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Ulysses (Modern Library) | 
 enlarge | Author: James Joyce
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy Used: $7.00
You Save: $16.95 (71%)
New (33) Used (56) Collectible (14) from $7.00
Rating:  396 reviews
Sales Rank: 271809
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 816
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.7 x 1.5
ISBN: 0679600116
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780679600114
ASIN: 0679600116
Publication Date: September 5, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: DJ is lightly soiled. Sound Copy. Mild Reading Wear.
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Amazon.com Review
Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, 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 a close-focus sort of 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 sheer 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 might 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 indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, 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 accordian 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 naive 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
Product Description
Considered the greatest 20th century novel written in English, in this edition Walter Gabler uncovers previously unseen text. It is a disillusioned study of estrangement, paralysis and the disintegration of society.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 391 more reviews...
 In History's Context January 2, 2009
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of those novels that in actuality heralded the end of the novel as it was known (and still is for those of us who still enjoy a story for story's sake, and by that I mean all the ingredients).
I first attempted to read this during my days in the army since I'd heard so much about it. But it wasn't until college that I was able to read this book and make sense of it (spent a whole semester doing so in a course by a superb professor).
But let's get back to the novel. Told a single day, the tale of Leopold Bloom is one that was unprecedented in its time. So much flap followed this book's publication in Europe that it took a ruling from our supreme court here in the states to allow the publication of Ulysses in America. The story, by Joyce's own admission, is modeled after Homer's Odyssey. Joyce himself admitted to, and I paraphrase here, including so many "enigmas and puzzles" he would keep scholars busy for years and solidify his own immortality. So much for being a humble writer. Of course, one might argue that no writer, by the very act of writing, can exercise humility.
Ulysses, since it was first serialized in a mag back in 1922, has always been more about people celebrating Joyce's supposed genius rather than about the book itself. It is, for the most part, a very poorly written book with prose, when the author is busy playing the old "look at how clever I am with wordcraft" game, is rather dull and empty.
Considered the modernist book of the ages, I recommend reading it first in a structured environment like a college classroom; even if you have to audit the class (maybe you can find a Joyce class at your local college). And if you can't do that it's best to hunker down with Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses [Revised and Expanded Edition] otherwise you might get lost like I did.
With that said, if you are looking for a beautifully written, compelling story I would look elsewhere. Of course, if mediocre prose peppered with crafty tricks is your thing then by all means have at it...
 Amazon Recommends I: James Joyce's Ulysses November 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Hello from this particular corner of the abstract retail market.
What a delight to have Amazon recommend the novel I've made practically a point in life to get around to reading! It provided just the necessary final incentive needed to throw all the "wait 'til a good time" aside and actually just read it, which of course is ultimately how it needs to be read.
"Ulysses" is famous for being "impenetrable" and "unreadable", but is far from either. Just like other formal experiments in writing, like Beat era writing, Thomas Pynchon novels, and more recently novels by such authors as David Foster Wallace (may he rest in peace) and Mark Z. Danielewsky, it's not a matter so much of understanding everything and getting the plot as it is of letting the book take you along on its own terms. In the case of "Ulysses" specifically, each chapter is it's own new formal experiment, and it is of my humble opinion that you are allowed to like some parts better than others. Those who have a problem with it are those who go into the reading with their own expectations or demands informing their analysis. "Ulysses" is an experience, and one that I think most people should at least try to have to see if it's for them or not (just like skydiving or eating unfamiliar food in a foreign country).
And like most media, the things that make it controversial are quite often beyond the point, and anybody who actually read the text finds that out quickly. This novel is about a lot of things, love, language, intertextuality, Shakespeare, Greek myth, Dublin (it does, after all, fall between the proto-neorealistic writing of "Dubliners" and the intense brooding of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"), humour, and life, and there are other repeated themes, allusions, motifs, and forms to give any critical reader much to play with and brood over, but it certainly is not difficult reading and it definitely isn't smut. Go figure.
In conclusion, this was a great way to start actually following Amazon's recommendation system, and I'm very proud of myself for finally getting around to doing something I really wanted to do after putting it off needlessly for so long.
--PolarisDiB
 Warning " look inside book" option is out of date October 30, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Ulysses (Everyman's Library, 100) When I ordered this book,(oct 08) the "look inside book" option showed the copy with blue covers, title on cover. But I received one with red covers, title on spine,the dust jackets are identical. Other reviews praise the blue covered volume, now out of date. If this matters to you, now you know you will receive the red covered volume.With my return, amazon may update the "look inside" book to show current red covers so you get what you ordered.
