I have, from time to time, struggled with modernist fiction. For as surreal and imaginative and deconstructed as my favorite films are, it has been harder for me to break apart literary forms. But I’ve also been intrigued and interested in James Joyce for the sheer scale of his work, and the transformative effect he had on literature.
I’m reading through Ulysses right now, and setting a few ground rules for myself as I do. First of all, I’m letting a lot of it simply wash over me. If there is a passage I really like or want to break apart, I may engage with a bit. But if there are pieces of the stream of consciousness that lose me, that’s okay. I just move on. I’m actually finding that the visceral feelings of the characters are enough to carry me through. Stephen Dedelaus, who the book starts from the point of view of, thinks in long cerebral metaphors and literary allusions. Some of which are deeply obvious, and some of which has been lost to obscurity. But it is all just a way of hiding his own insecurities and feeling of being on the outside looking in. This is in contrast the sharp, staccato stream of thoughts that run through the mind of Leopold Bloom, who hardly ever pauses long enough to consider the consequences of his actions or desires. These are the things that I am plucking off of the surface, even if I lose some of the depth that hides beneath it.
There are two resources that I am also finding really helpful.
- The first is a site called UlyssesGuide.com, which feels very web 2.0, old-web spirit in that it’s one person who knows a ton about one thing hoping to make that one thing feel more accessible. It’s incredibly successful at that.
- The other is Gifford’s annotations to the book (available to borrow at Archive.org), which is more old world than it is old web. Still, really helpful for those passages I want to dive into deeper. I’m in now ways referencing it on each page, only when something is particularly interesting.