I guess my first comment would be that if you don’t enjoy Ulysses, then don’t read it. I hate the notion that people feel compelled to slog through something they don’t enjoy simply because some other arbitrary group has decided that the work in question is “important”. If it’s assigned reading for an class, that’s another issue, but generally speaking, if you aren’t enjoying it, stop.
That being said, I should point out that being challenging or difficult does not necessarily place a book outside the realm of enjoyable reading for me (Ulysses is certainly one example of a work I was challenged by but have enjoyed each time I’ve read it; Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is another). The key for me is whether the effort expended is repaid by the enjoyment, education, or other reward I derive from the work. And yes, I have genuinely enjoyed Ulysses each time I’ve read it – some parts more than others, of course. There are incidents, phrases, etc. that still float around in my head at times.
I mean no disrespect or opprobium toward the original poster or anyone else, but most of the people I’ve known who’ve disliked Ulysses (and Joyce in general) have shared the trait of being unable or unwilling to let things they didn’t immediately “get” slide by without worrying about it. I think it’s essential to get any enjoyment from Joyce that you be willing to let a whole lot of the allusions, references, etc. sail past you. If you find you’re enjoying it enough to invest the effort, get a copy of Stuart Gilbert’s James Joyce’s Ulysses to refer to.
A couple of additional points to consider:
[ul][li]With Joyce in particular, you have to hear the words – not just recognizing them as they flow past on paper, but making an effort to say the words and be aware of the sounds they make. Important in Ulysses, the only way to begin to approach Finnegan’s Wake (which proved to be too much even for me).[/li][li]While literary theorists can debate the issue forever, my personal belief is that written communication is more like the score of a musical work than an recording of that work, and that just as some conductors and orchestras are better suited to certain works than others, the same is true of readers and literary works. If a particular combination of reader and text doesn’t work, it may be no reflection on either the text or the reader, but on their unsuitability for one another. And of course, simply because you’re unable to perform the text to your own satisfaction at one point in your life doesn’t mean you won’t return to it at a later time – or that a piece that works for you now won’t cease to be congenial later in your life.[/li]Without contradicting the preceding point, I will say that the net effect of recorded music, television, and movies in this century has been a decline in the willingness and ability of many readers to construct or perform the text for themselves. There’s no laugh track, no background music to serve as cues for how we’re to respond to the words on the page – we have to determine that for ourselves, and many of us have come to depend on those cues so much that we’re lost without them. Many readers expect books to dictate our intellectual and emotional reactions to them in the same heavy-handed way that most of our TV shows and movies these days do. That’s particularly hard to overcome in the case of an early Modernist like Joyce.[/ul]
When this new punctuation form reaches it’s zenith, all the classics will surely be expanded to include them; when the smiley version of Ulysses comes out, I’ll be the first one in line at the bookstore :p.