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Good advice. It’s a novel, after all. It’s great fun, and some of the best English prose I have ever encountered. The linked site is a fantastic resource. This
by leephillips 6y ago
Good advice. It’s a novel, after all. It’s great fun, and some of the best English prose I have ever encountered.
The linked site is a fantastic resource. This is the kind of thing the WWW was invented for (OK, not literally). Click on the notes to satisfy your curiosity, but not because you think you need to know all these details to enjoy the book.
From the site:
“Must one walk the streets of Dublin to find order in the protagonists’ meanderings?”
The last time I read the whole thing I did just this, but on a contemporaneous map, marking the paths of the two main characters in different colors, following a suggestion of Nabokov’s in his lecture on Ulysses (probably one of the few pieces of criticism of this book worth reading). I recommend it!
- leephillips 6y agoI’ll add that the first time I read it, I was confused for a while. I felt like I didn’t know what was going on, but the music of the language pulled me along. Then, about 100 pages in, it suddenly clicked. This is artistic genius: Joyce invented a new way to use language, to tell a story, his own brand of English—and through the beauty of his technique, compelled people to figure it out.