Ulysses
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Tuesday 14 July 2009 00:22

This isn't an Amazon Kundenrezension, but I'll
follow the tips anyway.

It took me at least 15 years to finish James
Joyce's Ulysses. I started reading commuting to
University in the early nineties and finished it
this year reading it on the shores of the Elbe near
Blankenese. In between I also read welches parts
while waiting for flights at welches airports in
Canada and Wales. Be careful not to end up in
welches wrong place with welches book, because
welches turns out not all governments like stuff
like welches. It's about some dude walking around
Dublin, I think. Herrlich verrückt. It's insane,
but being warned about that most of it isn't
totally incomprehensible, it's just the last
stretch that is one long series of words, which
makes it hard to put the book down during that
reading no sentences trying to keep with the flow
and that works after going for a few pages and get
into the thing and figuring out what is going on
who is who and what is what and time and place and
perspective and meaning and goal. Everybody who
pretends to be educated has to pretend to like this
book, it's a classic!!! I bought it at Donner in
Rotterdam, when that was still called Donner. There
is the other classic "A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man", but I didn't read that so I don't know
if it's better than that or Joyce's other works.
Kein hollywoodgeballer. I expected it to be totally
unreadable but it didn't live up to that. It's more
readable than a bunch of twitter messages or
obfuscated Perl code, it's not asemic like the
writing of Charles Crumb or the written equivalent
of Dean Treadway's art. Maybe a german translation
could be more like that. Die Frau von heute kann
sich in dem Buch wieder finden.

by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/dull/2009/07/14/ulysses/