Ulysses by James Joyce

Ulysses by James Joyce

Finished July 30, 2026

So. Having just recently read The Odyssey I thought what better time to read Ulysses since, y’know, “the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus…” Not to mention, this book is allegedly “one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called a demonstration and summation of the entire movement.”

It’s also said to be “one of the richest, and also the most difficult, books to ever be written.”

Having slogged through the whole thing, my theory is that this book is much like the emperor’s new clothes—it’s “dense but rewarding” and “full of symbolism and allegory” because no one wants to look like an uneducated fool and say, “this fucking sucks.”

Yes, it’s full of references. But so what. I could write a bunch of shit and namedrop references too, does that make my writing good? Homer, Ulysses, Helen…there, I’m a fucking genius. Just wait until I start writing unhinged stream of consciousness nonsense; you’ll be in for a real treat, I swear.

Okay, okay. I get that this book is A Big Deal.™ Maybe I am an uneducated idiot with no reading comprehension or appreciation for reference, allegory, or symbolism. Rather than quitting while I’m ahead, allow me to share some excerpts, fully displaying my embarrassing ignorance.

While not particularly great, the book starts off mostly normal and readable:

Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once …

And yes, that is how that ends, with the …
That’s the original text, not me cutting it off.


At the time I thought, “wow, how unappetizing” but at least this paragraph makes sense:

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

I would very quickly miss paragraphs and sentences about urine.

Even this one is mostly readable. Went from talking about urine to talking about shit, but readable:

He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall. Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of all though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies’ kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny, I don’t remember that. Hallstand too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago’s shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James Stephens they say. O’Brien.

Actually, this one got picked because, per my previous The Last Unicorn reference, I read “has anybody here seen Kelly” in the butterfly’s sing-song:

As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead march from Saul. He’s as bad as old Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady’s Hospice for the dying. Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They look terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He’s gone over to the lying-in hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other.

It’s so funny because at the time I read these, I thought they were nonsense. But looking at them now compared to what comes later, I think, “no, these are totally readable.” I do think this book has some sort of weird hypnosis; you read so much fast gibberish that at some point you feel it’s totally normal, of course it makes sense. (It doesn’t.)

This made me laugh because of the last bit:

Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem mass. Crape weepers. Black edged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Brown. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you’re a goner.
My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better.

Yeah, sure, it’s the voice of the current subject and totally not the author writing whatever comes to mind. Reminds me of when people accidentally leave the AI prompts in their writing. No, what am I saying—I’m sure the whole “my kneecap is hurting me. ow. that’s better” has some major huge significance, some brilliant reference and deep meaning.

The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with haste, quake, quack.
Door closed. Cell. Day.
They list. Three. They.
I you he they.
Come. mess.

Genius, isn’t it? Don’t worry, there’s more:

Pwee! Little wind piped wee.
True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay, Like you men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk.
Fff! Oo!
Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs?
Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl.
Then, not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt.
Done.
Begin!

Smack. She let free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable a woman’s warmhosed thigh.
―La cloche! cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No sawdust there.
She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren’t men?), but, lightward gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan.

I guess compared to the last two this one smacking smackwarm against her smackable thigh sounds almost normal. But I don’t know why “breasting boobily” is a joke when “smackwarm against her smackable” is “one of the greatest literary works in history.”

Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at his feet when will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. He can’t sing for tall hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him. What perfume does your wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look at mirror always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How do you? I do well. There? What? Or? Phial of cachous, kissing comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent.

Yep. Those are words. Good wording there.

Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went.

I’m sure we all remember this part in The Odyssey, right? Of course we do.

In Gerard’s rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. One life is all. One body. Do. But do.
Done anyhow. Postal order stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk now. Enough. Barney Kiernan’s I promised to meet them. Dislike that job. House of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn’t hear. Deaf beetle he is.
Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn’t. Settling those napkins. Lot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind on him then he’d be two. Wish they’d sing more. Keep my mind off.
Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait.

HEE HEE HEE HEE HOH INDEED

Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Then comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes her fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.

It’s fucking allegory, I’m telling you.

Oh? What the fuck is this, a paragraph that actually makes sense? Why?? We were just klook klook klooking, why actually write a real sentence and ruin things:

Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14 A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.

Don’t worry, he doesn’t make sense for long and soon we’re back to this:

O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair heave under embon señorita young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan Winkle red slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in her next her next.

It gets even better:

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (In amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly.) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a partially nude señorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping.
MRS BELLINGHAM: Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Me too.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of fury.) I will, by the God above me. I’ll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I’ll flay him alive.
BLOOM: (His eyes closing, quails expectantly.) Here? (He squirms.) Again! (He pants cringing.) I love the danger.”

DR MULLIGAN: (In motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow.) Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace’s private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta.
(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)

VIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (Harshly, his pupils waxing.) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. (He wriggles.) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man’s lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. (He cries.) Coactus volui. Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grapses woman’s wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman’s fat yadgana. (He chases his tail.) Piffpaff! Popo! (He stops, sneezes.) Pchp! (He worries his butt.) Prrrrrht!”

KITTY: (From the sofa.) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What.
(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)
MINA KENNEDY: (Her eyes upturned.) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together! Covered with kisses!
LYDIA DOUCE: (Her mouth opening.) Yumyum. O, he’s carrying her round the room doing it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.
KITTY: (Laughing.) Hee hee hee.
BOYLAN’S VOICE: (Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach.) Ah! Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht!
MARION’S VOICE: (Hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat.) O! Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck?
BLOOM: (His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself.) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her! More! Shoot!
BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!
LYNCH: (Points.) The mirror up to nature. (He laughs.) Hu hu hu hu hu!”

The symbolism. So brilliant. So brave. Ho ho, ha ha, hee hee, hu hu hu hu hu.

Thank God for this sentence so I can remember how words actually work:

PRIVATE CARR: (Tugging at his belt.) I’ll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my fucking king.

Private Carr, I don’t know who you are (only that you’re drunk, I think?) but thank you for your much-needed interjection. Possibly my favorite line in the whole book. Not that the bar was particularly high.

After that headache-inducing chapter, we got a chapter full of words and mostly actual sentences in an excessive interrogative format that made you want to kill yourself. Unless you like listening to pedantic depositions in which case this chapter was totally for you:

What relation existed between their ages?
16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen’s present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom’s present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C.
What events might nullify these calculations?
The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a new era or calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent extermination of the human species, inevitable but impredictable.

Did either openly allude to their racial difference?
Neither.
What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom and about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen?
He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not.

In what posture?
Listener: reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, right leg extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the attitude of Gea-Tellus, fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed. Narrator: reclined laterally, left, with right and left legs flexed, the index finger and thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge of the nose, in the attitude depicted in a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn, the childman weary, the manchild in the womb.
Womb? Weary?
He rests. He has travelled.
With?
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.
When?
Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc’s auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler.

Surely with one final chapter left we have survived the worst of it..? After all, this chapter is (I’m assuming?) from the POV of Molly Bloom—the parallel of Penelope we’re told. You remember Penelope, right? Odysseus’ wife who waited (chastely, I believe?) not only through the entire Trojan war but then the ten additional years it took Odysseus to return home, all the while trying to cleverly fend off suitors and hold down the fort.

Don’t ask me why the entire chapter has maybe one period and is just pages of solid text. So the excerpts are just…pickings because there aren’t really paragraphs or sentences. No punctuation for you, reader.

…I was leaning over him with my white ricestraw hat to take the newness out of it the left side of my face the best my blouse open for his last day transparent kind of shirt he had I could see his chest pink he wanted to touch mine with his for a moment but I wouldnt lee him he was awfully put out first for fear you never know consumption or leave me with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told me that one drop even if it got into you at all after I tried with the Banana but I was afraid it might break and get lost up in me somewhere because they once took something down out of a woman that was up there for years covered with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there where they come out of youd think they could never go far enough up and then theyre done with you in a way till the next time yes because theres a wonderful feeling there so tender all the time how did we finish it off yes O yes I pulled him off into my handkerchief pretending not to be excited but I opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch me inside my petticoat because I had a skirt opening up the side I tormented the life out of him…

…Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck besides hes young those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathingplace from the side of the rock standing up in the sun naked like a God or something and then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all day long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to listen theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock there so simple I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and white he looks with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its only like gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs of men I suppose never dream of washing it from 1 years end to the other the most of them only thats what gives the women the moustaches…

…Id love a big juicy pear now to melt in your mouth like when I used to be in the longing way then Ill throw him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to make his mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream too I know what Ill do Ill go about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then mi fa pieta Masetto then Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son piu forte Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good eyeful out of that to make his micky stand for him Ill let him know if thats what he wanted that his wife is I s l o fucked yes and damn well fucked too up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres the mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to even iron it out that ought to satisfy him if you dont believe me feel my belly unless I made him stand there and put him into me Ive a mind to tell him every scrap and make him do it out in front of me serve him right its all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery said O much about it if thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of tears God knows its not much doesnt everybody only they hide it I suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or He wouldnt have made us the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then…

Oh, you don’t see the correlation between Penelope undoing her shroud weaving every night to delay her suitors and Molly talking about a tongue 7 miles up her hole? How fucking ignorant are you? Get some literacy, already.

More than once I did wonder if this whole book was actually some elaborate code.

Also more than once I wondered if I was maybe being driven insane. If that was the point.

I do realize there are piles of legitimate references that I don’t get whether they’re too old or too Irish or just outside of my education. That said, I don’t think understanding them would help. Or would help enough.

I’m also not sure about a book that basically requires a whole other book explaining it/telling you how to read it/what it’s supposed to mean. Especially since it wasn’t really written that long ago. I’m all for a reader having to do some heavy lifting, read between the lines, to not be spoonfed, etc. but this just comes off as pretentious.

I found myself missing Kerouac; his pages of solid stream-of-consciousness text at least were fun. It was a story he seemed excited about sharing, it was a mad ride with the reader. Whereas the entire time I was reading Ulysses I felt like the author had nothing but contempt for the reader. As if he was just sadistically experimenting with how much he could get away with and have people venerate him for the abuse.

Rating: Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.