How to Read Ulysses

Thứ bảy - 27/04/2024 01:11
Come on, it's Ulysses. Considered by many to be the second hardest book in the English language (mostly because the hardest book in the English language requires a working knowledge of 8 other languages to read), reading Ulysses is both...
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Come on, it's Ulysses. Considered by many to be the second hardest book in the English language (mostly because the hardest book in the English language requires a working knowledge of 8 other languages to read), reading Ulysses is both enjoyable and provocative. Despite its reputation, it's not too difficult to read.

Steps

  1. Step 6 Know your episode.
    Since each episode has a different style, knowing what to appreciate beforehand can help. As such, here is a list of all of the episodes and their brand of comedy.
    • Episode 1: Normal novel.
    • Episode 2: An informal catechism.
    • Episode 3: Elitist masculine monologue.
    • Episode 4: Poking fun at great historic heroes.
    • Episode 5: The hypnotic nature of religion.
    • Episode 6: Death.
    • Episode 7: Making fun of journalism (it's written like a newspaper; pay attention to the headlines).
    • Episode 8: Food puns, everything can be eaten and everything eats in this chapter.
    • Episode 9: Making fun of Hamlet and elitists who debate over obscure pieces of literature (in particular making fun of certain scholars who would later analyze Ulysses).
    • Episode 10: This chapter has nothing to do with the main characters. It is instead presented as a series of short stories surrounding the side characters. The humor is that it is in fact largely pointless and that most of the side characters make fun of the main characters.
    • Episode 11: Everything is a music pun. A lot of onomatopoeia is used.
    • Episode 12: There are two narrators: one is hyper-colloquial to the point of not making sense and one is hyper-scientific to the point of not making sense. The competition between the narrators produces the comedy.
    • Episode 13: Narrated by a young girl and everything is a sex joke.
    • Episode 14: An elaborate parody of all the great English authors.
    • Episode 15: Written as a hallucinatory play in a red-light district.
    • Episode 16: This chapter is very ambiguous and the comedy comes from mistaking characters for other characters.
    • Episode 17: Written as a catechism, the comedy comes from the hyper-scientific question and answer format being applied to the mundane.
    • Episode 18: Streaming consciousness of Bloom's wife.
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Warnings

  • If you start reading Ulysses, you will start talking about Ulysses, and when you talk about Ulysses, you are apt to lose friends.
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Things You'll Need

  • A copy of Ulysses. (The Modern Library one is good. Preferably one with large margins.)
  • Time.
  • A pen for annotations.

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