Source: Wikimedia Commons

James Joyce’s Ulysses is a book with a huge reputation, despite the fact that so many people have never dared to read it.

It is, for sure, no quick summer beach read; but that does not mean it is an aloof, oblique, concentration-vacuum, like Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Joyce’s Ulysses is a raunchy riot of a book, as Louis Menand shows in his charming article, “Silence, Exile, Punning.” Ulysses is a celebration of the actual in Joyce’s life:

Nora… came from Galway, and was working as a chambermaid at Finn’s Hotel, in Dublin, when he saw her walking along Nassau Street in a manner suggesting that she was approachable. “Sauntering” is how Joyce later described it. He duly approached, and asked her for a date. She agreed, but stood him up. He sent her a note. “I went home quite dejected,” it said. “I would like to make an appointment but it might not suit you. I hope you will be kind enough to make one with me—if you have not forgotten me!” This time, they did meet. They walked to Ringsend, on the south bank of the Liffey, where … she put her hand inside his trousers and masturbated him. It was June 16, 1904, the day on which Joyce set “Ulysses.”  When people celebrate Bloomsday, that is what they are celebrating…(read more)