Is this supposed to be fucking unreadable? I thought if I just

>>8454716
That is one book like the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey where plebs discover it every year and don't know WTF it's about. Then 5-10 years later are the first to say it's the GOAT work of its artform.

>>8454716
I'm guessing that either English isn't your first language or that you aren't that experienced of a reader yet. The first couple of chapters of the book are pretty straightforward. I doubt most people on lit would have any problem with the first chapter. It's later on that it becomes more challenging.

>>8454716

Well if you've ever been across England's border it's pretty obvious that Scots are naturally hard to understand.

>>8454716
You don't just jump into Ulysses. The necessity of reading major works in the canon prior to this is not a meme

>>8454741
>Scots are naturally hard to understand.
Is this the Milhouse of this board?

>>8454745
it's one guy autistically spamming his own "clever maymay"

>>8454742
this

>>8454742
which works should I read first?

>>8454777
At the very least, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Though I suspect you might have a lot more to go than just that to get Ulysses. Which is nothing to be ashamed of. It's notoriously difficult.

>>8454791
Is there an actual list of works that should be read before reading ulysses so it makes more sense?

>>8454792
The Western Canon.

Start with the Greeks.

>>8454792
Required:
The Odyssey (if you weren't able to figure this out on your own, don't even bother reading this book for a year or so)
Hamlet
Most if not all Shakespeare besides the apocrypha
Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

Autism tier:
Dubliners
Some Aquinas, just get an idea for him
The Bible
Milton, Chaucer, Dante, etc.

>>8454831
this and some Aristotle wouldn't hurt

>>8454716
i feel the same about infinite jest

>>8454831
I feel like dubliners should also be required. It's good to see how Joyce's style developed over his career.
Plus there's the dubliners characters in Ulysses

>>8454831
bad list desu

objectively superior ranking of importance to read ulysses:

1. Portrait
2. Aristotle
3. Hamlet
4. Odyssey
5. More Greeks
6. Divine Comedy
7. Dubliners

>>8454831
not bad but dubliners should be in required and aristotle in autism

is Ulysses just prose, puns, and allusions?
I don't mean "just" in a demeaning sense, but are there any moral resolutions or deeper themes like you would find in say, Dosto or Woolf? Or is it mostly aesthetics and structure masturbation like Proust or Nabokov

>>8454974
It has everything. It's just not spelled out for the reader.

>>8454974
No there are definite themes
The book explores a lot of the inner lives of people, subjectivity of events/choices, and ultimately mortality. The book is centered around the death of a character's old friend, and while there are musings on death throughout the book, the biggest statement on the issue is never actually implicitly said, but is rather a byproduct of some sort of meta-insight; the book taking place over one day, it being mostly in the head of one rather insignificant man, and the parallels to the myth of Ulysses all show Joyce's main message that we experience and think so much over just one day, that even though we're bound by a few decades on the planet, we each have an epic's worth of thoughts, ambitions, and ideals.

Make of that what you will, just thought that might help

>>8454792
here's how to prepare to read Ulysses in 15 easy steps
1. read the entire Western Canon
2. become fluent in Italian, French, German, Celtic, and Latin
3. read the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church
4. Get baptized and have your first Communion
5. read the Revised Bloomsday Book
6. Read all of Ellman's analyses and biographies of Joyce
7. Read Exiles, Portrait of the Artist, Stephen Hero, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners
8. watch the all the operas composed by Wagner, Mozart, and Verdi
9. read the entirety of Western philosophy
10. learn basic music composition
11. learn the British monetary divisions pre-Decimal Day
12. memorize the Vulgate
13. learn all the major Catholic prayers in Latin and Catholic theology
14. read Das sechste und siebente Buch Mosis and Achtes und neuntes Buch Mosis
15. learn Judaic theology

>>8455150
Underrated. I got the same "lost thoughts" in a day thing from Proust and Tristram Shandy.

Yes Ulysses is taxing, but not the worst. /lit/ try Finnegan's Wake. Another one by Joyce. Calling it incomprehensible would not be a far stretch of the imagination >.<

>>8454844
Is Infinite jest hard to understand? I understand it pretty well

>>8455293
it's not but pseuds pretend it's hard to understand so they can posture intelligence for understanding it

I threw this book in the trash and have not regretted it

Schopenhauer was right that life is too short for this, and that shit books poison the mind

>>8455289
Are you seriously telling this board to "lele look up finnegan's wake its XD so hard guyz" as if we don't know the book? Fuck off.

>>8455293
i tried to read a translation because i couldn't understand quite well those giant phrases on the english version
still, i find it quite hard to keep track of everything is going on, i have to reread chapters and paragraphs all the time

but thats my opinion and based on the br-portuguese edition