Ulysses

Just finished reading Joyce's Ulysses. I found I authentically enjoyed it much more this time around; that was helped in part by the realization that the political oppressions of Ireland aren't the backdrop, not the canvas, but is the brunt of the novel itself--Joyce is writing like a Celt, not an Anglo, in the labyrinthine style of the reliefs on the Irish Book of Kells. In the words of William Carlos Williams, "It must have been his pleasure to 'unenglish' English," to demonstrate, at a time when the Irish were very much considered "white negroes" and a lower form of animal, how brilliant an Irishman could be at circumventing and containing the entire English and European literary tradition that attempted to contain him.

But none the less, the chapters that continued to vex me were "Sirens," "Oxen of the Sun" (though I at least understand that the latter is written in a medieval style that progresses through the centuries; in other words, I at least know why that chapter is so difficult), "Eumaeus," and of course, the grand finale "Penelope." Yet as much as I struggled through that chapter with only 3 punctuation marks, I must say, that final string of "yes I said yes I will Yes" is unusually touching, even if only as a nostalgia-tinged cry of regret and loss.