Ulysses by James Joyce (EPUB)

Description

Ulysses has been called “the most prominent landmark in modernist literature”, a work where life’s complexities are depicted with “unprecedented, and unequalled, linguistic and stylistic virtuosity”. That style has been stated to be the finest example of the use of stream-of-consciousness in modern fiction, with the author going deeper and farther than any other novelist in handling interior monologue. This technique has been praised for its faithful representation of the flow of thought, feeling, mental reflection, and shifts of mood. Critic Edmund Wilson noted that Ulysses attempts to render “as precisely and as directly as it is possible in words to do, what our participation in life is like—or rather, what it seems to us like as from moment to moment we live.” Stuart Gilbert said that the “personages of Ulysses are not fictitious”, but that “these people are as they must be; they act, we see, according to some lex eterna, an ineluctable condition of their very existence”. Through these characters Joyce “achieves a coherent and integral interpretation of life”.Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s epic poem Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between its characters and events and those of the poem (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus).

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The rating does not reflect my view of the novel Ulysses, which I love, admire, and have taught (although I am not a Joyce scholar). Nor is it a review of the paper edition of Ulysses issued by Penguin in 1992, with an introduction by Declan Kibberd. It is specifically a review of the Kindle edition purporting to represent the Penguin edition.Recently I “reread” Ulysses by listening to a recording of the classic RTÉ Radio “dramatised full production” of the novel done in 1982. This is a wonderful way to experience the book, and I recommend it to all. But at points I wanted to follow along, so I purchased a very inexpensive Kindle text of Joyce’s published works, “The Ultimate James Joyce Collection.” At points I noticed some typos and more serious textual errors, but since I only spent $2 for the set I wasn’t bothered. It claimed to be a literal reprint of the original 1922 text, so I knew it would be problematic. That edition was typeset by French printers who did not speak English! But I wondered whether there was a reliable text of the novel on Kindle. When I saw that the Penguin edition was now available in a Kindle edition, I bought it. The Penguin edition is apparently a reprint of the 1960 Bodley Head edition, which together with the 1961 Modern Library edition represent the most accurate corrected versions before the critical Gabler edition. (As far as I can tell, Gabler’s text is not available on Kindle.)I am sorry to say that the digitized version of the Penguin edition is not satisfactory. It is full of the kinds of errors that inevitably seem to come from digitally scanning text; it requires far more careful proofreading than the editors have given it. Ulysses is difficult enough on its own: the novice reader does not need to be struggling with mistakes like the following (just what I noticed from the first two chapters): “die bowl” for “the bowl” (3); “dive Kempthorpe” for “Clive Kempthorpe” (4); “Norn de Dieu” for “Nom de Dieu” (10); “virgmum” for “virgimum” (11); “discreedy” for “discreetly” (11); “Sort day” for “Soft day” (14). None of these errors appears in my Penguin paperback copy. Joyce might have enjoyed “Norn de Dieu” in Finnegan’s Wake–it may even appear there–but I don’t think it belongs in “Telemachus.” So if you are looking for a reasonable Kindle version of Joyce’s masterpiece, you should look elsewhere. I read somewhere that the revised Project Gutenberg edition is good. At least with an edition costing a dollar or two, you are getting a bargain, even if it has a few errors. The Penguin Kindle edition is not inexpensive, and it is no bargain. Caveat emptor.Update: in chapter 3, “Proteus,” along with a few minor misprints like those described above, the Kindle/Penguin has Stephen ask “Where is poor dear Arms to try conclusions?” Instead of “Arms” the text should read “Arius,” the “illstarred heresiarch” whom Stephen thinks about for the rest of the paragraph. As it is, the text makes no sense at all, and even an experienced reader struggling with this difficult early chapter will lose the thread of thought Joyce is working very hard to convey.

⭐This is not a review of Ulysses itself.My one star review is for the unreadable paperback version that Amazon is selling, being propped up by reviews of practical and superior prints of the novel. The copy I received was clearly printed on letter paper, end to end. The font size is small enough to create walls of text that fill margin to margin. Chapter dividers are scrapped in favor of new lines within the pages themselves. No pages are devoted to any sort of publisher or contact for who is appropriate for this disaster. A real shame.

