Ulysses
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession". None of these descriptions, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in its own way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's astonishing command of the English language.
Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is "What happens?" In the case of Ulysses, the answer could be "Everything". William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of inforgettable Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, loiter, argue and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream- of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river-- we're privy to their thoughts, emotions and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordion-folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.
Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call "Early Yeats Lite"-- will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naïve curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession". None of these descriptions, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in its own way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's astonishing command of the English language.
Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is "What happens?" In the case of Ulysses, the answer could be "Everything". William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of inforgettable Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, loiter, argue and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream- of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river-- we're privy to their thoughts, emotions and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordion-folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.
Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call "Early Yeats Lite"-- will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naïve curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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'WHERE do you begin in this?' Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
'WHERE do you begin in this?' Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Re-Joyce!,
By
This review is from: Ulysses (Modern Classics) (Audio CD)
This is an astounding tour de force. Ulysses is a notoriously difficult read but, when listening to this, one is simply swept along, unconcerned about such difficulties as foreign-language quotations, obscure allusions, opaque puns, crazy word-games etc. On the printed page, such things are frustrating for the reader, who feels ill-inclined to continue with a book which he or she doesn't fully undertand. But this brilliant reading places such difficulites in their proper perspective.
For me, this reading revealed the humour of the book for the first time. The Aeolus episode had me in stitches; the Cyclops episode and the end of Circe made me literally cry with laughter. And, in this reading, the very ending of the novel, with its great surge of warmth and love, is almost overwhelming. One could quibble about the occasional pronunciation. And maybe Marcella Riordan, who reads Molly Bloom, could somehow have suggested the total lack of punctuation in the final Penelope episode. (Yes, I appreciate that the poor woman has got to breathe...!) But these are minor quibbles. The reading(s), production and presentation are all absolutely first rate. I hope this splendid recording will win new admirers for this great masterpiece. Norton and Riordan have also recorded a very abridged Finnegans Wake. Let us hope that someday they - and Naxos - will give us the whole thing.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Extraordinary Experience,
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This review is from: Ulysses (Modern Classics) (Audio CD)
Like many, I have tried reading the book and found it quite tough.Jim Norton makes the text come to life and team with unforgettable characters. His voice is an extraordinary instrument capable of conveying every emotional nuance and moments of great humour. His reading is an amazing tour de force.He has an inexhaustible range of voices in all registers from velvety bass to falsetto. He conveys the multilayered prose with complete ease deploying many voices to convey a sense of place, inner thoughts and an astonishing cast of characters, each with a unique and distinctive timbre, register and accent.Bloom emerges as a deeply sympathetic and vulnerable human being.
Marcella Riordan is also marvellous as Molly. She is vividly realised and her soliloquy becomes a fascinating and erotic experience. Despite their considerable length, I have already enjoyed these discs several times and find each repetition more illuminating.I now understand why this book has achieved its legendary status. This reading is, perhaps, the most remarkable piece of storytelling I have ever heard.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thoor de Fahrts,
By
This review is from: Ulysses (Modern Classics) (Audio CD)
Tom Stoppard had Joyce answer the question of "what did you do in the war?" with "I wrote Ulysses, what did you do?" Jim Norton might answer a corresponding question about what did he do during the end of the world, with "I read Ulysses, what did you do." It is quite magnificent, transcending the medium of the audio book to create a genre for itself. Norton acts all the parts (except, finally for the affirmative Molly who is breathed out by Marcella Riordan) and makes this best of all and most difficult of all novels completely comprehensible. If you ever tried to read Ulysses and gave up, start again with this recording either by itself or in parallel with the written word. It will stay in your memory forever and you will be enriched.
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