Zack’s Reviews > Ulysses > Status Update

Obviously I will finish this and will read it closely to get as many allusions/hidden meanings as I can, etc. etc., but this is a violently unfun novel to read.

“Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.

Buzz buzz.

But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms.”

I should be having a good time but I resent passages like this so much

I do have to keep reminding myself that this is the first time some of these gimmicks were used. I appreciate what Joyce did for the novel as an art form. As usual, though, Joyce gets in Joyce’s way a lot of the time.

I’m not trying to be a hater, and I don’t think this opinion is based at all, but where I land on some of these stream-of-consciousness passages—especially coming off of Orlando, To The Lighthouse, and The Waves in the last two years—is: absolutely no one’s thought patterns are like this. “No cow, me, fun time? Sic parvis magna. Illusions: all: in us” this is not a real line, but it could be

Chapter 3: now we’re cooking. This is what I signed up for