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    Joyce's Ulysses for Everyone: Or How to Skip Reading It the First Time
    Joyce's Ulysses for Everyone: Or How to Skip Reading It the First Time
    Joyce's Ulysses for Everyone: Or How to Skip Reading It the First Time
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    Joyce's Ulysses for Everyone: Or How to Skip Reading It the First Time

    By John Mood

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    Most scholarly writing about Joyces Ulysses has concentrated on its parallels with Homer''s Odyssey, Catholic theology, Dublins streets, Shakespearean references (especially Hamlet} , all of which, and much more, Joyce included in his novel but emphasizing the interpretation of these overlays to the story has led to the book appearing almost impenetrable to readers who might otherwise enjoy it.


    Mood attempts to cut through these grids and go directly to the strengths of the novel: - its suspenseful double plot, its breathtaking wordplay, its eroticism and, above all, its constant hilarious comedy. One doesn''t need to know a thing about the Odyssey to enjoy Ulysses thoroughly.


    The life of the young Stephen Dedalus is in a mess and he obviously needs an elder''s advice. The older Leopold Bloom yearns to pass on his wisdom to someone younger. He also learns his wife Molly is going to commit adultery for the first time. These plots, not Catholic theology or Hamlet, is what the novel is "about". And the comedy, the sex, the heart-stopping suspense and the verbal fireworks are what drive the reader on.


    Moods book makes this obvious on every page. One will never have difficulty reading Ulysses again.


    The late dean of American critics Leslie Fiedler said it would be "more useful [for beginning readers] than anything else I have seen".


    Best-selling Dublin novelist and memoirist Nuala O''Faolain said it is a "charming and funny account of Ulysses" and "quite authoritative as well."


    Tom Wolfe commented, "I certainly enjoyed your Joycean excursion, particularly the part about Joyces interweaving of various narrative voices.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateJun 11, 2004
    ISBN9781418460334
    Joyce's Ulysses for Everyone: Or How to Skip Reading It the First Time
    Author

    John Mood

    The author moved west from Indiana to San Diego with her husband John in 1973, to start a new life. And it worked. After many heres and theres, tos and fros, in 1991 she became a full-time professor of creative writing, composition and literature at Grossmont College in El Cajon, CA, where she still teaches today.

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      Book preview

      Joyce's Ulysses for Everyone - John Mood

      JOYCE’S ULYSSES FOR

      EVERYONE

      OR HOW TO SKIP READING IT THE FIRST TIME

      BY

      JOHN MOOD

      © 2004 by John Mood. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

      First published by AuthorHouse 07/30/04

      ISBN: 978-1-4184-6033-4 (e-book)

      ISBN: 1-4184-5105-3 (Paperback)

      ISBN: 1-4184-5104-5 (Dust Jacket)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2004095680

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      1. INTRODUCTION

      2. THE CHAPTERS OF ULYSSES

      3. PLOT STRUCTURE AND NARRATIVE STYLE IN ULYSSES

      4. THE PLOTS OF ULYSSES

      5. THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

      6. RECURRING WORDS AND PHRASES, WITH FIRST OCCURENCE

      7. AND NOW, ABOUT THAT SECONDARY LITERATURE

      8. 1ST SAMPLE, TOO RADICAL POLITICALLY—GULLIVER AND THE LESTRYGONIANS: A HETERODOX VIEW OF THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF LITERATURE

      9. 2ND EXAMPLE, TOO EXPLICIT SEXUALLY—’THE FEMINIAIRITY WHICH BREATHES CONTENT’—JAMES JOYCE’S ‘NEW FREE WOMAN’ AND ‘NEW WOMANLY MAN’

      The function of criticism should be

      to show how it is what it is, even

      that it is what it is, rather than

      what it means.

      Susan Sontag

      1. INTRODUCTION

      James Joyce’s novel Ulysses is the account of one day in the life of compassionate ad salesman Leopold Bloom, his sexy wife the professional singer Molly, and the young intellectual school teacher Stephen Dedalus. The novel has it all—complex plotting, mesmerizing word play, infidelity, betrayal, conflict, pathos, heartache, hallucination, anguish, all kinds of humor, even a brief scuffle with no gore at all, and a marvelous final resolution. In short, everything that most readers of novels would enjoy. It is by far my favorite novel; I’ve read it straight through eleven times and it is truly the one book I would take to the proverbial desert island.

      Yet it seems that while the novel is highly thought of, as well as intensively studied in the universities, few people actually read it just for pleasure. Many who love novels and appreciate poetic language confess to being unable to get very far into Joyce’s admitted masterpiece. Even those who have enjoyed Joyce’s earlier fiction seem daunted by Ulysses. They appreciated the stories in Dubliners and fell in love with Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. But even the fact that Stephen is also one of the three main characters in Ulysses doesn’t seem to help them in trying to read that novel.

