Ulysses by James Joyce

Now, Ulysses gets a raw deal. It's a great work, but you have to dip into it, approach it with care and fun and a strange spirit. It's not like other books. There is a narrative, many of them, but you need to be coming at the book with knowledge. When you're ready, you can read it here online--peck away at it like a bird, don't try to read it straight through.

Ulysses is the infamous 1922 novel by James Joyce, an Irishman expatriate. It was banned for a while in many countries. Here's basic info on it.

Remember that many of Joyce's compatriots and he himself were educated in the Classics, and had read widely. They knew way more than most people today. Make sure to have a guide, and read over basic information about each chapter as you dive in. Understand what Modernism was before you try it.

I am not joking when I say Ulysses is the ocean. You've got to wade in wisely. I'm the lifeguard!

I could talk about Joyce forever, I even used to win prizes on him. What I want to focus on today is the emotion and sincerity in Joyce's narrative. In Ulysses there are moments when the metaphorical/inspiration overlay of the actual Greek guy Ulysses [favored clever mortal of Athena, husband of Penelope] from the Trojan War fades away and you are just fondly following Leopold 'Poldy' Bloom's adventures.

As a half-Jewish Irishman, he feels out of place in many ways, and not in others. The story isn't about racism or politics, he's a real guy. He's an adman in Dublin. Ulysses takes place on one day alone.  [It's called Bloomsday, ie. June 16, 1904, and is celebrated in real life!!]

You follow Bloom's life, loves, kids, feelings, meals and even his intimate moments. Joyce really takes away Bloom's privacy for the reader; there's no punches pulled, but its not gross or shocking like many modern books.

When Bloom and Stephen connect at the end of the book, a tear really comes to the eye. Of course, they're both rather gentle men who've just met and connected in a kind of mentor-mentee relationship, so they keep a bit of a stiff upper lip. Still, there's a lot of sweetness there. And then it ends.

Stephen's been looking for a father figure, since his own is terrible, and he's been plagued by dreams of his deceased mother chastising him for refusing to pray and embracing atheism. When he has cocoa at the end, you feel so glad for him. He finally gets a peaceful, kind moment in his life.

This is why I feel Joyce's modernist work stands above many other writers. He's got a sincere, moving narrative in there for many of his characters--including his famously spot-on [for writing as a woman] inner monologue of Bloom's wife Molly. Many modernist writers are really quite dry in terms of story, character and sincerity.

Books must have an emotional component, people you care about. Sadly for me, many modernists and other early 1900s era writers failed on this count. I do not think Virginia Woolf succeeded here, or Nabokov and the other Russians. I was disappointed in Ford Maddox Ford and DH Lawrence. The same goes for Kafka, Lewis and Faulkner. Proust too.

Yes, I went there. I am arguing for sincerity, for literature that truly moves you.

I will excuse Pynchon, as sometimes he has brilliant ideas. And I understand that Faulkner and the other Southern gothics were doing their own thing. In any case, I still need characters worth caring about, not a grey frozen field of emptiness.