions
June 18, 2024
That was a difficult and disorienting read, I’ll need to come back to it when I’m a better reader for sure.
I love the odyssey so I was very excited to read this, I’m not sure what I was expecting but this book really caught me off guard. Very creatively arranged, my favourite chapter was the one formatted as a play, I think I only started to enjoy and understand the book from that point on. I have to admit that without sparks notes I would’ve been lost completely.
I love the odyssey so I was very excited to read this, I’m not sure what I was expecting but this book really caught me off guard. Very creatively arranged, my favourite chapter was the one formatted as a play, I think I only started to enjoy and understand the book from that point on. I have to admit that without sparks notes I would’ve been lost completely.
August 1, 2023
It is like reading a book in another language, but which the reader inexplicably can understand for the most part. It helps if you know Dublin. It requires stamina to get through it once, but unfortunately one reading is not enough.
March 25, 2011
Second time through after a lengthy acquaintance with the Wake. Wonderfully funny. Ignore the references you don't get and simply enjoy.
August 6, 2021
Well that was remarkably dull. I am quite sure I am just too dim for this book.
February 18, 2023
A solid 3.5 imo. I definetly didn't get a lot of it because I'm no scholar but there were parts I enjoyed
August 2, 2025
Jesus Christ, does the man never shut the fuck up?
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews