Tuesday, September 22, 2009

SHARING A ULYSSES REVIEW BY MISFIT SALON

Ulysses (Urghhhh)
Anyone read this book? Can you tell me what it's about because I'm halfway through and I still have no clue. I believe, although I am not 100% sure, that it is in the English language.
The literature majorette in me vows to persevere since this has been touted as The Novel - the one that changed everything that came before it. I can see how it is different from not only what came before but anything that resembles or claims to be a book. To say Ulysses is nonlinear is an oversimplification of it's, and this is a legitimate literary term I learned in English Lit 101, What the F#$%&*@#%!k quality.
Ulysses makes The Sound and the Fury look like Mother Goose.
no discernible plot - check


stream of unconsciousness - check


multiple points of view switcheroos (even mid-paragraph) - check


unfollowable conversations - check (right, unfollowable is not a word but if Joyce can make up words willy nilly and be published AND be touted as a literary giant, so can I!)


obscure and random literary allusions - check


just plain random - check


For the first time in my life, I am considering consulting a Cliffs Notes.
But - here and there are more than lucid, actually quite breathtaking sentences, phrases even, which remind me that Joyce is not random. That he is in full possession of his keishter. That maybe I'm just a dumbass for not getting it.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
BY: MISFIT SALON STEPHANIE

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this, Kris! Now I definitely have to finish this monster.