Stephen Fry on Ulysses - James Joyce
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 20 сен 2024
- www.whyilovethi... - One Minute Book Review Videos -
“I’ll tell you the book I have chosen as my favorite book. And it may make some people’s heart sink, because it is associated with difficulty, where in fact it should be associated with joy…”
[ Stephen Fry, 53, polymath, trader in words, entertainer, national embarrassment, London & Hollywood. ]
As a Dubliner preparing to read Ulysses, I did, I confess, read the book Dubliners along with the cliff notes, and watched The Dead directed by John Huston, it was worth the trouble. I also went to all the pubs mentioned in the book and got absolutely hammered and that was worth the trouble too.
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 see you were quite dedicated to the project 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽😵💫😎
I found that Ulysses scans better if it is recited out loud, like a poem.
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.
It's hard to convey to someone who, for whatever reason of his/her own, is not familiar with this marvelous novel. I have spent my entire adult life with it. Feasting on it, grazing on it, loving it.
No you haven't.
@@DDDD-hv3ub Well, not me personally but a guy I know. Him and Ulysses got. it. on.
Fry hits the nail on the head here. A great introduction, for its brevity, that I imagine would make any reader desire to, as he says, return to it again and again and again.
Ulysses is hilarious; that is what tends to be forgotten.
I read Ulysses in Polish and due to good translation I was stunned by the mastery of... well any aspect of writing I can think about. Joyce possessed unique talent which allowed him to change the style of storytelling, depending on what he needed to express and keep that formally complex book consistent. What I feel is the most outstanding about this book though is that it had all the potential to become a lame academy-oriented piece, instead it's actually the funniest novel ever written.
What we were told when I was studying English Lit. in college, is that it was too difficult to read without help. I think I will follow Stephen's advice and read it again, just on my own.
+Margaret Chase it is tough going in places but overall it's actually a lot of fun. Enjoy.
Read Dubliners first, then Portrait of the Artist, they'll teach you to read it. That was my experience, anyway. Either way they're all worth having read
My brother said the same thing, but he likes studying literature so for him it's not as much about the joy of reading as it is about what he can get out of it, to find structure. I'm more the feeling side of things and already made plans to read Homer's Odyssee and then let it sink so I can enjoy Ulysses by the time Spring comes around :)
@@DarkAngelEU No need to read the Odyssey in advance, really, it's just a way to interpret the book and in no way should it be binding. As for reading it "without help", that's probably the best way to go about it initially - then you can immerse in the hundreds and hundreds of pages of annotations, interpretations and scholarship that you will find readily available.
@@nmaurok I know it's not necessary but that's the way I want to explore it, since I'm comparing the impact WWI had on modern literature to other wars and literature. I already read Eliot and Woolf from this perspective and it's alot of fun!
I tried it in English... and I failed miserably back then. That was many decades ago and I was still a child, at least mentally. I should pick it up, again. The book is certainly true... but I am not sure how much of a joy it is to read unless English is truly your first language and your profession, which, of course, it is for Stephen Fry.
I spent twelve years building up to this novel, reading "easier" literature. Finally got round to it last year. Parts were opaque, other parts were confusing, and some were fucking magical.
"I doubt that I ever read anything to equal it, and I know that I never read anything to surpass it." An early critic on Joyce's completed "Ulysses"....
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!
"And it may make some people’s heart sink, because it is associated with difficulty, where in fact it should be associated with joy"
## An excellent description of Finnegans Wake. IMHO, Homer is beyond words. FW is beautiful, magnificent, filled with joy - if Ulysses is comparable to FW it must be very good indeed. But is anything as magnificent, as humane & compassionate & many-sided, as the glory that is Homer ? FW is a work of genius, and no mistake - it's more than a book; a quality it shares with Tolkien's great myth.
*****
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.
Stephen Fry has given a nice sense of why the book is so good without drowning us with sesquipedalian logorrhea: nice touch comparing it with The Great Gatsby. Ulysses is The Great Gatsby of the novel form, which Joyce renewed, bringing to the novel a new form, an invigoration of content, the dying fall of the daily cycle, and a few choice, well chosen characters of Dublin life.
'Ulysses' is the 'Gatsby' of novels? Uh, what?