      Certainly, at first glance, the novel does appear quite daunting, what with all the numerous overlays and grids of Odyssean parallels, Catholic theologizing, Dublin streets, Shakespearean references, descriptions of real persons, to say nothing of the innumerable other allusions which Joyce’s awesome learning scattered throughout his story. It is enough to put one off at first.

      And for all their work, the Joycean scholars haven’t helped the non-academic reader. I myself used to be one of those, a Joycean, a university professor who taught Ulysses, got scholarly articles on it published, attended and spoke at international Joyce symposia. But I was not happy being an academician and so in 1973 I resigned my tenured professorship and moved to San Diego, California, where I still live. I didn’t lose my interest in Ulysses, however. Indeed, it increased, perhaps in part because I was no longer a Joycean. Of my eleven readings of the novel, three of them were out loud with my wife after I left the university. Actually, we frequently were unable to continue on reading because we were laughing so hard.

      That points up one problem with the scholars; they are so-o-o-o serious. Joyce himself commented on that, observing that C. G. Jung "seems to have read Ulysses from first to last without one smile." On the other hand, Joyce’s wife complained that his laughter while writing kept her awake at night. I can believe it; Ulysses is a comedy, after all, and a sexy suspenseful one at that. Though you’d never know it from the critics, who Joyce said would be busy for centuries arguing over what I meant. I say, let them argue over Finnegans Wake and leave Ulysses for the many readers who could enjoy the fireworks display of plotting and poetry, story and style, underlying all the learned frameworks, if only they had a little help.

      Part of that help has finally arrived in the form of a professionally recorded, unabridged audiocassette of the novel, so that one can have the novel read to oneself while holding the text in one’s hand, saving my wife and me from having to read it aloud to ourselves any more. For that has been my conviction for decades—the novel must be read out loud to be appreciated, and this recording does that work for you, and brilliantly.

      The only acceptable text of the novel itself now is Ulysses [The Corrected Text or The Gabler Edition] (New York: Random House, 1986), which eliminates more than 5000 errors accumulated over the years in previous editions. The spoken book recording uses this version and is performed by two Irish actors. It is available as "Ulysses by James Joyce, 30 Audiocassettes Narrated by Donal Donnelly and Miriam Healy-Louie (Prince Frederick, MD: Recorded Books, 1995), from Recorded Books, Inc., 270 Skipjack Rd., Prince Frederick, MD 20678, 1-800-638-1304. Ask your local library to get it; I did and it worked. Still, I treated myself and splurged the $185.00 for my own copy. You’re in luck, however. There are now two editions, one for libraries, still at that same price, and the personal Collector’s Edition" for individual consumers. You can rent the 30 cassettes for 2 months for $35.50 plus $9.50 S. & H. or buy it for only $99.95 plus $5.00 S.& H., with a 90-day warranty! I urge you to do one or the other; it makes a world of difference in reading the novel.

      The present book provides other resources, or tools, which can enable one to skip reading Ulysses the first time, as it were.

      First and foremost, one should be familiar with the two intertwined plots of Ulysses. This is, after all, not a puzzle to solve, but a novel with a story to tell, actually two related stories. My third chapter here provides an overview of these plots, their structures and associated matters. The heart of this book is the fourth chapter which moves through the novel step by step by focussing on the double narrative. I describe briefly the various styles employed in the novel and some of the other events that occur. I also occasionally mention some allusions and parallels outside the plot and call attention once in a while to the humor and verbal play Joyce is always engaging in. I should add that the reader should be quite alert at all times. This is not a novel to read oneself to sleep to!

      Second, a cast of characters is helpful because there are so many of them. Chapter five has the family trees of the two major families (Dedalus and Bloom) and an alphabetic list of more than 125 characters in the novel, identifying each and giving the page number of first appearance.

      The sixth chapter gives a list of some recurring phrases with the page number of their first appearance. These are organized by character (Stephen, Bloom, Molly, etc.), and enable one to keep track of who is thinking, or being thought (written!) about.

      These aids should enable the attentive first time reader to have a marvelous experience reading while listening to Ulysses as though for the second time. Should one then wish to experience more fully the delights of the novel, read it a third time as it were, or even begin exploring the numerous structures Joyce has erected to hang his plots on—Homeric, Christian, Shakespearean, the streets of Dublin, etc.—one can do so by using the many available secondary sources. At that time, Ulysses scholars can be of assistance, if used judiciously. I speak to this problem in the seventh chapter, and illustrate my points in chapters eight and nine

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