Memories of Ulysses ..for those on flist doing a Book Melee

[shadowkat]

Once upon a time, I did a really stupid thing - I decided to take not one, but two classes on James Joyce's Ulysess, plus did my BA thesis comparing Ulysses to Faulkner's Sound and The Fury. I'd gotten somewhat obsessed with reading the book when my mother told me she'd written a paper on why it was banned in the US when it was first published. And the controversary surrounding it.

The reasons it was banned? Ah. Three that I remember: 1) there is a rather humorous conversation in the middle where a guy is trying to pee with the clap. (I vaguely remember my Prof drawing on the chalk-board the urine arcs of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus and explaining what the arc of each metaphorically explained about each character. And how Dedalus was the son Bloom never had, and Bloom the father.)
2. The language and explicit sex - yes it is there, if you look.
3. Molly Bloom's monologue

Personally, I think whomever banned it was nuts. The other reason it obsessed me is it is a story that takes place within one day - a man's internal journey and his effect on those around him in the space of that day. Not a special or extraordinary man, but an ordinary bloke who feels incompetent, the everyman.
Not brilliant. Just a man. This was a revelation to me - the concept of doing a 600 page book about a man's day, detailing all the aspects of that day through his and his friends and acquaintances thoughts as one long prose poem.
Sort of a - what if Ulysses journey took place in one day and was an internal one - what if we are all Ulysses in our way - going through our own metaphorical internal journies? The myth scholar in me went nuts. In case you haven't figured it out by now, I was obsessed with mythology, oral stories and poetry, and folklore in the 1980s.

When reading it - it helps if you've read the Odyssey, or at least have some understanding of it. Since each chapter is named after a chapter of that epic poem and Joyce styled it after the Odyssey. I remember hearing long lectures on that.

It also helps if you have read the book "Portrait of An Artist as A Young Man" - which introduces Stephen Dedalus and is easier to read than Ulysses.
Not necessary, but helps.

Oh and it really helps if you have a good translation. What? A Translation?
But he wrote in English, right? Ah no. He wrote the manuscript - and had French nuns type it, because he couldn't type or afford anyone else. Scholars got a hold of the original written manuscript that the nuns had and re-translated it. The French nuns didn't know English very well and Joyce's writting wasn't always legible - just imagine what the result was. (I'm pretty sure that's the story, it's been a while since I studied all this - did it back in 1988-1989. First class, spring 88, second fall 88. Thesis, 89. I got obsessed with it and James Joyce for reasons, I no longer quite understand, and ended up reading the thing four times. Plus all the literary criticism on it, and three biographies on Joyce, the best by Elliman.)