Ten Reasons to Re-read Ulysses October 11, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
1. When you tried it in college, it was a task, a challenge, an intellectual mountain to climb, a test of your literary mettle. Perhaps if you read it apart from any course, as I did, you felt you failed.
2. In the intervening time you've read perhaps hundreds of Modernist and post-modernist novels by Joyce's acknowledged progeny, those whose numbers are legion: from William Faulkner to Beckett to Barth to Perec to Eggers to Coover to Calvino to Kundera, from "Wittgenstein's Mistress" to "Wittgenstein's Nephew," from Jeanette Winterson to Louis Paul Boon and Gilbert Sorrentino to Peter Handke. These you have relished and enjoyed tremendously. Why, then, not tackle their progenitor, the master himself, again?
3. A book is no longer in any way a notch in your belt; you read for enjoyment, enlightenment, enrichment, a sense of connectedness, all the right reasons and some that aren't.
3. You can start with your old paperback, and if Ulysses again proves too difficult, you can toss it aside, no harm done.
4. If the old paperback falls apart and you find you're still reading, you can buy a new copy.
5. You're not in such an all-fired hurry any more. You have the sense to adapt to Joyce's demands and slow down your reading speed, recognizing that this is like a prose poem. Take five minutes on one given page, what's the rush? The writing is finely tooled enough to deserve it.
5. Your maturity allows you to see beyond the Masterpiece Syndrome and the Scholar's Paradise that Ulysses became to enjoy what a romp it is. This is fun! for God's sake. Joyce is forty different kinds of comedian, veering from irony to black comedy to sly humor to sheer buffoonery.
6. Each section being in a different style is itself royally entertaining, and Joyce is masterly in all of them. This is a buffet prepared by a virtuoso chef, and if you hang onto your hat, it's exhilarating as all get out.
7. The unexpected effect of all this variety is that the three main characters, Stephen Dedalus, Leopold and Molly Bloom are more vivid and real than they could possibly be otherwise. Various sections familiarize us with their intimate habits, personal effects, private thoughts, and the way others see them; and by regarding them through different stylistic lenses, Joyce effects unusual familiarity and allows these fictional entities to assume the palpability of real people.
8. We feel great affection for these characters, and Joyce achieves this while depicting them not as highly exceptional, heroic souls but rather average, idiosyncratic and unremarkable people. Even the highly intelligent, poetic Stephen is a typically self-dramatizing, youthful romantic. And yes, though the novel is rife with comic turns, there is poignancy, great and generous humanity.
9. The novel is a sensuous feast, the words chosen always with an ear for sound in the reciprocal service of memorable, ultravivid images. You can dog-ear a dictionary (to many disappointments, considering Joyce's flamboyant taste for arcana and neologisms) or not; your workable vocabulary will suffice for much, if not most, of the glorious language. In this regard Joyce is a wizard, a magician unsurpassed by any poet in memory.
10. As another reviewer here noted, you will have the urge, once you've come to the last line, to immediately begin again. Keep your new copy handy. This is such a kaleidoscope, a ride of a book, that you'll want to read it a third time, soon enough.
Mount Everest for Readers August 19, 2008
I can offer little in the way of literary criticism that has not been expounded by scholars about Joyce's masterpiece. What I can offer is the viewpoint of an 'average' reader.
My edition was the 1922 text, and it was prefaced by the original publisher with a simple disclaimer: "The publisher asks the reader's indulgence for typographical errors unavoidable in the exceptional circumstances." And it certainly is understandable and necessary: the text is rife with punctuation, spelling and word issues - but it is nearly impossible to tell which are deliberate and which came courtesy of the type setter.
The structure itself is almost more of a literary experiment than a novel. It switches presentations, from interior monologue to grandiose play to question and answers to stream of consciousness. At least that happens in sections, so the reader has some chance of keeping within the structure presented.
I read that Joyce wanted someone to be able to recreate Dublin from the text of this book - that's probably a good way to describe the essence of it. While not every street is named, the character of the city through its inhabitants comes through (often more clearly than what the event does that he is writing about).
It was a struggle to get through this book on my own, and I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it if read as part of a class or discussion group, particularly if there were participants with knowledge of Irish history and specifically Joyce's background. The failings however are more my own versus the text itself.
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