There is possibly nothing more pretentious than blogging about Ulysses.

So I'll start off with his friend Ezra Pound, to set the mood before moving in.  I'm a little obsessed with this one right now, it's very easy to sing-song it in your head like some sort of nursery rhyme mantra.

Salutation
O generation of the thoroughly smug 
and the thoroughly uncomfortable, 
I have seen fishermen picknicking in the sun, 
I have seen them with untidy families, 
I have seen their smiles full of teeth 
and heard ungainly laughter. 
And I am happier than you are, 
And they were happier than I am; 
And the fish swim in the lake 
and do not even own clothing.




---


So, Ulysses has been haunting my bedside table for, oh, I don't know--2 years now?  I started my Joyce infatuation because we read Dubliners in one of my English courses, and studying his style embodied everything that I loved about literary criticism in my fledgling, freshman, newly-declared English Major Brain.  I immediately went out and annihilated Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, pleased that his method of fusing puns with politics could be applied even to his own life.  


Then, I bought Ulysses.
And.  As you might have gathered, it has been a bit of a slog.
Not that it isn't great, because obviously it's Joyce, so it's brilliant, but I definitely would have preferred to read this in an academic setting, since I ended up putting double the effort into reading and research.  My knowledge of Parnellian politics and Irish history needed a boost, and I found myself turning to JSTOR to give me increasing help, just so that I could know why these words were worth reading.  His style of prefabricated language, and overwhelming dedication to idiom are, of course, ground-breaking, but make for weary reading.  


It's all worth it, though, for the section written in play format--the brothel scene which is played alongside Stephen's and Bloom's respective nightmare hallucinations--various family and other characters who turn up to admonish their brains.  [It is clear that Joyce was tripping balls at the time.]




I finished earlier this week, and have been relieved and confused.
This is my life Not Reading Ulysses.  I'd imagined this day would come, and had naively assumed that reaching this point would lead to some kind of finality.  It clearly needs more study and breakdown (which is definitely not what this post is all about) but it seems to me that finishing these literary epics are a kind of geeky milestone--and at the same time, incredibly humbling, because finishing the book is only the beginning of the work your brain has settled in for:  reading is the Finnegans Wake* of...y'know... reading.


Ugh.  Also hooray.  Also, ugh.




*My friend Joel and I theorize that no one has ever actually read Finnegans Wake. Everyone I know who says they started it can claim about 20 pages before they put it aside.  I suspect that the final chapters, and the tell-tale last sentence/first sentence structure, are purely myths and every lit.crit. on the subject is based on urban legends and campfire stories.