In Stephen Fry's defense; the last phrase "and yes I said, yes I will, Yes" has the word recurring thrice (much as a brinded cat hath); if one thinks in terms of pitch and rhythm, we can see how the ever-delightful Mister Fry got to that mis-statement....
I am delighted to see this video. Thank you for posting it.
Tonight, I finished reading Ulysses. It was book that I have been pecking at in fits and starts for three years. The middle part is extremely hard going, and I broke down and bought some guides (a Cliffs Notes, and Stuart Gilbert's book). That helped a lot, and I was able to get through the most entertaining chapters ("Circe", and "Ithaca"). Good luck to all who attempt it: it's one of the Mount Everests in modern literature!
Much of the book's reputation for difficulty (unjustly earned, I concur with Stephen) is mainly due to the specificity of its local color of Dublin, the places, people, and proper nouns that litter every page that are remote to American readers in the 21st century. The difficulty of deciphering these references has been greatly ameliorated thanks to the internet, but one can still ignore, if one chooses, the vast bulk of the opaque references and enjoy the richness of Joyce's prose and renderings of universal human consciousness. Upon first engaging with the work at the age of 40, it was the first novel that when reading I felt fully engulfed in the mind of the protagonists and author. It is the most stupendous novel ever written in the English language, one that you can return to again and again.
I am making a series of videos on "Reading Ulysses for Fun". Your
comments are welcome. Once you've made it through, you may discover a
great mental playground Joyce created for us.
Chris Reich did you upload them?
Started reading it last week for the first time, and I love it. I'm just moving on to chapter 2. I like it.
100th anniversary of the publication this year. Yes, yes, yes to Melle Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Co Paris, for taking a giant leap of faith in its publication. Interestingly, when it was first published it was banned in many countries, except for Ireland. The authorities here said that “no one would bother to read it anyway”. Well, they got that one wrong…..
Stephen Fry... He MUST have a photographic memory; he's such a genius. Or maybe his genius lies within being such a lovely human being.
Wow, very well said. I took a college course years ago that surprisingly turned into a full-semester analysis of Ulysses. I think that without it, I might not have been able to enjoy other classical literature as much: I found out that Ulysses is definitely a hard read for a relative beginner. I've read it several times since then, and it remains one of my all-time favorite novels.
This book captivates me. I have read this book line by line and then I'll read again. There is so much within this book that only reading a dozen times let's you scratch the surface of what it means. It amazes me after these many years. Banned it was, but banning a book is only due to true blind ignorance. If you don't understand it do one of 2 things. 1) Stop and put it away, or; 2) Read and study it until you get it.
You are a sad person with a very sad life!
I named my late lamented Labrador Retriever - born on June 16th, the date that Leopold & Stephen take their epic sojourn - Molly Bloom. She turned out to be a very faithful dog in spite of that.
I think maybe the difficulty in reading this book is trying to read it from cover to cover. The best advice I ever had was just dip in and out of it and then it will appear easier
What a joy that he mentioned Dutch as his random example. Am reading the boldly retitled recent Dutch tandem translation "Ulixes" side by side with Joyce's original, even though I could read the English directly and purely -- oh the immortally childish pleasure of blasphemy!
I've never heard Stephen talk about Ulysses before and it's pleasing to find we have the same favourite book. He's wrong about the ending, though: the book actually ends "yes I will Yes". Time to give it another read, Stephen!
I am currently reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by Joyce, but I might have to read Ulysses now that I know Stephen loves it so much
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 feel the same 100%. A line that hasn't left me
"They say a nun invented Barbwire"
His two favourite books written by an Irishman and an Irish American. I wonder what his favourite play is?
22grena I heard he likes U2
And he played one of his heroes, an Irishman, Wilde on screen. Of course, Fry has no real attachment to Ireland or the Irish, so it doesn't mean anything, other than the simple fact that the Irish have been just as important as anybody else, at least regarding the English Novel, as it were. Some would say the most important. It's not shocking that some of the best writers and books, and indeed, plays, ever written were Irish.
Irish people have a very humble notion of life, I have found whilst staying over in Belfast. They're alot like the English, just more likeable. They don't go smashing around glasses for instance "for fun", they rather go to the night shop and drink a gallon of milk and chug it when the pub's closed. Ah and the music! The Irish music scene is truly the best I have ever met in my life! Live music in every pub and none of em are shite! Talking about it makes me feel homesick.
