Finally, some thoughts about James Joyce's Ulysses as an entity.
I take as my text: “Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted” (12.337).

Shortly after I started my blog, my friend M.K. said to me, "Ulysses?"
He couldn’t understand quite why I wanted to read it. He argued and insinuated that the book is over-hyped and pretentious; too difficult and not really worth the effort. This argument—like most of its ilk—might have carried more weight if he’d already read the book himself. Now, M.K. is a good reader, and I value his input. His unstated question was really, “why now?” and that’s a question that does deserve an answer.

So much of the fiction that I love—and here I’m thinking especially of Robert Kroetsch’s work—is by people for whom Ulysses was a touchstone. That it afforded them new ways of thinking about how novels can work, how language can work. Ulysses is a book of options.

Those options tend to mean that it’s an overwhelming book. In many senses, it tries to include everything and the kitchen sink: details, styles, plots, characters… And while James Joyce sews everything together, the reader is asked to spend a lot of difficult thought trying to make sense of this universe. In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that the book presents a universe. Frye even agrees with me, to an extent; he wrote that Ulysses is nearly unique as novels go, in that it “is a complete prose epic with all four forms [Frye’s four genres: epic, romance, confession, and anatomy] employed in it, all of practically equal importance, and all essential to one another, so that the book is a unity and not an aggregate” (AC 314). I think that Frye’s description can be extended beyond genre, to include… everything. And because of Ulysses’s comprehensiveness, we’re not sure what, as readers, we should take away with us from a reading, despite the privileged (though suspect) points of entry that are Stephen and Bloom. That makes Ulysses hard to pigeon-hole; that difficulty, in turn, if nothing else, proves that it’s one hell of a good book.

Mark commented that I seem to be taking a “long refractory period to recover from the Joycean jouissance” that is Ulysses, and he’s not wrong. It takes time & effort to absorb a universe that vast; it’ll take a number of rereadings to even begin to feel comfortable there. Those rereadings are going to have to wait, though. Despite being awed by the brilliance of the book, and enjoying its playfulness & its world, I’m not going to reread it anytime soon. I read it because I thought it was one of those things that I should read. Like a mountain to climb because it’s there, perhaps; more like, though, an Eliot-esque statue in a field of Tradition that is important to know, because of how it asks me to read forward and backward. I will reread it, to get to know that statue and individual talent better. But I’ll need some time reading other things, first. It really did flabbergast me, and it'll continue to ask me to think for quite a while.

For the record? The best book ever? I don’t know. It’s brilliant, sure. And I enjoyed it. For now, that’s enough. I’m not all that willing to entertain comparisons of that sort, in any case.

Yes I have yes I finished it yes

For form's sake: 18. "Penelope." I'm done reading it.
No question, Ulysses is a brilliant book. Stunning. I need to think about it a bit before I say more, and explain why I'll not be rereading it any time soon.

17. "Ithaca."

16. "Eumaeus."

Ulysses, 15. "Circe."
My friend Mark said that he thinks "Circe" is the funniest thing he's ever read. I'm inclined to agree.

The stage direction at 15.4091-92 is gorgeous: "(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)"

I think I love it so because it captures the dance while speaking to Joyce's intricate dance of charactes and ideas that simply swirl throughout the book, but nowhere until now as much as now, in "Circe."

Yesterday, 13. "Nausicaa." Today, 14. "Oxen in the Sun." Sometimes slowness happens, sometimes distractions. While I'm enjoying the book--it's time to be done.

Ulysses: 12. "The Cyclops."
I'm starting to have real fun, reading this book.

10. "Wandering Rocks" and 11. "Sirens." Slight progress since Monday.
"Sirens" is gorgeous, and it actually manages to describe a musical moment or two, reasonably well.

I finished 9. "Scylla and Charybdis." It's as though I was even making progress, reading Ulysses.

Over breakfast, I finished 8. "The Lestrygonians."

I'm debating what to add to my current reading list. Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, and Marcel Proust's Swann's Way top the list (all part of the reading everything I own project). Would you like to weigh in?

Ulysses: 6. "Hades" & 7. "Aeolus."
coming up next, 8. "Lestrygonians"

I apologise for the white space until the table; I've fidgeted with the html code, but can't figure out how to make the space all disappear. I'll keep playing.

Office Readings for
Christmas Eve (Canada, BAS)

	Mattins	Evensong
Psalm(s)	Psalm 45 & 46	Psalm 89.1-29
1st Lesson	Baruch 4.36-5.9	Isaiah 59.15b-21
2nd Lesson	(Galatians 3.23-4.7)	Philippians 2.5-11
Gospel	Matthew 1.18-25
Collect	Heavenly Father, who chose the Virgin Mary, full of grace, to be the mother of our Lord and Saviour, now fill us with your grace, that we in all things may embrace your will and with her rejoice in your salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.	Eternal God, this holy night is radiant with the brillians of your one true light. As we have known, the revelation of that light on earth, bring us to see the splendour of your heavenly glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Ulysses: 4. "Calypso" & 5. "The Lotus Eaters."
in midst of 6. "Hades."

I have been reading Ulysses, in the Gabler edition, of course--I mean, one of my best friends is a disciple of a disciple of Gabler. Paul might well be aghast if I were to read a different edition. (for those of you wondering what difference it all makes, this link begins to explain bits and pieces about the various editions, and does refer you to other sources.)
At any rate. It's also more of a rereading, to this point, since two Decembers ago I got through "Hades" (the 6th episode) before I got distracted. As of now, I'm only through the Telemachiad (the first three episodes: "Telemachus," "Nestor," and "Proteus," before the text shifts to describe more about what Bloom does that fateful day).
Each time I open something by Joyce, I'm reassured and pleasantly surprised by what I find. That is to say, it's always delightful. He plays with this language in a way that seems effortless to the reader, endlessly inventive, and delighting in the capacities that English affords him. The reader cannot but be pulled into this delight, in an almost perfect example of what Barthes would call the jouissance that the text offers. The rich, dense mass of allusions stuns the reader--asking, perhaps the reader to consult a companion book or two for help, from time to time--and yet the allusions are part of the play, part of the fun.
Someday I will try to finish Finnegans Wake. For now, I'm happy that I can believe that I live in Dublin, at least for a space.