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Comment by isaacfrond | Hacker News Reader

From the verdict:

Joyce has attempted it seems to me, with astonishing success to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious. He shows how each of these impressions affects the life and behavior of the character which he is describing.

I've tried, at least five times to read the book... and failed each time. Then I tried the audiobook. Gave it up. I have to face it, I'm just not up to the task.

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I think the desire to understand the meaning of everything immediately defeats a lot of readers.

If you're willing to read it more like a poem - to just experience it and only understand some portion of what's going on then it is quite an immersive book.

Time has increased the obscurity of much of what is said and done. Also it was released at a time when the education of an educated person with respect to literature, the classics and language was at something if a peak in Europe.

So you've read it cover to cover?

I don't want to misjudge you but the question kind of suggests that no answer will truly satisfy. I mean like you could ask did your eyeball rest upon each word? Did your brain decode the meaning of every word? I don't know.

I read it when I was 17 and again at 21. Haven't read it since. I studied literature so I had to read it the second time. It's very far from being a favourite and lots of silly things are said about it but it is readable and evocative and interesting.

> I think the desire to understand the meaning of everything immediately defeats a lot of readers. If you're willing to…just experience it and only understand some portion of what's going on then it is quite an immersive book.

I love this sentiment. So many people have been conditioned to look for the “truth” in everything, when the reality is that not everything has a fundamental truth that’s meant to be universally understood.

There was a thread on one of the design subreddits not long ago about London’s book benches[1]. Some of the commenters were absolutely convinced that the benches are deliberately designed to be hostile to the homeless, because the seat is curved and can’t be easily used for sleeping - never mind that it’s meant to look like an open book.

Sometimes a thing is just a thing; sometimes a book is just a poem.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2014/sep...

> Some of the commenters were absolutely convinced that the benches are deliberately designed to be hostile to the homeless, because the seat is curved and can’t be easily used for sleeping

Why can't it be both? Hostile design in public infrastructure is absolutely a thing. I can't prove that the design was "deliberately" hostile but it's clearly hostile for sleeping on.

> never mind that it’s meant to look like an open book

Cool. This bed is also meant to look like an open book: https://bookpatrol.net/ruth-beales-bookbed/book-bed-ruth-bea...

Yet you can sleep on this one and not sleep on the other one. Obviously you can say that one is meant to be a bed and that one is meant to be a bench. But surely you can imagine a bench which is booth looking like an open book and can be slept on?

> Some of the commenters were absolutely convinced that the benches are deliberately designed to be hostile to the homeless, because the seat is curved and can’t be easily used for sleeping - never mind that it’s meant to look like an open book.

This is off-topic, but both things can be true. I would expect any competent organization who wanted to do hostile architecture in an aesthetic way would be able to find a solution like that.

I always assumed it's on of those books that everybody has in the bookshelf but no one ever really read.

I wouldn't feel bad. I listened to the audiobook five times - a yearly pilgrimage to try and "get it."

I loved the language and the cleverness from the start; and I understood more of the story each time. BUT I no longer feel like the "payoff" was worth the journey. I assumed there was some deep understanding or message that would come through eventually, but I no longer think that's the case.

Robert Anton Wilson described the book as a joke at the expense of English majors (can't find the exact quote) and I tend to agree. Kind of like the obfuscated C contest; try to read it if it entertains you, but stop if it doesn't.

I've decided it's a little too "inside baseball" for me.

You may enjoy literature more if you don’t reduce works of art to conveyances of “messages”. Ulysses is far better than that.

I enjoy a lot of literature. I've just fallen out of love with Ulysses; The more I understood the more I felt the author was just trying to show off.

Clearly it's not worthless or we wouldn't be talking about it a hundred years later. But when you say it's "better," what is your measure of quality?

Subjective, as everyone’s should be. But adopting the criteria of art for art’s sake, which is the opposite of works with messages or social purposes.

Have you tried the RTÉ unabridged dramatization?

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0610/1146705-listen-ulysses-...

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