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 because he never did a thing like that before
by Brian Anderson
 On the 16th of June, 1904, in Dublin, nothing happened.
No wars broke out. No great person was born, or died, or had an epiphany. History wasn't changed.
Something, however, must have happened, for young James Joyce remembered the day very well. He may have had his first date with Nora Barnacle, the earthy, forthright woman who was to become his lifelong partner. He may have slept with her for the first time. It may have been the day that the two of them decided to leave Dublin together for a life on the Continent.
And of course, everything happened, because life happened: flies were stuck on windows; old friends died and were buried; new persons were brought into the world in maternity hospitals; breakfasts, lunches, dinners were eaten; Irish nationalism was discussed in pubs over beer and whiskey; men dreamed and women dared.
In 1922, Joyce and friends financed a run of 1000 copies of a book called Ulysses, which takes place between 8 AM on 16 June 1904 and dawn of the following day. In less than 800 pages, the book attempts to capture life in Dublin. "A day," Joyce would say in his final novel, "be as dense as a decade," and on every page the inner thoughts of his main character, Leopold Bloom, and the small incidents that happen to him, echo in our own lives.
Bloom thinks up schemes for bettering his lot. He tries to remember the words to half-forgotten arias and Gilbert and Sullivan songs. He has tropes like "thirtytwo feet per second per sec" and "Elijah is coming" running through his head. He tries not to think of the affair his wife, a singer, is most likely having with her promoter. As Dublin is his home, he is part of the city; and as an individual and as a Jew, he is an outsider. In other words, he's a lot like us.
Ulysses has been hyped as the greatest novel in the English language, or at least of the twentieth century. It's derided as an intellectual game for academics, a hobbyhorse for literary snobs, a massive joke on English literature.
All these opinions, of course, have merit: both academics and amateurs find Ulysses to be an intoxicating crossword puzzle and riddle book. They play games like Spot-the-Reference and Extemporaneous Exegesis. They point out the parallels, deep in the structure of the book, to Homer's Odyssey and name each chapter after the corresponding episode in that epic. They chuckle at Molly Bloom's final soliloquy as the only example of literature in which dawn actually has a rosy-fingered coming. They note that one chapter is a textual overture and fugue with theme and variations. They turn every 16th of June into a secular Passover, hosting pubcrawls and readings and dramatizations, crying "Next year in Dublin!"
And many potential readers, now using the tome as a doorstop, are left not with puzzles, but just puzzled. They couldn't get very far into the book without figuring out what was going on, they said. Certainly, this Joyce guy had talent, but did he have any reason to be so overly complex?
Of course he did. Life is complex, and one can't hope to recreate it using our paltry English. Words must be blended, mashed, chopped up to capture our thoughts. We think in shapes, in colors, in songs and snatches and quotes and feelings. We narrate for ourselves. Part of the point of Ulysses is that by turning an epic adventure into a throroughly mundane story, we can laugh at the Gods and fate, as we must every day to remain hopeful; but conversely, the human is shown as the epic. Every day has its little defeats and little triumphs, and each of our half-thoughts and returning themes builds toward those. Leopold Bloom, eminently flawed and modest in scope, becomes all the more wonderful simply for being real, and every day is a journey through unknown waters.
All well and good, you say (and so does Mr. Joyce, back there paring his fingernails). But how does one read the furshlugginer thing?
Slowly. While thinking. Just like everyday life, Ulysses requires you to meet it head-on and take an interest.
Aloud. Joyce's language trips off the tongue like poetry. His sight began failing while writing, and often he would dictate his writing. What looks like an impenetrable forest of text turns into a river of sound.
With annotations, if you must, but without if you can. Part of the pleasure is in a shared reference, in seeing the depth of a word choice below the sentence, in making a connection with the book. When you've been reading Joyce for a while, events and conversations in your own life seem to blend and mirror Bloom's life in the pages.
With patience. Everyone I know who has read Ulysses, from high school kids to literature professors, had to try more than once. At a certain point (different for everyone), the entire narrative breaks open as the whole gels. And as you change over time ("Molecules all change. I am other I now."), you learn new things; rereading reveals something new in light of your own thoughts and what you have learned from the full structure of the book.
With whimsy. Yes, Joyce is funny, self-mocking, ironic, sarcastic, joyful, and fond of wordplay.
With experience. Everyone who has ever been jealous, worried, a dreamer knows Bloom. Everyone who ever reveled in sensuality, who is hopeful, who feels like they've settled for a lesser life knows Molly. Everyone who has ever thought like an undergraduate, who drank too much and made a fool of himself knows Stephen.
With an eye to the whole. The book becomes more elaborate as it goes on, and the style becomes more wildly inventive. Bloom's Mitty-like dreamlife blends into reality in Nighttown; in a question and answer period he becomes a cometary Elijah. We build and build to a final moment, when Molly Bloom's female voice comes and undercuts all of this overly-male world, bringing us home to bed and watching the dawn.
No two people live the same life; and no two people read Ulysses the same way. The advice I give above (going on, it seems, for as long as the book itself)? It works for me. But old Jimmy intended his book for everyone: masons and Masons, women and men, laborers and lords. The most important advice is this: make it your own, by finding yourself in it.
Next year in Dublin!
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