So, Ulysses by James Joyce. The best novel ever according to many of the authorities who compile lists of best novels. I had to read this book at some point. But it was an intimidating prospect, maybe requiring me to know Greek, Latin, French, German and endless literary references. No wonder I have left it until my 60s.
These are some of the notes I jotted down as I went along.
We start at breakfast on an ordinary day in Dublin in the summer of 1904. Young men share digs in a former military tower by the harbour in Dublin. Much religious imagery is mixed with mundane morning routine. There is a reference to changing of water into wine, but in this case, water changes into tea via an anecdote about an old woman who likes her tea strong, because she likes water to be water and tea to be tea, even if tea is still almost entirely water.
The conventions of academia and fancy literature come in for the same treatment – revealed in many ways to be tea, which is actually still plain water in disguise. Maybe there was nothing here for me to feel intimidated by.
Ulysses combines the intellectual and the everyday. It’s a book respected in academic circles, but maybe best read by skimming along and not worrying too much. When the going gets tough I suggest reading out loud in an Irish accent, just for fun.
In chapter 15, the central character Leopold Bloom muses on his failings, cooking up self-lacerating fantasies of condemnation and trial by jury. He then goes to the other extreme and imagines himself as a great and wise leader loved by all. But as he hands out gifts and gives freedom to his people, he accidentally introduces “a free fox in a free hen roost”. Then things turn around and Bloom is hated again. Meanwhile, outside his fantasies, back in normal life, he continues to live between extremes, neither particularly loved nor violently hated, not brilliant or useless, just an average chap on an ordinary day in Dublin.
There’s a wonderful scene towards the end of the novel where Bloom turns on a tap to fill a kettle with water. And then we go on the incredible journey which water has taken to reach that tap. Tea might remain water, but water is an amazing thing.
So I drank tea while reading Ulysses, a book I found a funny, ethereal, sometimes distasteful, often confusing, frequently compelling, brew.
Writing And So On 
My favorite line in the book: “his mother is beastly dead.” Don’t know why that struck me as beastly hilarious.
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Hello Perry. Thank you for your comment. Yes, so many great lines. You chose a brilliant one there. I loved the section where they are having a singsong in the pub. What a piece of writing that is, not so much like listening to Led Zeppelin, or Pentangle but remembering their music through the lens of nostalgia.
But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lump music. The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth’s fatigue made grave approach and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called on good men and true. The priest he sought. With him would he speak a word
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You have inspired me to re-read this glorious book. I’m hopeful it will be “new” to my 62 year old self as compared to my 32 year old self.
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I hope you enjoy your re-read Perry. There is so much in the book that I”m sure there will be new things for your 62 year old self to find. I am also 62. Here’s to finding new things in what we thought was familiar.
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