@@TheClassicWorld When I was growing up in Ireland we had a saying 'Island of Saints and Scholars'
I’m on page 300 now, and although it is terribly difficult and often illogical I have cried, numerous times, reading about Molly and Milly and the beauty of it all. The sexuality is quite liberating, I find. Also, McKenna and Morrison, as well as Monroe read it! Honestly, this is the most meaningful book ever. 🙂 Oh, and the poetry is so cutting! “Sea of the cunt”! (Excuse my profanities!)
Best book to read with "Ulysses" is Richard Ellmann's "Ulysses on the Liffey"---it's short, very clear and specific, and it opens up the central themes and meanings beautifully. In a phrase, "Casual kindness overcomes unconscionable power."
If you can get over the fact that you won't understand all of it and aren't meant to it is the most enjoyable reading experience currently available.
One more reason to love Stephen Fry!
Want a fun video series to help you read Ulysses? ruclips.net/video/aK3BclJtPQY/видео.html
Haven't read Ulyses but he is dead right about Gatsby. Word perfect, inspired.
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
Didn't know this book existed until the first week of this year. Can't say I'm glad I found it because I find it hard to follow.
Wholeheartedly agree with the comments of Stephen Fry. Great book.
I always have a gorgonzola sandwich with a glass of Burgundy when I'm in Ireland.
As Richard Ellmann said, "Ulysses" is the most difficult funny book and the funniest difficult one. Another said "I doubt I ever read anything to equal it, and I know I never read anything to surpass it." THE simplest key to really enjoying it is Ellmann's own little-known "Ulysses on the Liffey," which lays out patterns and themes etc. with perfect clarity. Yes, Yes, Yes! "Ulysses" rules!
Ulysses transcends the book format. It cannot be contained
@LewisSlotkin
That certainly is an immortal line. There is beauty in it that I continue to be astonished by.
There is hardly a wasted word in The Great Gatsby. It is a wonderfully written book, even though it can be considered dull by some.
Well said sir, I'm a Dubliner and proud of it. If I had a problem with it, it was as you said how the style changes per chapter. But yes it was one great read
Yeah Stevie - but you can read and enjoy Ulysses without knowing any of the classical references and, yes, it is the most remarkable book that seems to offer something new with each successive reading, yeah, yeah, yeah...
I do agree with his assessment of The Great Gatsby. What a wonderful novel!!!
Q : Why did Stephen reJoyce in the retellings of Bloompold Henry Flower?
A : Inelecutably the delectable Stephen found harmonious the irascible and sensible muddled befuddlings of the Bloomflower made possible in oddest odyssey Oireland had ever scene. Cosmic delineations reeled him in realistically by comparing chapters of the novel to each individual body part O Yes that was the whole beauty of it all wheeling turning round round would I read it over again Yes I would and again yes and Yes.
The Last line of Ulysses actually reads: 'Trieste-Zurich-Paris, 1914-1921'.
The only joy I experienced from Ulysses was finishing it
It’s something people revisit more than once in their lives.
I am grateful to Stephen for this explanation. I had to write about Ulysses for my degree. It was agony for me. I could not understand why anyone would write such a book, let alone read it. Actually I just didn't understand it at all. 30 years later I managed to complete it as an audio book just because I needed to finally grasp the meaning of the key text of modernism before I die. I still don't. It's an flat wall of nothingness to me, I hate it. At least from this video and the comments below I can get a sense why others enjoy and honour it so much.
@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.
@edmund184 As Christian Moevs points out in his brilliant book on Dante, a work of art's greatness is measured in how the ideas it expresses can only be measured in the work of art. The exact qualities it has can't be accurately reduced to description without losing essential aspects. Ulysses is simply this: a massive immersion in an alternate reality. The patter of experiences wash over you to the point where it becomes as impossible to take in as life itself and it becomes an escape.
It had lots of comedy in it. My fave was the page where Paddy Dignam, inhabitant of 1904 Dublin and a man given a devout Catholic funeral ascends into the afterlife to find it is, in fact....... Buddhist. The correct answer was .....Buddhist. Class.
Favourite line: Down the shelving shore flabbily their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand.
