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Why you should definitely read James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’
What’s my favorite book, you ask? Well, I would tell you it is James Joyce’s Ulysses.
‘But Ulysses is such a hard read!’ I bet you’ve heard that over the years, making it too daunting of a classic for you to even give it a try.
I can’t blame you. Classics already tend to carry an aura of the impenetrable, their ‘true meanings’ only accessible to elite scholars who have dedicated many years of their lives covered in dust between stuffy volumes seriously studying their contents with a deeply furrowed brow, bent over these pages full of profound content.
But what if that was just a way to make us literature nerds all seem more serious than we really are?
Literary fiction has carved out a proper artistic niche since the late 19th century, in which brilliant and beautiful works have been allowed to thrive. Then, it slowly suffocated itself to death as time went on by gaining the reputation of being too difficult, too unreadable for the ‘general’ public, whoever that may be. And unreadable does not sell.
I’m here to tell you to forget that. Get a copy of Ulysses, skip the introduction, and just start reading.
