The Tale of Brave Jacob

Ulysses by James Joyce is considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.  Libraries have been filled with attempts to analyze and annotate, hundreds upon thousands of terrible undergraduate papers have been written, lives have been made and ruined with this book.  I have tried to read this book five times (at minimum - not counting the handful attempts where I've read the first five pages and put it back down in fear and self loathing) and have yet to finish.

Joyce wrote only three novels, three collections of poetry, and a collection of short stories.  I've read his first work, his short story collection, Dubliners.  I read this while in Turkey and it was amazing.  Loved it.  Stories are simple yet profound.  I read his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man after my senior year in high school and it immediately became my favorite book - a great portrayal of a young man wrestling with his faith, his desire to be a writer, his family/national ties, and romance.  Obviously right up my alley.

Apparently somewhere along the way Joyce decided that his writing should be incredibly esoteric and impenetrable.  Ulysses plays around with form and style, employing stream-of-consciousness, and relying heavily on abstract, obscure allusions.  (Abstract and obscure to those who do not have doctorates in Greek literature/mythology.)  For example, the last fifty pages or so is an inner dialogue of a house wife with no punctuation.  Joyce's final novel Finnegan's Wake is considered to be unreadable. I tried to read the first page and almost choked on my tongue.   Here is the opening "sentence" to Finnegan's Wake: 

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

That’s pretty much the whole novel.  Although Ulysses does not pose that extreme threat to my sanity, it’s still quite a trudging experience.  I would even pride myself in being able to read “difficult” literature, but this is a beast of a novel; it is my Moby Dick.  It will only take an Ahabian obsession to destroy the book that has eaten my leg, scarred my body, and ruined my marriage… (whale may or may not have done the latter).

So with the summer approaching and possible time to spare, I have decided to dedicate myself to finish Ulysses.  Updates to follow.