⭐The magnitude of genius and complexity of James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses can not be understated. Perhaps the most ambitious, most intimidating, most notorious, and single greatest novel of 20th century- if not all of literature. I own two different editions of the novel: the Every Man’s Library hardcover edition, a fine and handsome book, presented in three parts/chapters and is excellent; and the Vintage “Gabler Edition”, which I strongly prefer, this version has a more complete text, the lines are numbered, the book is arranged into 18 titled chapters making it easier to navigate the running themes and vast references to Homer’s Odyssey, all this makes this undertaking much less difficult, and even after many months of reading and use the soft cover book’s spine did not crease or crack. Truly excellent. The novel is enormously challenging and the more you can understand the more rewarding and impressive it becomes. It obviously helps to know Homer’s Odyssey, it’s parallels are incredibly numerous. I also highly recommend reading Joyce’s Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man before this, it gives backstory to the Stephen Dedalus character (as well Joyce himself and his narrative style). It helps, but not necessary, to get acquainted with Irish history, the works of Shakespeare, Dante, and maybe Yeats. If you can make it through the Proteus chapter you should be able to make through the book, although Oxen Of The Sun is the most demanding chapter. As for extraneous materials: Joseph Campell’s books were good, but the best, most helpful by far for me was Prof. James A. Heffernan’s invaluable, enjoyable lectures on DVD from The Great Courses. Reading this masterpiece can be great fun, especially for lovers of myth, as it’s basis Homer’s Odyssey, the ancient Greek epic poem of Odysseus’ (Ulysseys in Latin) remarkable twenty year return from the Trojan War to vanquish his faithful wife’s suitors and reclaim his usurped home, one of the grandest adventures of heroic myth, is here reimagined, reinvented, reincarnated, and regurgitated into a single mundane day in Dublin- June 16th 1904. This longest day in literature is actually quite eventful, as the day dovetails into the twists and turns of adman Leopold Bloom, his quest back home to wife, Molly, their complicated relationship, and the academic Stephen Dedalus, a trinity of existential wanderers, a father, a surrogate son and a mother, the natural world, the mind, and spiritual all culminate in a metaphysical meditation on the human condition and the link between the ancient and modern world. Some Highlights: Stephen’s ponderous walk along the strand (absolutely great- my favourite chapter), Bloom’s pork kidney breakfast, the food buffet of Lystrygonians, Stephen’s theories on Hamlet and Shakespeare, the music of the sirens, the hilarious overblown parody in Cyclops, the cosmic Ithaca, and Molly Bloom’s stream of consciousness/soliloquy -an intellectual knock out punch. Told in a variety of styles and voices in a vivid city, Joyce’s command of language is unsurpassed, it even becomes apparent he is delightfully toying with the reader. The work is dense with symbolism and language- including Latin, French, Italian, multiple forms of English (not to mention Joyce’s own unique wordplay and onomatopoeia !). It’s notoriety is also well earned, and is still earthy and vulgar a century later, though much of it is rather humorous -every bodily function is included as well as frank aspects of life, death, birth, religion, love, sex, memories, food, music, art, literature, science, culture and society…- the whole kitchen sink. Indeed this book is not for everyone but it is richly rewarding, completely unique, and may still has the power to alter a reader’s view of what is capable in a real world literary landscape. Consider also reading Joyce’s daunting final work Finnegan’s Wake, a dream time novel beyond description, Alfred Doblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, the works of Virginia Woolf, and even T.S. Eliot’s poetry.

⭐The one star is for the Penguin Modern Classics edition on Kindle, not the novel itself. Ulysses is a challenging read. I listened to the Teaching Company’s audio lectures on Ulysses beforehand, which proved helpful in navigating this novel. There are 18 chapters (apparently), and the novel is (loosely) based on Homer’s Odyssey. I think the casual reader will be turned off by the difficulty since there is hardly any plot and the style changes abruptly (from straight exposition with clearly defined characters to stream-of-consciousness to playwriting to nonsensical alliterations and back again.I would stay away from the Kindle edition. It is riddled with typos. I notified Amazon of about twenty typos in the first three or so hours of reading but stopped after that. Wish I could return the Kindle edition.

