In a quest
to find the greatest works of English language novelists, Random House, in 1998,
used its editorial board to come up with the 100 best novels of the 20th
century. And the winner was – Irish writer James Joyce for his novel Ulysses,
interestingly he also came in third for, A Portrait of the Artist.
So what was
Ulysses? A wandering story of more than a quarter of a million words that takes
place in a single day, June - sixteenth - 1904. The novel establishes parallel
lives between Homers, Odyssey and Ulysses of Joyce’s work.
It is tough
reading in places as Joyce, a stream of consciousness writer, uses a large number
of puns, twists and turns to tell his story. The novel was attached for
obscenity and criticized by some scholars for too many mistakes, but it continues
to show up at the top of nearly all lists of great novels.
The book was
originally serialized into eighteen parts, of which as a college student I was
forced or honored to read two of them, we could have read another for extra
credit, but I passed.
Think I will
kick back and relax with a good western.
1 comment:
I didn't understand much of Ulysses due to the stream of conscious writing and I don't have the time to re-read it and re-read it. I'll stick to lighter reading for now.
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