I think what he's saying is that Fitzgerald's style of writing is unsurpassable. It's always been my favourite novel and the last couple of pages are sublime. Beautiful nihilism which is always the most dangerous kind. I actually did my BA dissertation on Gatsby and my MA on Ulysses so I definitely think they can be compared; the latter is obviously more complex and less accessible but ultimately they're both two of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. Cyclops is my favourite chapter. :)
the last three words are not "yes yes yes" its "yes i said yes i will Yes."
Or you can read Lady Don't Fall Backwards.
I read Ulysses to say I read it...was very difficult. Have read Dubliners many times and some stories in it 25 times (at least)...enjoyed it much more.
Favourite line: A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled.
Really, both are amazing books if only because of the use of the English language. I'm so glad he also spoke about The Great Gatsby... one of my all time favorites... and he's right; Ulysses is a perfect book. If you find yourself getting through both of these books, chances are you will find yourself a lover of words, language, and you just might read them both again and again. :o)
The last three words of Ulysses are not 'yes yes yes' they are 'I will yes'. Other than that, he's spot on.
Yes
There's a half dozen of Dicken's books that I would place above Ulysses, I can already hear the howls of derision and I am certainly not bothered about that, his masterpiece, Great Expectations is a cut above.
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.
Essentially it's "Yes, yes, yes."
You're lucky man. Here I am pondering on the wish of reading it, with no more knowledge about Dublin other than what Google may provide, and with the only option of getting the two volumes in spanish.
I tried reading it several times and I fall asleep despite my best efforts every time. Oh well.
Read it in the early afternoon
I think there's a line whereby something becomes difficult for its own sake - one of the marks of a non artist in the modern period is that they'll cross it to separate themselves from 'the herd' in order to feel superior, often using psuedo-scientific blather and theory. Joyce most definitely doesn't do this but he did write a book which was unashamedly aristocratic in the artistic sense.I never went to university but I could, with some help from Ellman, plough through it to great excitement.
@katelynna10000 Ulysses is definitely harder than portrait. However it is much deeper and the characters are great. In portrait, I find the only character that matters is Stephen. In Ulysses you can connect with almost every character.
Yeah.
What did you think of the Radio 4 adaptation yesterday?
Yaaay i live a few doors down from where James Joyce was born, i pass his house every day.
I hope you piss on the doorstep!
I was like that but if you keep reading it and once you get to the third chapter or episode (where I am now) it becomes rather brilliant. But as I say I'm only a bit through the book and I agree that the first chapter is hard.
I guarantee you will not finish it unless you re maschostistic!
The problem with Ulysses is that because of it's reputation as the "greatest work of literature ever," you gointo it primed for something serious and intellectual, whereas the book doesn't take itself seriously at all. When it shows you something that doesn't make sense, you're inclined to feel like you don't understand the joke when the joke is how incomprehensible it is.
So I'm just reading it for the prose and pay no mind to the supposed plot because there isn't one. Or rather, I'm not missing much by ignoring it.
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
I love comments such as the one you posted. The fact that you went out to pubs and got "absolutely hammered" makes my day!! :-) You will need alcohol in your veins before you try to read this train wreck of a novel...
do you ask customers if they prefer gatsby or ulysses when you're taking their orders at mcdonald's?
@RampageEndsHere I agree, although Beethoven's music is full of humour, its not exactly 'comic art'
Happy Bloomsday! 🎉🎉🎉
Totally agree with you, Mr Fry.
I seriusly Doubt that Fry read the whole parcel of crap...if he did he may be the only person who did ever!
I watched brother where art thou. Does that count?…
alright educate me. What insights into life do we get from this masterpiece?
They put glass in the Turkish Delight.
You deserve a medal, I think it's fair to say.
Keep reading, it's worth it. Cheers.
"Dream of Red Chamber" is one of the best literary work (but unknown to the west).
On a more serious note this quote by Sherlock Holmes on Professor Moriarty sums James Joyce up best:
"Is he not the celebrated author of [], a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it?"
Just replace [] with one of Joyce's books, replace "mathematics" with "literature", and remove "scientific" and you get James Joyce
Need him to talk about “Finnegans Wake”. Just finished “A Shorter Version Of...” edited by Anthony Burgess and I need help...
Im Back bitches
On the lash with Tim Finnegan again were ya?
It would be grand if Fry even seemed to have read the last three words of his favourite book. Maybe it's amnesia. Once you start losing your memory you can forget it.