⭐This Kindle text has become corrupted and is completely useless. Almost every line reads like it has been put through Google Translate into Chinese and then back into English.It is absolutely disgraceful that Amazon is selling this junk. Ulysses is a great book and I wonder how many people have paid money for this edition and given up on the first page.As an example from page 1, the text should say:Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartlyBut instead you get:Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the reflect after which protected the bowl smartly.I hope this review saves someone a lot of frustration.

⭐My review is not about the Ulysses of James Joyce, but about this edition. This is not the real book, almost every line has a substitute word which is not written by Joyce, and not grammatically correct either. It is as if a computer dictionary has substituted words with synonyms. Words which often were not common at the time of Joyce and sometimes make no sense in English.

⭐As we can all see, there have been many editions of this book that have become cross-posted on this site by the owners, so this has become a bit muddled. If you are looking for the best edition, with footnotes and so on, then you cannot really go wrong with the Oxford University Press edition, which also has the full 1922 text. This review is for the e-artnow edition which has no footnotes, but then neither did the book when originally published, and as I have read this a number of times before does not really bother me. Also I should point out that the number one review for this book does not tell you which edition the reviewer was reading, but if you look through their reviews you will see it is for one no longer available on this site. James Joyce’s masterpiece is always worth reading and is a must read especially for those into modernist literature. In fact, this has become so famous that in Ireland of course you now have Bloomsday – no mean feat in itself (Dublin of course is the place to go). Along with being an important modernist work this is also important for all book lovers as this has so much to offer and is something that you can never become bored with.Taking Homer and The Odyssey as its inspiration and the structure of this monumental novel, so we have a tale here that takes in a single day. The main protagonist here, Leopold Bloom is a character that first appears in the second part here and being of some Jewish descent this jars with the first part where we read of certain anti-Semitic comments and feelings. We thus follow what happens and meet and hear from various characters over this one day.Full of incident, considered by some as controversial and obscene at its first publication, so we can all read this nowadays with a more open mind, and reflect upon the genius that Joyce displays here. There is wordplay, puns and motifs, and with so much detail this book comes alive in your hands as you immerse yourself in the pages. We of course have the re-introduction of Stephen Dedalus here who those who have read it will recognise from ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, who appears right near the beginning of this book.With meticulous detail and a lot of thought going into the construction of what is an experimental work, so this takes stream of consciousness to the highest point it can go, which inevitably meant that in some ways Joyce caught himself in a dead end, and that is why Finnegans Wake is so different, but in ways the logical way to go after this monumental work.If you have never read this before you may find yourself intimidated and unsure of what you are reading, but that is okay, just go with the flow. This only really becomes very difficult if you have to study it, because you will then be expected to recognise every single nuance and piece of wordplay, etc. that goes on.In all this is a very clever book, that is erudite, full of humour and intelligence and is certainly worth reading. Don’t expect to speed through this though, because there is so much to take in and absorb. If you do not end up liking it, fair enough, but at least you will be one of those who have tried to read it, rather than some who are quite willing to write this off as not very good, despite the fact that they have never even opened it.

⭐This is hard to read. Oh my god, so hard to read. I gave up. I tried multiple times. I wanted to read it, I thought that as it was lauded as one of the greatest tomes of all time, that it would do me some good. But no. It instead highlighted the fact that I have the attention span of a spoon, and that high brow literature of this nature is beyond me. If anything, it makes other people stare at you in wonder when they first see it on your book shelf, making you, the owner, feel slightly superior for a fleeting moment in time.

⭐I gave this 5 stars because it is value for money and it arrived very promptly. I’m now into it, having read the introduction (50+ pages !!), and first 2 chapters (another 50 pages). It is HEAVY going, but I’m determined to finish it, after all, I’ve plenty of time on my hands :). I found the trick is to read just 10 pages at a time and digest them before proceeding, so far, so good. I hope to be still alive by the end !

Keywords

Free Download Ulysses in EPUB format
Ulysses EPUB Free Download
Download Ulysses 2015 EPUB Free
Ulysses 2015 EPUB Free Download
Download Ulysses EPUB
Free Download Ebook Ulysses