Tommy here

Hope you did your homework beforehand.

i.e read Dubliners, Portrait, Odyssey and Hamlet

>>8357006
Just came off of all the above. Wish I woulda brushed up on my Dante a bit first.

>>8356947
>corrected text
wew

>>8357056
You'll be fine enough provided you've read Portrait.

Chapters 1 and 2 are easy. Chapter 3 is where you first get a sense of what you're in for in the rest of the novel.

>>8356947
Hell yeah. It's a much easier read than you're expecting, ONLY after you've gotten into the rhythm of it. I say, take the first ten pages and just read them over and over until you can visualize it like it was genre fiction or something else that easy. It's not so much hard as it is..abrupt. A majority of the difficulty of the book is just "plunk here you are in the middle of a scene, no set-up, no introduction, hit the ground running" and I love it for it personally

>>8357063

Why do I need to read Portrait?

I have read Dubs, Odyssey and Hamlet, that's the only one I haven't touched yet.

>>8357103
The main character of Portrait, Stephen, is a major character in Ulysses and several chapters are from his perspective. Also because Portrait is fucking good

>>8357103

Portrait's more essential than any of those. Ulysses is in some ways a direct sequel to it.

Most importantly, you become familiar with Stephen Dedalus and his upbringing; Stephen, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom alternating as the central characters in the book.

Plus you get the lowdown on Joyce's perspective on Irish internecine politics, the Roman Catholic church, the education system, and so on.

>>8357142
Is there anything else important to have read before Ulysses?

>>8357168
Some beefy ass realism (probs Anna Karenina) to see what Joyce is working against. Maybe Don Quixote to get a feel for experimentation with form.

>>8357168

You covered everything else to get a good first reading. Hamlet, Odyssey, Dubliners, Portrait.

If you want to go hardcore, you could read the Iliad, the Aeneid, a compendium of Irish mythology, the King James Bible, the complete works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Shakespeare, Defoe, Henrik Ibsen, the catechism of the Catholic Church, the English Romantic poets, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Giambatista Vico, the English Romantic Poets, Morte d'Arthur, Charles Dickens, the Divine Comedy, have a working knowledge of Irish, Italian, and Latin and a resource on turn of the century Irish politics and pop culture.

>>8357237

Oh yeah and William Butler Yeats.

But you could just get something like the Annotated Ulysses for this stuff.

Again, what's crucial and most prominent are the Odyssey, Hamlet, Dubliners and Portrait.

>Tommy here
Glad to hear Pinecone is finally getting around to reading Ulysses.

>>8357254
Why Dubliners? For Irish background info?

>>8357296

Yeah, and the random middle class Dubliners return as a sort of 4th main character in Ulysses. Like a chorus in a Greek play.

>>8357237
how the fuck is Huck Finn important, and Vico is more for Wake than Ulysses.

Yeah those two both apply to the Wake more than Ulysses.

I just got carried away lol.

>>8357320
ay ok ill let ya off this time
watch urself

Update: Holy fuck this reminds me of when I first read Pound or Borges. I have seen the light. I didn't think he could top The Dead or Portrait but holy fuck. The passive aggressive/verbal sword play of Mulligan and Stephen, Buck like a fucking modernist Wilde, the allusions to the Odyssey, to Grecian culture in general, the motherghostsea imagery. This may be better that sex.

>>8356947
Read Ulysses last year. Understood about 60-70% of what was going on--I'd consider that decent and enjoyed it immensely. The chapters vary in their easiness to grasp. Some are normal tier some are incredibly esoteric. There's a chapter where he writes poorly on purpose. I remember that being hard.

For Ulysses (like any Joyce) what helps is:

*know Irish history/politics*
*know French*
*know Latin*
*know Shakespeare*
*Have read Portrait and also Dubliners*

>he fell for the meme

>>8357475
>There's a chapter where he writes poorly on purpose.
Do you mean the last chapter?

>>8357475
What's a good intro to the history of Ireland?

Op take your time and buy a couple guides such as Bloomsday. Frank Delaney's podcasts are wonderful too.

>>8359348
No, he means Eumaeus. Fuck Eumaeus.

File: Nabokov-in-America-Feature.jpg (69KB, 580x320px) Image search: [Google]

69KB, 580x320px

kid, you're fucked

it's not that you have to read his other books first, or any specific books at all, what is needed is for you to come to a point in your journey through the history of the written word (which you can approach from any direction, any starting point, as long as you're truly engaged), a point at which you're just bored with conventional forms, bored with avant garde stuff, whatever, you need to be truly bored of literature, sick of it, you want to see it smashed, and this is when you pick up ulysses. read secondary sources, get ulysses annotated, and swim through it slowly.

but you might not get to that point for a few years, maybe never. ulysses just isn't the kind of book to be approached because you want it completed, on your shelf, checked off the list.

>>8359348
He means all chapters

They're all written badly

>>8362051
>Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected. Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought.

Hey Tommy. Do you find weed helpful in the creative process? Or is it just recreational for you?

>>8357006
>Hamlet

For like that one chapter where blooms dads ghost talks to buck? Its not like you have to read all of Hamlet to get the reference. Its pretty obvious

>>8357237
Lol or you just read the sparks notes after each chapter