You’re Having a Laugh

What’s my favorite book, you ask? Well, I would tell you it is James

Joyce’s Ulysses.

‘But Ulysses is such a hard read!’ I bet you’ve heard that over the years, making it too daunting of a classic for you to even give it a try.

I can’t blame you. Classics already tend to carry an aura of the impenetrable, their ‘true meanings’ only accessible to elite scholars who have dedicated many years of their lives covered in dust between stuffy volumes seriously studying their contents with a deeply furrowed brow, bent over these pages full of profound content.

But what if that was just a way to make us literature nerds all seem more serious than we really are?

Literary fiction has carved out a proper artistic niche since the late 19th century, in which brilliant and beautiful works have been allowed to thrive. Then, it slowly suffocated itself to death as time went on by gaining the reputation of being too difficult, too unreadable for the ‘general’ public, whoever that may be. And unreadable does not sell.

I’m here to tell you to forget that. Get a copy of Ulysses, skip the introduction, and just start reading.

Joyce’s seminal work gives us a glimpse into a day in the life of the bachelor Stephan Dedalus and the married Leopold Bloom, roaming around Dublin on the 16th of June 1904.

Dedalus is a young writer, suffering from acute writer’s block and a serious case of melancholy after the loss of his mother. Bloom, on the other hand, is a man in his forties who has never processed the loss of his son and is carrying an increasingly melted bar of soap in his pocket to give to his wife later.

Meanwhile, this same wife, Molly, has stayed at home to see her lover.

Both men’s paths cross as they tumble into all kinds of adventures during a sweaty Dublin summer night and are confronted with thoughts they’d rather not be having, people they’d rather not run into and places they’re not supposed to be.

Joyce turns language into a playground, a kind of wonderland where the rules no longer apply, gleefully throwing them in the river Liffey in full recognition of the fact that we are all quite mad in this life.

Ulysses is regarded as an experimental modernist work. It plays with words, meanings and sentences like no other. Joyce weaves words into a surprising tapestry of sounds.

You can lose yourself in the dreamy atmosphere surrounding Stephen Dedalus as he wanders on the beach, while his thoughts churn, swirl and flow like the seawater. You can hear how Joyce lifts the typical modernist device of the ‘stream of consciousness’ to a higher level with his musical realism:

«Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.» — James Joyce

It only takes one look at this gorgeous language, to understand that Joyce is a virtuoso of the written word and this verbal concerto makes Ulysses a uniquely auditive work, one meant to be heard.

It would do this book justice to boisterously declare its sentences out loud, so that all can enjoy its beauty and many laughs, just like a traditional Irish folk song.

With this call for a live performance, Ulysses reminds us of the ancient Greek works it was based on. Homer’s epics, Sophocles’ tragedies… all were performed by a live choir, which made literature a collective and auditive experience for the ancient Greeks.

This stands in stark contrast to how we experience literature today: quietly reading it in a corner by ourselves, using our ‘internal voice’.

No one is obliging you by any means to stand up proudly in the middle of the room and start reading this text aloud. Your inner voice can also bring Joyce’s words to life as it sings rather than speaks the words right into your brain.

Its musicality, however, is not all that makes Ulysses an utterly enjoyable and memorable read.

Joyce turns language into a playground, a kind of wonderland where the rules no longer apply, gleefully throwing them in the river Liffey in full recognition of the fact that we are all quite mad in this life.

Funny is what this book is.

The humor in Joyce’s word play will make you laugh out loud at times, or will at least elicit a sneaky giggle if you’re not the exuberant type. Forget worrying about what others might think, for laugh, you will. Think instead of Aristoteles, who once said that literature can only be instructive if it is also enjoyable.

Now of course, we should not ignore the fact that Joyce himself was an erudite, highly educated and well-read author. He had been confronted with great works of literature from a young age and was instructed in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He also spoke Irish Gaelic, French and Italian.

In Ulysses, Joyce projects grammatical structures of these foreign languages onto his Anglo-Irish mother tongue or vice versa. He mixes and matches words until we witness the birth of Grebrew and Fritalian and, at times, also pure nonsense.

This led to claims that this book is untranslatable, which isn’t surprising when you encounter sentences like these:

«I am the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman. » — James Joyce

On top of this linguistic madhouse, allusions to mythology, history, folklore and many different European cultures are strewn throughout the novel with abandon. So it’s more than understandable that Ulysses is regarded as a tough, or even incomprehensible, read.

But those who open this book, abandon all worry, even though all of this is entirely true. Many of the references, layered like a colorful birthday cake, will probably pass right by you.

But who ever claimed we needed to grasp every reference to enjoy a book? And if you do get one, dance a little celebratory jig and let the rest drift right off on the water under Dublin’s bridges. They can’t harm you.

Don’t put Stephen Dedalus under the microscope. Leave him there by the seaside, lost in thought with his walking stick, his empty stomach and equally empty pockets, and go and sit next to him.

If you don’t believe me, ask Stephen Dedalus. His own slice of tragedy results in this main character struggling with his past and with letting go. Everything reminds Stephen of his mother’s death and the troubled relationship with his father.

For what is a father without a son? How can I connect with others in the now? I am so lonely. So lonely I could die. What is history? And what is the use of creating a history if we all have our own versions of it? It is best to forget everything that ever happened. Never look back. It’s too awful anyway. I should write more. But who will ever read what I’ve written?

Stephen over-analyses every aspect of life to death, and it leads nowhere. Because in the end it doesn’t matter if Shakespeare was father, son, grandfather, the holy ghost or everyone at once.

Are you still following? No, neither am I. Because these thoughts are just a distraction, a way to keep thinking and not doing like a proper modernist Hamlet. And Stephen realizes that, even if he won’t admit it.

Analysis is death

No work of literature can ever be enjoyed if you are adamant on analyzing it to bits and dragging up every ounce of symbolism.

It’s okay to reflect, to let it sink in, and feel like a right Sherlock every once in a while when you’ve unearthed some deeper meaning in the work somewhere. Of course that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

But to experience art with the sole intention of analyzing it, can scarcely still be called an experience.

So don’t put Stephen Dedalus under the microscope. Instead, leave him there by the seaside, lost in thought, with his walking stick, his empty stomach and equally empty pockets.

Now go and sit next to him. Listen to the waves, feel the summer sun on your face. Don’t overthink it. That is when you’ll start enjoying Ulysses.

Take a break from analysis and let the Dublin waters wash away your fears around tackling this book. You won’t regret it. I promise.