I have not read Ulysses by James Joyce, few people have. Even fewer have understood it. To honor the annual Bloomsday festival going on right now, here is a map showing the wanderings and locations within the book. The map about as easy to understand as the plot itself.
Ulysses takes a fair amount of effort, and of course that's not how everybody is going to want to spend their effort, but it's also pretty rewarding if you geek out hard with it. It's best read in a group and/or with a companion book the first time through. The "Symbol / Art / Technic" business is related to the stuff Nabakov correctly called "the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings," and is best ignored. But, everybody who talks about Ulysses is kind of obligated to mention that stuff, in the same way they are obligated to say that Ulysses subverts previous literature by describing an average guy on an normal day rather than having a overarching narrative arc. The guy isn't average, the day isn't normal, there's an overarching narrative arc, and previous literature isn't subverted. Otherwise, the description is dead on. HAPPY BLOOMSDAY 2024!!!
Ulysses takes a fair amount of effort, and of course that's not how everybody is going to want to spend their effort, but it's also pretty rewarding if you geek out hard with it. It's best read in a group and/or with a companion book the first time through. The "Symbol / Art / Technic" business is related to the stuff Nabakov correctly called "the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings," and is best ignored. But, everybody who talks about Ulysses is kind of obligated to mention that stuff, in the same way they are obligated to say that Ulysses subverts previous literature by describing an average guy on an normal day rather than having a overarching narrative arc. The guy isn't average, the day isn't normal, there's an overarching narrative arc, and previous literature isn't subverted. Otherwise, the description is dead on. HAPPY BLOOMSDAY 2024!!!
Thanks for the clarification!