My odyssey through Ulysses

Like many pursuits I undertake, my blog has followed a familiar pattern. First a big idea, followed by enthusiasm, throw in a few days hard work and then like a sprinter in a marathon, I run out of steam. I know I'm not alone. Surely, many other people find it difficult to stick to the program--any program. I would be justified if I said "I'm simply too busy to write every day", but truth be told I have much time. No, my problem is that I procrastinate, get sucked into the television, get stuck in the web--the world wide web. I've also procrastinated in my reading ambitions. If my memory is correct I first began reading and studying Ulysses in late 2006. I'm now on chapter four! For those of you who are not familiar with Ulysses, it is a novel by the Irish novelist James Joyce published in 1922. The novel recounts the story of a group of Dubliners on a single day--Bloomsday--June 16th, 1904. The characters are unaware, however, that they are all reliving scenes from Homer's The Odyssey, hence the title of the book Ulysses, which is the Greek name for Odysseus, ruler of Ithaca and hero of Homer's Odyssey.

This novel is renowned for difficulty of reading. I admit that were it not for a lecture series I rented from the library taught by James Hefferman, a Dartmouth professor, and heavily relying on the internet for research, I would not understand any of this book. It is not uncommon for me to spend an hour reading a single page. Joyce references figures from 18th and 19th century Irish and British history, renaissance scholars, Shakespeare, obscure saints seemingly from the beginning of history, and on and on. On top of this excessive erudition are the "stream of consciousness" passages in which we are allowed to read a characters every thought verbatim. When I read Ulysses, I do not feel so much like I'm reading, rather I feel like I am deciphering a code. You don't read Ulysses like a Hemmingway or Fitzgerald, rather you study it like the Bible--passage by passage. You unlock its secrets.

My plan is to write about my adventure of reading Ulysses. I got this idea from a writer friend of mine named Julie. It seems to be all the rage now, for example blogging about following a French cookbook is now a movie. It was a good idea there, why not here? In the end it is all about a journey.