[HN Gopher] Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes
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Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes
Author : petethomas
Score : 51 points
Date : 2025-06-18 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| sys32768 wrote:
| https://archive.is/EanTi
| zabzonk wrote:
| Those of a more light-hearted temperament might prefer Ellman's
| book on Oscar Wilde. But Joyce is himself very adequately
| described and amusingly so.
| jahnu wrote:
| Honestly, it's not as strange a read as people make out. Read it
| twice. After the first time which was ok but not an amazing
| experience I then read an analysis/explaination and then I read
| it a second time which was obviously much easier and it was
| really great.
|
| Finnegan's Wake on the other hand... bailed after three pages.
| rjpower9000 wrote:
| I had a similar experience. I finally got around to reading
| Ulysses when I had some downtime between jobs and pushed my way
| through it. I ended up referring to
| https://www.ulyssesguide.com/ as I went along which helped
| substantially: the extra context and discussion made me
| appreciate the novel more.
|
| I came to the conclusion that while I didn't necessarily _like
| it_ per se, I had to acknowledge how absurdly talented Joyce
| was, and that there was some justification for being in the top
| books list. My feeling was that the lack of enjoyment was a
| fault of the book but more that I didn't have the background to
| appreciate it. Though there were also some chapters where most
| people agree Joyce was just trying too hard and it shows.
| atombender wrote:
| I've never read Finnegans Wake, but it made a lot more sense
| when I heard it spoken out loud, which I think was the intent.
| Here's Joyce reading it:
| https://youtu.be/M8kFqiv8Vww?si=YO69BX_KVEINr5mo.
|
| I had the same sensation when I listened to Fiona Shaw
| performing The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who breathes
| completely new life into it:
| https://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk?si=IBKeyTnu0KCZ2r_U. (She's an
| amazing actress, truly one of the greats.) The poem is supposed
| to many types of voices talking, so you lose a lot of meaning
| if you just read it like a poem (even T. S. Eliot himself reads
| it quite poorly!).
| eszed wrote:
| Fiona Shaw is one of the greats. I've been lucky enough to
| see her on stage a couple of times.
|
| For those of you who don't recognize her name, she's Maarva
| in _Andor_ , and some minor character (I don't remember) in
| the _Harry Potter_ films - neither of which roles get even
| _close_ to challenging her range and power.
| atombender wrote:
| I would love to see her on stage. She did wonders with the
| Maarva character even though it was a very small role.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| I (too) had a similar experience! On the first read I felt like
| I was barely scratching the surface but could enjoy just enough
| of the lyricism and imagery to slog through, but definitely
| didn't "get it". Then I read it with a bunch of fellow book
| nerds and put some effort into unpacking it and had a blast.
|
| It definitely repays sustained attention, if literary fiction
| is your jam.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| RTE produced a dramatised reading of Ulysses by actors. Still
| available for download. I found this helped me access the
| written text.
|
| https://www.rte.ie/culture/2025/0527/1146705-listen-ulysses-...
| gnulinux wrote:
| It's definitely not the hardest "arthouse" novel (or whatever
| you call it), I found _Gravity 's Rainbow_ by Pynchon so much
| more harder, and Beckett's _Three Novels_ (i.e. _Molloy_ ,
| _Malone Dies_ , _The Unnamable_ ) was likely the most difficult
| text I attempted to read in my life. Even then, I think it's
| still pretty difficult for an average Western reader in 2020s,
| our literacy attention span and interest is very low. People
| should definitely attempt it though!
| squidsoup wrote:
| Pynchon's "California" novels (crying of lot 49, vineland,
| inherent vice) are much more readable, and arguably
| enjoyable. I found Gravity's Rainbow pretty inscrutable.
| i_hated_finegan wrote:
| You made it three pages? I doubt I made it two.
| sivers wrote:
| If you don't mind audiobooks, here's one way (well, two ways) to
| listen to Ulysses:
|
| https://sive.rs/ulysses
| gnulinux wrote:
| Just in case people consider this seriously, I just want to add
| my two cents: Ulysses although is prose, it's so much more of a
| poetry than prose compared many other novels. I personally
| don't think listening to someone's reading of Ulysses will be
| remotely similar to reading it on page. Some of the chapters
| are really almost entirely about discovering _how to_ read this
| chapter. I don 't necessarily think it's bad, just the same way
| you can listen to poetry by going to a poetry reading session,
| you can listen to Ulysses. Just note that it's going to be an
| entirely different experience than reading it, and it will
| likely forever bias your interpretation of the book. Just my
| humble two cents, I don't claim to know anything.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| You can listen to the man himself reading it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI
|
| It's meant as pure lyrical poetry. Reading it aloud is like
| dancing with your tongue instead of feet.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Why not both? Listen and read along.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| What a surreal take. Poetry differs from prose _in that_ it
| relies much more heavily on being spoken aloud.
| gnulinux wrote:
| That's certainly your take on poetry, but not mine. It also
| may not be everyone's. I think everyone has a unique
| reading of each poetry, and thus reading and listening are
| different. There is nothing wrong with listening to poetry,
| it's just that I prefer to read first (find my own reading)
| then listen to others. I personally don't think I would
| have wanted to listen to Ulysses before reading it. Again,
| you may find it bizarre and that's fine.
| soneca wrote:
| I agree with GP that poetry is _more_ suited to the
| spoken word that prose, not less. Ideally, by the author
| 's spoken word.
|
| But neither perspective is "bizarre" or "surreal", just
| different takes.
| plemer wrote:
| The best reading I've found is from Raidio Teilifis Eireann
| (RTE), Ireland's national public-service broadcaster. [1] It's
| treated more as a play, one part per actor. It's special - my
| closest other experience is watching Shakespeare.
|
| [1] https://www.rte.ie/culture/2025/0527/1146705-listen-
| ulysses-...
| some_random wrote:
| Ulysses to me is a really good example of a book whose reputation
| has been sabotaged by being assigned in class, that was where I
| first read it and while I was ambivalent to it most people seemed
| to hate it.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think high schools / universities do their students such a
| disservice assigning books that students don't have the life
| experience to understand. Like they can read the book and
| analyze it sure but they're going to hate it and be bored out
| their minds because the experiences being portrayed aren't
| relatable (yet).
|
| No high schooler or undergrad is going to understand a book
| that talks about being trapped in a life they don't enjoy by
| the choices they've made that's meant for a reader in their
| 40s.
| gnulinux wrote:
| This is extremely true. Reading Dostoyevsky as an adult was
| like finding a long lost treasure in ancient scrolls. I never
| understood what's the point in High School. Some of the
| classics are really classics because they're so much about
| humanity at large, and unless you're a literary prodigy like
| Rimbaud or whatever a lot of human drama won't make sense to
| you in high school--maybe even then. Schools really blew it
| out of proportion by assigning books like Crime & Punishment,
| Ulysses etc to 16 year old kids who are essentially overgrown
| toddlers. I think kids should _still_ attempt to read these
| books in High School (learning comes from challenge) but
| creating the entire curriculum based on these adult books
| does them a disservice by not answering the "why do we give
| a shit?" question.
|
| Really, same thing goes for most other disciplines. So many
| kids learn 4 years of algebra without having the slightest
| clue that this all is building to something called "Calculus"
| that they don't understand what it is.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| > So many kids learn 4 years of algebra without having the
| slightest clue that this all is building to something
| called "Calculus" that they don't understand what it is.
|
| That specifically at least could be improved greatly by
| just reworking classes to include plenty of hands-on
| practical application so it's not so abstract. The
| pervasive thought during that period of my life was, "why
| am I learning this" and nobody wanted to bother answering
| except with the non-answer, "you might need it someday."
| eszed wrote:
| I have a background in education, and I agree with you _so
| hard_.
|
| Another related mistake educators make: assigning material
| that _could_ be relevant or interesting to high school
| students, but then not giving them the sorts of experiences
| that will make it so. I was a nerd (and, in fact, skipped
| high school English), so when my classmates were reading
| Chaucer and were (predictably) bored to tears by _The
| Knight 's Tale_ (it's all about Virtue, right?), I led an
| impromptu study hall session on _The Miller 's Tale_ (it's
| a long series of scatalogical jokes), and what do you
| know?, they a) enjoyed it, and b) were more willing and
| able to give _The Knight 's Tale_ a go.
|
| Don't even get me started on reading Shakespeare without,
| you know, experiencing it _as a play_ first (or, indeed,
| ever).
| adriand wrote:
| It's disheartening to see this happen in real time. I
| raised my kids to be readers but the habit ultimately
| didn't stick. My son got assigned Frankenstein in his
| Grade 12 English class and I hoped for the best but he
| was bored to tears by it. I read a page or two and I
| could understand why - the language is outdated and
| there's little for him to relate to. Meanwhile there are
| plenty of modern novels by great writers to choose from
| where I think the reading would be easier and the stories
| would be immersive. Tom Wolfe and Jonathan Franzen come
| to mind, or Margaret Atwood, or Ursula K LeGuin. I'm
| reading We Do Not Part by Han Kang right now, which won
| the Nobel - it's a great example of an ideas-driven book
| with accessible language.
| jfengel wrote:
| I am a Shakespeare actor and director, and I find it
| insane that they give students plays to read. Reading a
| play is a skill unto itself. Even more so for an
| Elizabethan play.
|
| The actors are doing so much interpretation work for you.
| It is an enormous effort. Let them.
|
| There is much value in reading Shakespeare, but you have
| to learn how, and you won't get there just by having an
| unabridged text thrown at you.
| bluGill wrote:
| We (as society) don't assign algebra or Calculus for the
| fun of it. We assign it because they are so useful in a lot
| of different careers (mostly in engineering). However it is
| really hard to find a simple and realistic example of why
| you need to spend the next 6 years learning that before you
| have done the math so you can see how it works on a real
| world problem.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > So many kids learn 4 years of algebra without having the
| slightest clue that this all is building to something
| called "Calculus"
|
| But... that's not something they should think. It's not
| something that's true. You learn algebra to solve certain
| types of problems. You learn calculus to solve other types
| of problems.
| gausswho wrote:
| Calculus is advanced mathematics and absolutely not the end
| goal of algebra. It used to be taught at university level
| but its utility to other sciences (and toys of war) got it
| shoehorned into the high school curriculum at the expense
| of other maths and logic.
|
| So many high school students tragically treat it as a
| litmus test, bounce off it and as a result suspend their
| dreams of higher education. It is the epitome of
| sacrificing education for occupational goals. If you don't
| intend to pursue applied science it is almost worthless
| forced masochism.
|
| Disclaimer: I have a bachelors in pure mathematics.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I don't know, I'm finding Calculus ties a lot of earlier
| math together. The quadratic equations that I thought
| were a weirdly specific thing to spend so long drilling
| (ok so parabolas can describe kinematic arcs, what's the
| big deal?) come up again and again in differential
| equations.
|
| The relationships between area and volume of various
| objects I spent geometry trying to understand make much
| sense as integrals.
|
| Trig, logarithms, exponentials, infinite series, they all
| come into themselves when you start applying them to
| analysis. It just all sorta clicks once you start to
| thread them together.
| Yizahi wrote:
| I honestly don't get western obsession with Tolstoy and
| Dostoyevsky. People at r/books are going nuts in how they
| tackle these books, some even try to learn the language
| only for that feat. Like, just what do you think even
| applies to humanity at large from those authors? Let alone
| the "treasure" angle? Incomprehensible for me. I read them
| in school and unlike some of my classmates I actually did
| read them fully. Today I wouldn't touch any of their books
| with ten feet pole voluntarily, unless I will find a need
| of a huge dose of depression plus cringe spread out on a
| thousands of pages. Which is unlikely.
| rurp wrote:
| I agree with this so much. My parents got me reading books
| early and I regularly read now, but for the most part I hated
| school asigned reading. There were maybe three books I
| actually enjoyed throughout high school and college, with the
| rest being a slog to get through. After college I stopped
| reading for fun for years because I was burned out on books I
| didn't enjoy.
|
| A lot of school asigned reading cements the idea that someone
| just doesn't like books because, well, they haven't ever
| liked anything they were told to read.
|
| Encouraging people to read period should be the first goal
| with yound adults, and if they want to read something that
| academics sneer at then that's totally fine. Reading any sort
| of book has benefits, and those who develop a love for it
| will naturally seek out more challening and interesting books
| when they are ready for them.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > high schools / universities do their students such a
| disservice assigning books that students don't have the life
| experience to understand
|
| I disagree. If you read a book first, it can inform you as
| you go through your life experiences, and it can potentially
| have far more value to the student that way. The mistake in
| teaching these books in school is that the teaching is
| generally done with the assumption that students have already
| had those life experiences, making it a complete waste of
| everyone's time. At least that was how it was taught when I
| was in school.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I think it depends on the book.
|
| I'm actually thinking of movies though. I watched
| Casablanca in my early 20s and it did nothing for me. I
| watched it again in my 50s and cried so hard my whole body
| shook. The difference was life experience. I knew what they
| were giving up. Something I had no experience with in my
| early 20s
|
| I suspect some books have a similar issue.
| asimpletune wrote:
| What classes assign Ulysses? Serious question.
| wk_end wrote:
| Well, I had a third year university class that assigned it.
| But it assigned only it, for the entire semester, because it
| was a seminar devoted to reading Ulysses.
|
| (This is far-and-away the best way to read Ulysses, FWIW)
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| And americans get in debt to do things like this?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Yes. A liberal education is supposed to prepare you to be
| able to learn anything else you need for the rest of your
| life; to do so, it must expose you to strange and odd
| things which are nevertheless considered valuable.
|
| If you just wanted to learn Java, there are faster and
| cheaper methods.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The point of a liberal education is to help the student
| understand the world around them. Somewhere along the
| way, many colleges realized it was lucrative to convince
| people that the point of a liberal education is to engage
| in frivolous hobbies considered valuable by the people
| who share those hobbies, and millions of people with
| worthless "educations" are now suffering for it. That's
| what clubs are for.
| gausswho wrote:
| Out of many a frivolous hobby doth spring the rarest
| kernels of civilizational triumphs.
| wk_end wrote:
| Well, I'm a Canadian. And I paid off the small amount of
| debt I picked up during university with my first couple
| of paycheques as a software developer.
| WalterGR wrote:
| As an American, I did the same. Step 1: Go to a public
| university where you can pay in-state tuition.
| wenc wrote:
| I didn't. I did 3 STEM degrees and then made some money
| and went back to school to study liberal arts part time.
|
| I think studying liberal arts after having life
| experience is so much more rewarding -- not to mention
| affordable (assuming you've done something with your
| life).
|
| The payoff of studying liberal arts in your 20s is very
| different from when you're in your 40s (my age). The
| context is much more salient and the practical
| applications become more visible.
|
| Morris Chang (chairman of TSMC) once wanted to be a
| literature major and he has mentioned how studying
| Shakespeare has helped him to understand human behavior
| and the human condition.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| The title is in reference to Molly Bloom's stream of
| consciousness monologue in the final chapter. If you read one
| single work of english literature in your life, let it be this:
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm#chap1...
| patrickscoleman wrote:
| Finally read it this year and so happy that I did!
|
| Although a lot of that reading was skimming haha. I think
| that's good for a first reading though. You get a really good
| idea of the overall pacing and chapter-to-chapter variety that
| way.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| Why this one?
| sandy_coyote wrote:
| I tried reading it once, but hearing excerpts of this book read
| aloud really unlocked it for me. In the right hands (mouth?),
| it's hilarious.
| jackconsidine wrote:
| Happy Bloom's Day 2 days ago everyone [1].
|
| I'm on my 4th attempt at Ulysses. It's just two dense. Too many
| niche references that only an educated early 20th century Irish
| citizen would understand.
|
| [1] Ulysses took place all on June 16th 1904. Most of the book is
| stream of consciousness from Leopold Bloom. Bloom's Day is now a
| celebration of Joyce in Ireland
| WalterGR wrote:
| > Too many niche references that only an educated early 20th
| century Irish citizen would understand.
|
| Presumably there are dozens of companion references to explain
| those. Can anyone recommend some?
| kej wrote:
| I have this site [0] bookmarked in case I ever get around to
| reading it again. I like the use of hypertext so that you can
| follow the explanations you want and ignore others, and the
| inclusion of pictures and videos reminds me of the breathless
| anticipation of new multimedia experiences back when CD-ROMs
| started becoming common.
|
| [0] http://m.joyceproject.com/info/aboutproject.html
| freejazz wrote:
| > It's just two dense.
|
| Try reading just one copy :)
| uqual wrote:
| In the 1970s I made the mistake of satisfying one of my general
| ed requirements by taking a one quarter class which covered
| _only_ Ulysses. The professor had done his PhD thesis on Ulysses
| and knew the page numbers (both in the edition he was using and
| the paperback version the students bought) of random passages
| even when a student came up with a question that was tangential
| to the immediate expected discussion.
|
| It was quite a challenge writing the term paper (which was most
| of the grade) knowing it would be evaluated by this professor. My
| attempts were mediocre and in exchange I received a well deserved
| mediocre grade (some sort of "B") in the class (sort of a "Ain't
| that cute that uqual tried so hard and wrote so many pages of
| related but nonsensical BS but at least he came to class" grade).
|
| It's safe to say that I will NEVER again read Ulysses!
| da02 wrote:
| What are some of the books that had the biggest impact in
| changing or developing your mind?
| dekhn wrote:
| The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Fire Upon the Deep.
| freejazz wrote:
| So you wont read it again because you had a professor that
| dedicated his career to the book and it made you feel insecure?
| That seems unfair. Give a shot, free of pretension.
| redavni wrote:
| Dude has a mildly traumatic experience in a high pressure
| environment at which he pushed through, and you respond with
| toxicity and name calling? This is not OK behavior for an
| adult. Do better.
| plemer wrote:
| Unhelpful
| zerr wrote:
| Homer's Odyssey as a prerequisite is the main obstacle.
| biorach wrote:
| You don't need to have read Homer
| adamwk wrote:
| It's not a prerequisite though. Nor is Hamlet or any of the
| other works referenced. Very little will be missed if you
| haven't read the Odyssey. It's a book that stands alone on its
| own. Like anything else, Ulysses is inspired by other works,
| but you don't need to catch every single reference or allusion
| to enjoy a book or movie
| tianqi wrote:
| However, the Odyssey is much easier to read than Ulysses.
| jfengel wrote:
| You have to be familiar with it to appreciate the connections,
| but you don't need to read it. A good summary will do fine.
| Even the Wikipedia page is good enough.
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| something, something, something, dawn, something, rosy fingers,
| something
|
| told you I'd read it!
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