Great Courses: Ulysses-The Story of a Modern Masterpiece

To combat the boredom of sitting in traffic, I’ve decided to start listening to the Great Courses series to keep me from potentially murdering that one person in the fast lane who loves leaving 10 car lengths in front of them at all times until you attempt to pass. I decided to start with one of my great failures as a reader, that being one of the most interminable slogs I’ve attempted to digest, Ulysses by James Joyce. I’ve decided to start with this for several reasons; I want to finally finish what I started all those years ago, and I’m also heading to Ireland for Thanksgiving on vacation. Being Joyce is one of the most famous of writers from an island known for their writers, I figured it would help me get in the mindset of a Dubliner, so to speak.

 To make sure I stick with it and actually learn something, I’ve decided to write up a summary and my thoughts on each part of the lecture as I read along with the book. The lecture series is helpfully broken into parts that discuss each chapter individually, so I’ll be able to do this one piece at a time. Now that I’ve listened to the intro lecture titled The Story of Modern Masterpiece, I think I’m ready to take on this most difficult book.

 The professor giving the lecture for this series is James A. W. Heffernan, a professor of English at Dartmouth by way of Georgetown and Princeton, so I half assumed he would be an obnoxious, stuffed shirt droning on and on until I fell asleep and ended up in a five car pileup. Luckily, that expectation couldn’t be farther from the truth. He has a very clear, authoritative voice, and he speaks with passion on the subject, bringing it to life for the listener. After listening to the first part, I’m already motivated to see all the things I’ve missed out on having been unable to tackle this book on my own.

 He starts with a short summary of the origins of the book and it’s contemporary reviews. Let’s just say they weren’t particularly kind. Thought of as turgid, pornographic, and confusing(incidentally, these were my first thoughts when trying to read it 15 years ago), it wasn’t received all that well in the literary circles. However, it did pick up several American luminaries that were quite taken with it, such as Ernest Hemmingway, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. Of course, none of those three is a selling point for me; I don’t much care for poetry and Hemmingway is vastly overrated in my opinion. Written in Paris by Joyce in 1922, it was apparently banned in the United States until 1933 due to the pornographic nature of some of the passages. The lecturer states that it’s probably the first book to have the main protagonist masterbating; I suppose harlequin novels hadn’t quite been developed yet.

 The title of the book is interesting as it relates to the story itself. While the book only takes place over one day, June 16th, 1904, now referred to as Bloomsday by fans of the novel and named after the main character Leopold Bloom, the characters parallel the great adventure poem the Odyssey by Homer. Why was the title of the book the Latinized form of the name of Odysseus instead of Greek? Apparently, Joyce never learned Greek, having studied Latin and French, always regretting that he was unable to read the epic poetry in it’s native language. I doubt this makes much of a difference to the novel itself, but it is a rather fascinating look into the writer’s mind. Joyce was introduced to the character Ulysses in a children’s book made up of the various adventures when he was young and he was so taken with the complexity of Ulysses that he used it for the basis of his most respected book.

 The lecturer gives a short history of the Odyssey for those that apparently missed that class back in high school, and discusses how the three main characters of the novel are reincarnations of the ancient Greek characters of the ancient poem. Ulysses is represented by Leopold Bloom, a man who doesn’t quite fit into his world due to his heritage. His father was a Jew from the mainland who converted to Christianity in order to marry a Catholic Irish girl, Leopold’s mother. Bloom is not a Jew in any religious sense, but it seems that the ethnicity plays a role throughout the story. Ulysses son Telemachus is represented by the second main character Stephen Dedalus, a young writer who actually appears in a previous novel called Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (I had no idea Ulysses qualified as a spinoff/sequel-take that Marvel!), a non practicing catholic who is obsessed with said religion, and who is a failed writer descending into alcoholism due to guilt regarding the death of his mother. He apparently becomes a surrogate son to Bloom at some point throughout the novel. The last character who really only appears in one chapter is Leopold’s wife, Molly Bloom. She is representing Ulysses’ wife Penelope, although appears to be quite a bit less chaste, considering Molly is openly having an affair with another man.

 Now that the stage is set, the characters are introduced, the only thing left is to actually read the damn thing and listen to the good professor’s interpretations of what James Joyce was trying to say. Being this book is 18 chapters, I have a feeling this is going to take a while. Hopefully, it’s quite the ride.

Vox Popoli: This explains so much

I think this picture will have disagree with your judgment about that face.