[image by FlickrJunkie]
I think I may have lost my companions on the voyage through Ulysses, a loss I am feeling most keenly after reading this and the previous sections… I would love to know what they make of them.
Episode 15 is loooong, by far the longest of the book. And it reads, to me, [...]

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[image by occhiovivo]
OK, so this is section that broke my back the first time I “read” (and the depth of my engagement that time demands the scare quotes) Ulysses, and it very nearly did so again this time. With this section the usefulness of the annotations hit an all-time high. The stylistic changes of [...]

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[image from litmuse; created by Jonathan Day]
Ah, the infamous Gerty MacDowell. This is one section of Ulysses that has remained in my mind from the first reading and even before I had started considering the Homeric parallels, thinking instead of Gerty in light of Hamlet’s mother Gertrude, an analogy that I still can’t carry [...]

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[photo by Walt Jabsco]
A strange, strange section of Ulysses (I should get my terminology straight– these aren’t properly books, but section doesn’t accurately represent the degree to which each is different from one another. Part? Episode?). There are two Cyclops represented: the unknown first-person narrator (the “I” or the “eye”– get it?) and the [...]

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  [art by mikem1115]
This is a late update; I finished the “Sirens” section of Ulysses almost three weeks ago and have finished two more section since. As a result, I have only my marginal notes and poor memory to work from and what sticks in my mind most is the style and structure.
In “Sirens” [...]

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[photo by Jamelah]
This relatively straightforwardly written section of Ulysses was quite a changeup from the complex “Scylla and Charybdis” book just before. In The Odyssey Ulysses chooses to sacrifice 6 of his men rather than risk the Wandering Rocks, which only Jason (of Jason and the Argonauts) was ever able to navigate, thanks to [...]

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[photo by Bikkhu]
Finished Book 9 (Scylla and Charybdis) of Ulysses. I found Book 9 fiendishly difficult, not because the writing style was impenetrable, but because I found it continually difficult to get a good grasp of the two main points of the section (as I read it): Stephen’s argument w/r/t Shakespeare and the relationship [...]

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[image by maxf]
Just finished Episode 8, The Laestrygonians. Random, likely incoherent thoughts that’ve crossed my mind over the last 60 pages or so:

There’s something interesting and tricky going on with the voice and perspective of Bloom’s monologue… a multitude of tiny moments where the text notes things said and seen [...]

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Ulysses Annotated is a great resource when tackling Joyce’s densely allusive novel, but in some ways it is almost as unwieldy as Ulysses itself! If you make it through the lengthy, but immensely useful introduction– which is generally concerned with providing adequate context of Ireland in general and Dublin in particular in 1904 but [...]

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Some segments from Chapter 1 with a musicality that particularly appealed to my ear, even if they are sometimes unpleasant:
 
If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, [...]

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Ulysses– at least through the first chapter– has more humor than I remembered. Perhaps because I was overwhelmed the first time around, I didn’t put catch it as often as I should. And Joyce tends to immediately follow the funniest bits with something of real import. For instance, the Jewish Haines and Stephen discussing Buck [...]

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[photo by editor_tupp]
Reading the first section of Ulysses, I was– like Scott– struck by the sound of the words tumbling around inside Stephen Dedalus’ head. There are many passages which read like (deeply allusive and heavily referential) prose poems. For instance:
Alo! Bonjour. Welcome as the flowers in May. Under [...]

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Monday morning I Twittered that I was digging into Ulysses, a book I read once and too-quickly many years ago, and before I knew it a few friends were joining in. We have formed some kind of rule-free, schedule-less reading group I’ve dubbed The Club of Uncertain Genius. I’m excited to have company and plan [...]

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