Ulysses (Modern Fiction) [Abridged, Audiobook, Classical] [Audio CD]

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession". None of these descriptions, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in its own way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's astonishing command of the English language.

Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is "What happens?" In the case of Ulysses, the answer could be "Everything". William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of inforgettable Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, loiter, argue and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream- of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river-- we're privy to their thoughts, emotions and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordion-folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.

Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call "Early Yeats Lite"-- will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naïve curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Amazon.co.uk Review

Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession". None of these descriptions, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in its own way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's astonishing command of the English language.

Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is "What happens?" In the case of Ulysses, the answer could be "Everything". William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of inforgettable Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, loiter, argue and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream- of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river-- we're privy to their thoughts, emotions and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordion-folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.

Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call "Early Yeats Lite"-- will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naïve curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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By : James Joyce
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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks; abridged edition edition (3 Oct 1994)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 9626340118
• ISBN-13: 978-9626340110
• Product Dimensions: 12.5 x 14.3 x 2.4 cm
  

 

Ulysses (Modern Fiction) [Abridged, Audiobook, Classical] [Audio CD]

 

Costumer Critiques

This is an astounding tour de force. Ulysses is a notoriously tricky read but, when listening to this, one is just swept along, unconcerned about such difficulties as foreign-language quotations, obscure allusions, opaque puns, crazy word-games etc. On the printed page, such things are frustrating for the reader, who feels ill-inclined to continue with a book which he or she does not totally undertand. But this brilliant reading locations such difficulites in their suitable perspective.

For me, this reading revealed the humour of the book for the initially time. The Aeolus episode had me in stitches the Cyclops episode and the end of Circe produced me literally cry with laughter. And, in this reading, the quite ending of the novel, with its excellent surge of warmth and really like, is practically overwhelming.

One could quibble about the occasional pronunciation. And maybe Marcella Riordan, who reads Molly Bloom, could somehow have suggested the total lack of punctuation in the final Penelope episode. (Yes, I appreciate that the poor woman has got to breathe...!) But these are minor quibbles. The reading(s), production and presentation are all completely 1st rate. I hope this splendid recording will win new admirers for this awesome masterpiece.

Norton and Riordan have also recorded a particularly abridged Finnegans Wake. Let us hope that someday they - and Naxos - will give us the whole thing.

Tom Stoppard had Joyce answer the question of "what did you do in the war?" with "I wrote Ulysses, what did you do?" Jim Norton might answer a corresponding question about what did he do for the duration of the finish of the planet, with "I read Ulysses, what did you do." It is quite magnificent, transcending the medium of the audio book to build a genre for itself. Norton acts all the parts (except, finally for the affirmative Molly who is breathed out by Marcella Riordan) and makes this best of all and most tough of all novels absolutely comprehensible. If you ever tried to read Ulysses and gave up, start out once more with this recording either by itself or in parallel with the written word. It will remain in your memory forever and you will be enriched.

 

Ulysses (Modern Fiction) [Abridged, Audiobook, Classical] [Audio CD]