Stephen Fry on Ulysses - James Joyce 

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.

hey, so did you read it?

"I also went to all the pubs mentioned in the book and got absolutely hammered.." - nothing to boast about, 100,000s Dubliners have done this!

I find it works best when you read the outer dialogue out loud but read the internal dialogues in your head.

I actually read Ulysses when I cared for patients with dementia, and I found that in reading it out loud to the people I was caring for I was able to pick up on a lot more of the wordplay and rhythm of the piece.

That’s what I have heard from many others. It has got something to do in the fact Odyssey was also written to suit the oral reciting form as that’s how stories were told and passed on in Ancient Greek.

No you haven't.

@@DDDD-hv3ub Well, not me personally but a guy I know. Him and Ulysses got. it. on.

'Ulysses' is the 'Gatsby' of novels? Uh, what?

***** I think all three of them are masterpieces, each in its own way. The Wake is definitely "something else". though. I'm thinking of reading Ulysses, if only to see how Joyce matches events in Homer to those of one day of one man in in Dublin.

That's a little bit too much.

@@wlrlel How so? Can you argue for another book that equals or surpasses 'Ulysses'? Honestly, I cannot.

@@37Dionysos Odyssee, Divina Commedia, Faust I + II, À la recherche du temps perdu...

@@wlrlel I guess we'd need a symposium to explore all the rivalries between 'Ulysses' and each/all of those masterpieces. The "greatest ever" judgment would surely come from the criteria for judging that we'd have to create first. Just that imho, none of them revels in their own and other languages quite as 'U' does. It leaves me with a greater sense of the totality of life/full range of human experience than do the others, nor do any of them have 'Ulysses'' core of sheer life-affirming humor in spite of darkness. Joyce's master was Tolstoy and we'd likely agree that he too is a major Joyce rival. Or it's all my Irish half's bias!

I read Portrait whilst I was studying Lit at Uni. One of our books was Dubliners and so I dutifully read Portrait next but I was bored I must confess at the time. Now, much later I re-read it and it was mesmerising. Take note of how the Jesuit teachers at young Joyce’s school teach and how they maintain discipline - then read how Stephen teaches his class (Chapter 2 -Nestor) in Ulysses; quite interesting.

I kind of get but don’t get Gatsby. I mean it is a good breezy book but I don’t get the hype around it. I mean I have read more relatively more obscure books that are much more interesting and well written than Gatsby.

@@rishabhaniket1952 I found Gatsby incredibly dull. I have studied it in depth as an adult for my course, I have read analyses and reviews, we had group discussions on it. I still find it dull and needlessly obtuse. Then I discover, when studying the life of Fitzgerald, that he deliberately made it obtuse to sell more copies, to make enough money to marry a woman, Zelda. Then suddenly I realise that the academic world has been taken for fools. It's not even clever. It's just boring. I read it 3 times over, it's still just boring. Everything is psuedo-intellectual symbolism and upper-class pontification, nothing is pleasantly descriptive, nothing makes me feel sympathy for the characters. It's a cold book.

@@EzioAuditoreDaFirenze99 Yet some people argue that it’s meant to be cold to signify how plastic and emotionally dry those kind of upper class greed driven people were. But then again you can make that certain argument for so many other dull books as well. It seems even back in those times a reputation was built so much on hype and marketing. A great book dealing with similar themes but much more interesting is What Makes Sammy Run.

@@EzioAuditoreDaFirenze99 People like to throw around this "they did exactly what people (interested in literatured) wanted and so it sold more copies so it's a big fraud!!!!!" but you can see how if take a step back and rephrase it as I did, how silly that sounds. It's okay to have a taste that excludes classic novels or classic authors, we don't have to objectively denounce them

@Tony Cope

Read it again. Read it out loud. You'll be glad you did.

@@ambskater97 I listened to it on audio book. Still rubbish.

@@ladystardust2008 Read what I wrote carefully. Read it yourself out loud.

@@ambskater97 I honestly don't need to do that.

It’s something people revisit more than once in their lives.

Different century. Different readership. I would also not concur. Drama aside... Dickens is like watching paint dry. OK, maybe Joyce was experimenting with even slower drying paint. I will give you that. ;-)

Agreed. Ulysses is overrated.

Dickens wrote too much.

@@stephensharp3033 he was paid per installment, duh. At least his works are intelligible and not available exclusively to the Literati. Most people who enjoy Ulysses have to have it explained to them or have some type of supplementation with it. He should've made it like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where most of the book is capable of being understood all by itself. Had he done this, I'd consider Ulysses a masterpiece.

Dickens was too much of a cartoonist. I love Great Expectations but he writes too much like a cartoon. He's on the list of great authors but with a big asterisk, and below when you reference the asterisk it reads "Great for a cartoon writer". Don't even get me started on Oliver Twist. What a Disney cartoon man.

Read it in the early afternoon

I seriusly Doubt that Fry read the whole parcel of crap...if he did he may be the only person who did ever!

You're thinking of Finnegan's Wake, which to this day people debate whether or not there is a plot in that book, and the people that agree there is a plot in it still argue about what the plot actually is. There's no debate whatsoever about whether Ulysses has a plot. It has a plot, lmao. Come back in 10 years when you're up for it you'll understand

On the lash with Tim Finnegan again were ya?

I hope you piss on the doorstep!

I guarantee you will not finish it unless you re maschostistic!

What - in one sentence, if possible - is that about ? Can it be summarised in a sentence ?

Well you know that is very condescending! I would rather read a challanging novel that at some point I could understand. It is total mock erudition. Toatal crap. The worst novel ever in my mind Loius Lamour would be better!

President Sunday well he was searching for a way home to his son.

+stephen EEJIT

This comment is indecipherable.

Gusranteed you will not get halfway through!

Try reading his wife's letters to Jimmy

But why would you read his letters before his masterpiece?

How would the letters in any way diminish your respect for him or his work?

@@CriticalDispatches have you read them? No shame. It’s just when you read someone’s work and that is your foundational understanding of the author it’s hard to read other works produced by that person without having that preconceived understanding shrouding what you take from the work. Especially when the two works are so different in tone, context and essence

@@direktorpresident wait. Where can I find those?

Lol, she only read 27 pages (that's including the title) and Joyce himself said I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of ensuring one's immortality. One just has to see his notes to see the nonsense of your comment

Are you a scholard sir?

@@internetuser969 One does.....muppet.

@@2009ELTEXDid my use of the word one upset you or something else?

What the fuck are you talking about?

008Invisibleman could you take a look at the video series I am making un Ulysses?

It takes over the structure and refers to Homer's Odyssee in many ways, yet at the same time makes alot of fun over heroes that are described in epic poetry like the ones Homer wrote. It's one of the many reasons James Joyce is considered to be a pioneer of postmodern literature.

It's teeming with life, beautiful and hilarious.

James Joyce was a lot of things, but a very plain man was most certainly not one of them.

Right... Nobody because there is nothing there!