This is another instance where I am inordinately and unreasonably please with myself. Yes, I have done it. I have read Ulysses. Now, I do realize that there are plenty of people out there who have already read this book, including incredibly enough some who have read it multiple times and some who love it. However, I still think I deserve some recognition for getting through this one. Go me!
What a weird little book. I mean, really. I am glad that I had read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and The Odyssey before wading into this one, that's for sure. It also helped that I had some familiarity with the book as well (I was excited when I got to Molly's inner monologue, since I've read references it to it before).
Perhaps my excitement does need to be tempered somewhat, because I must say that I didn't really get that much out of this one. It wasn't as difficult or bizarre as I had expected, I mean it certainly does change style and tone frequently and I wouldn't call it your traditionally structured novel by any means, but overall it had a plot and characters (which is more than you can say for the list works of some Irish authors). I could always follow it, and having the Odyssey as a guide certainly helped.
Side note, but the trouble with the Odyssey is that it always makes me think of Wishbone, specifically the Odyssey computer game. That was a tripy game. I'm glad Wishbone never tried to do Ulysses. That would have been bad. And you may say, they never would have, but they did Faust for goodness sake. Faust!
Back on track, there were some sections I liked more than others. I did not care for the part written like a play script. My favorite part was probably the question and answer essay part. It might have been exhaustion on my part, but I found a lot of that seriously hilarious. I'm not sure that I was supposed to, though.
Anyway, I should probably go read some literary criticism on this one to see what I was supposed to get out of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment