Book Review - REVIEW - Ulysses by James Joyce

In Homer's epic Greek poem, The Odyssey, Odysseus is lost in his travels at war and at sea for the better part of twenty years, enduring setback after setback on his journey home. He battles strange and violent creatures, endures storms and shipwrecks, loses his entire crew and generally endures every insult to body and mind one can survive.

In Ulysses we follow the path of our main protagonists through Dublin (moonlighting as the trials and travails that Odysseus followed in The Odyssey) with Leopold Bloom as Odysseus, Molly Bloom as Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus as Telemachus.

James Joyce's Ulysses is aptly named.

It's brilliant and grueling, hilarious and confusing. At times it's blushingly erotic and at other times ridiculously opaque. In short, it's like a harrowing trip through the thought process of a human mind. In this case, a few minds. It's a word soup, chockablock with metaphors and puns, bawdy jokes and advertising jingles, and every other way to approach language.

Strong themes of the Odyssey and Shakespeare, of Christianity and the evolution of the English language, are woven throughout.

Then for the money shot—did I enjoy it?

Good question. 

Much like any kind of epic journey, there are highs and lows. There were times when I was just white-knuckling my way through the text and wondering wtf was going on, but there were other times when there was some brilliant prose being laid down or laugh out loud jokes being delivered.

There's the beauty of the line, "The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit” and the fabulous wordplay of "Thought is the thought of thought." which well sums up the whole book. 

While I was reading the book, I was thinking I would never read it again. Partly because of the novel, partly because I rarely read books twice (exception: The Hobbit! Thirteen rereads and counting!). Now I'm not so sure. I might take another shot at it.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Patrick Hastings and his wondrous website, https://www.ulyssesguide.com/, for being my staunch companion on the long, enjoyable, arduous journey of reading Joyce's Ulysses.