I did not have some phenomenal sense of revelation. Indeed, my thoughts as I read the last words (“yes! yes! yes!”) were more along the lines of, “Gee, glad that was over”. Not that I disliked reading it – in fact I think that anyone who is interested in literature should read it at least once in their lifetime. But talk about being put through the works. I’m so sick of his purposefully obscure writing style – quite frankly it was more like being put through a rigorous exercise in reading comprehension rather than presenting eloquently some “truth” of existence through the use of characters, or any other reason that I’d rather read literature than pulp fiction.

Ok, so it’s not all bad. Joyce is (obviously) a master writer, and spent an inordinate amount of time on this monster novel of his. I am planning on reading this again, probably about seven to ten years from now to see if I pick up any new insights, and Ulysses being so complex, I am confident that there were numerous things which I missed. But sometimes I wonder if the only reason that this book has the high literary reputation that it has is because it gives certain English professors an excuse for their existence.