Depending on whom you ask, “Ulysses” is either the greatest work of literature, period, or the most confusing pile of what-is-this-I-don’t-even-know imaginable. There is no middle ground. It’s certainly got the credentials to go both ways.
I re-read “Ulysses” last week over the course of four days. To put it bluntly, it was an experience. It was physically exhausting; when I finished reading the last words, I lay down for a nap, I was so sapped. Even though there are longer books, none of them have the same feeling of immensity as “Ulysses.”
When James Joyce wrote “Ulysses,” he pulled out all the stops with regards to technique. The book is less a book than a compilation of every trick writers had been using up to that point, and even then he changed those, too. Each chapter assumes a different style or mode—ranging from straight-forward narrative to Victorian pastiche to a 180-page play nestled in one of the last chapters, and don’t forget the infamous unpunctuated soliloquy that constitutes the last chapter. It kind of assumes a history of English writing up to that point.
The story of “Ulysses” doesn’t concern itself with plot per se, since nothing in the book seems to be building up to anything. The story is almost asininely simple compared to the complexities of execution. It goes: One Stephen Dedalus (an author avatar if there ever was one) bums around Dublin after the death of his mother, feeling all-around perplexed and saddened. Meanwhile, one Leopold Bloom has an average day out which includes work at his newspaper, fried kidneys, a visit to the library and doing a questionable thing on a rock while looking at women on the beach… it’s not everything that happens but you’ve got the gist of it.
Reading “Ulysses,” you get the feeling that this is the most realistic book ever written. It sags with detail and insight. Simultaneously it is one of the most contrived books I have ever read. I don’t say contrived as a bad thing, but I use it to say that “Ulysses” is the most nakedly novelistic novel I have ever read.
Generally when we read books we expect them to have some dimension of truth to them, even if they’re some kind of off-the-wall sci-fi or fantasy work. Fiction is just spinning a bit of truth out of a heap of lies and arranging it artistically. But more so than any other book I’ve read, “Ulysses” is the one that tries hardest to be realistic.
Joyce used language to mirror thought, carefully detailing what every main character does in the context of the story. In short, he wanted someone to open the book and find Dublin. It’s not just a facsimile of truth: it is truth, this is how Dubliners truly lived their lives on this June 16, 1904.
It’s a discomfiting thought. It’s discomfiting not necessarily because of its hyper-realism coupled with impossibly pompous technique, but because you aren’t allowed to escape into “Ulysses.” It keeps the reader engaged, whether it’s enrapturing you or miring you in confusion. It engages you even if you quit after line one, whether it lingers in your mind as fantasia or horror.
We’re accustomed to literature being separated from life, both as a sort of discredit to the novelist as well as a defense mechanism against the unpleasantness a novel can unleash. Bad things happen in “Ulysses.” There is a lot of unpleasantness and awkwardness and overall pessimism. But there are also laughs and cries and sheer jubilation. In short: There is life in “Ulysses.”
Couldn’t keep your eyes open through “Ulysses”? Ask Sean how he did it at sreichard@wisc.edu.
