Welcome to Ulysses Wednesday, where I track my progress reading James Joyce's tale of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.
Status: page 429 of 783.
Again real life has hampered my reading progress. I did finish the "maternity ward" chapter, which my friend Ed informs me is the "Oxen of the Sun" episode (my edition has absolutely no mention of chapter numbers, much less the names of episodes as they are called in the smart circles) but it continued to make absolutely no sense to me.
I wonder if I need to read the whole book first without "thinking" about it, then go back to closely read and thus better appreciate what it's trying to say?
I am heading out on a short vacation today and since I know I won't be in the right place to read properly I am not bringing ol' Ulysses with me. I hope to read the next chapter/episode before next week's post, though.
Hey Sus,
ReplyDeleteThere's a great summary on Wikipedia.
Joyce was of two minds about giving titles to the chapters. He was afraid that if he did, people would get even more confused by taking the Homeric parallels literally. He made no bones about what the theme of each chapter mirrored in the Odyssey, but he thought it would confuse. (Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in his letters. )
Anyway, this is a great summary if you get lost on the "what's happening?" aspect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)#Structure
I really like reading your posts about Ulysses - whenever I see them in my feed they remind me that I'm supposed to be reading it!
ReplyDeletePS - I've given your blog an award; stop by my blog to see. :)