You know how people section hike the Appalachian Trail? They do a couple hundred miles, go home, come back later, do some more?
In that spirit of resolute endevour, I'm section reading Ulysses. I expect to be done around 2040.
Ulysses wasn't searching for his son, Ulysses' son was searching for Ulysses.
President Sunday well he was searching for a way home to his son.
I wouldn't bother reading other writers, then. Check out dsome books on Joyce and remember ultimately the book is about simply existing. Simply being happy to exist - that's the great mystery at the heart of it so if that's what's daunting you, there it is. Simply be happy to exist and take wonder from it. Joyce by Ellman is THE great biog and my other fave is prob Years of Bloom.
I agree with his first statement so much. This idea of Ulysses as some sort of endurance test is so stupid and unfair.
He covers himself by describing it as his favorite book, which is what it is.
If it is the re-telling of the Homeric Odyssey, why is the central episode, "The Wandering Rocks," an adventure from the voyage of Jason? It is, indeed, a mock-Odyssey, but of a thoroughly modern hero, Leopold Bloom, he who plays Milton's Satan in an episode based on Dante's Hell (please see my blog for fuller explanation: joyceanopusday.blogspot.com/).
Anyway, thanks for your review. I agree with it for the most part, but would certainly place the realist Joyce above the symbolist Fitzgerald.
If all the comments from Wikipedia were collected and rewritten in stream-of-consciousness manner, it'd be blast!
To that effect, fool, the last three words are 'I will yes.'
I loved The Glass Bead Game
What - in one sentence, if possible - is that about ? Can it be summarised in a sentence ?
Fantastique. On doit rire, on reste intéressé, et voilà, ne peut pas traduire. Absolument Ulysses par Joyce est bien le plus Covid19 suitable..
I love Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but HATE Ulysses. The content of the plot is great but it's way too difficult to read. I wish Joyce had written it differently.
Has anyone on here actually read it?
Almost no one could put up with it to the end. It is drivel beyond anything I have ever attempted.
There's not a chance that Fry understands all of the obscure Irish references, both in gaelic and in reference to obscure parts of Dublin.
I seriously cannot fathom how someone reads Ulysses and enjoys it. While reading it, I had strong urges to put the damn thing on fire!
It's hilarious! Filled with jokes and wonderful prose. And in the end life affirming and very moving.
I read somewhere that you need a couple of companion books to understand what the hell the book is about. Is that true?
Yes. It helps. It helps if you have a scholar's knowlege of western civ. It helps if you know french, latin and if you can read Old English. It helps if you have a photographic understanding of places in Dublin. It helps if you have read the Talmud, studied Christ, seriously contemplated Hamlet and gone to a prostitute. A very good ear for puns is important and you should be an expert in rhetoric. And it would be good if you had an education in medicine, and irish history, thats important. British history, roman empire and the levant. So yes get a book. Get a lot. But do sit down and read Ulysses. Its a good book.
Wow, that sounds horrible.
I know. It does. But its not. Its a novel about everything. You have to read it as if it were jazz. You just sort of slip into it. It took him over a half a decade to write it. He had a photograpic memory and was proabably the smartest guy in books at the time. He put everything he knew into this book. Its all interconnected in hundreds of strands of meaning that stretch out in thousands of directions. It is vast. If you like it, you will never stop reading it. If you don't like it, well, you have plenty of friends.
I'll probably try the first chapter without a companion and see how that goes. Unfortunately, not being a native English speaker will add and extra layer of difficulty, judging from your comments.
Actually my advice would be to try the last chapter. Thats most people's favorite. It is Leopold Bloom's wife molly falling to sleep and in her half awake state she mulls over the day, her life, men and other things. This is the classic interior monologue and its very beautiful. Especially the end. She has committed adultery that afternoon and this is on her mind, as are other things. The chapter is useful to read first because to read it you must relax as Molly does in all her life. And as you must take this book. Do not rush this book. Don't read it for a school class. It must be what people nowdays call "enjoyed" which actually is a combination of love and understanding which education doesn't want to do any more. Enjoyment now days is ancillary to life. When in fact it is life. And Ulysses is very good guess of what it is to live. I took a class in this book once. It almost ruined it for me. If you are really confused, read "Portrait of the Artist as a young man." Its a bit more accessible and also very good.
Don't criticise what you can't understand.
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!