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Ulysses for doubting Thomases
For a 100 years James Joyce’s Ulysses has been seen as an intimidating read. KATY MULLIN begs to differ and here’s why
INNOVATOR: James Joyce playing a guitar, 1915 and Ulisses first edition published by Paris-Shakespeare, 1922
[(L to R) Geoffrey Barker/Creative Commons and C Ruf/Wikipedia]
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JAMES JOYCE’S Ulysses was first published 100 years ago. For a century, it has been seen as an intimidating read, but I’d like to challenge that. It is surprisingly accessible.
Set in Dublin on a single day (June 16 1904), Ulysses commemorated Joyce’s first date with his life partner, Nora Barnacle. Nora herself never cared to read it. “Jim,” she said, “should have stuck to the singing.”
It isn’t hard to see why she was put off. The first three chapters focus on Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s sardonic portrait of his younger self as a philosophising drifter prone to giving lectures on Hamlet over pints.
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