Ulysses

By: James Joyce

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 29 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

Joyce’s experimental masterpiece set a new standard for modernist fiction, pushing the English language past all previous thresholds in its quest to capture a day in the life of an Everyman in turn-of-the-century Dublin. Obliquely borrowing characters and situations from Homer’s Odyssey, Joyce takes us on an internal odyssey along the current of thoughts, impressions, and experiences that make up the adventure of living an average day.

As his characters stroll, eat, ruminate, and argue through the streets of Dublin, Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness narrative artfully weaves events, emotions, and memories in a free flow of imagery and associations.

Full of literary references, parody, and uncensored vulgarity, Ulysses has been considered controversial and challenging, but always brilliant and rewarding.

Public Domain (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence." ( New York Times)

"To my mind one of the most significant and beautiful books of our time." (Gilbert Seldes, The Nation)

“Joyce soars to such rhapsodies of beauty as have probably never been equaled in English prose fiction." (Edmund Wilson, The New Republic)

So immensely Irish. So mesmerizing and vivid.

I've read this book at high school to feel myself modern and educated and I sort of struggled to the end. I must notice that proper narrator changes things dramatically. John Lee is the king amongst narrators indeed.

Superb novel and performance!

I'd put off reading ULYSSES for decades. I now understand why it was considered the best novel of the 20th Century.

Not for Everyone

Would you try another book from James Joyce and/or John Lee?

James Joyce is an acquired taste as far as I can figure. It would depend on the person whether I would recommend it. John Lee would be perfectly fine on something that wasn't so *completely* taxing and mind-numbingly difficult.

What did you like best about this story?

I rather did like that there was stream-of-consciousness and alliterative prose, but not to the extent it happened in this book. I know that Joseph Campbell read this book 56 times, bless him, but I can't see getting through it once. (I got two thirds through)

Would you listen to another book narrated by John Lee?

Oh yes.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Maybe.

Any additional comments?

Having it audio did help me a bit getting through the stream-of-consciousness way that it is written. Hearing expressed in a voice is quite a bit easier than trying to interpret it as text, as happened in the last Joyce book I tried to read. So if a person was keen to read a Joyce book having an audio book is helpful if it is hard for them. The whispersync might even be better, but I can't say for sure.

YES!!!!!

oh what a trippity trip it is to be walking about the lake listening to Ulysses. complete!

Pure Joyce

The reading is magnificent. Through the crowded pages and episodes of literally hundreds of characters, the narrator, John Lee, manages to catch in all their tones, quirks, and color the distinct voices of each. His inflection, pitch, and cadence is clear and deadly accurate. Not only are the rolling rhythms of Joyce's prose maintained with uncanny naturalness--thoughts are recognizable as such (not merely rendered as captioned overlays) and the tones, timbres, moods, and motives of the enormous flood of speech are rendered in as richly and varied accents as they would if one were walking the streets of Dublin.

From heavy Latinate meditations to the onomatopoeic replication of linotype machines in the newspaper office and the raucous imitation of a gramophone recording of a deceased grandfather, Lee's renderings are palpably believable as both the realities they represent and, more importantly, as empathetic interpretations of the individual hearts and minds they issue from.

I was first a bit wary of the lower cost and ratings of this version compared with the nearly tripled price of the most reviewed recording (who knows what they were thinking), but after listening to the provided sample of its long stretches of rushed and flattened monotone and hokey interpolated music recordings, I moved on to find this gem. It does what Joyce's greatest gift does--bring the full panorama of humanity to life purely through language.

A forceful narration but a long haul

This is James Joyce fired out of a cannon. An impressive demonstration of narrative athleticism by the talented John Lee does not compensate for a lengthy difficult listen and lack of nuance. It may possibly have been compressed in post production on the other hand to squeeze it into a certain time frame in which case they should de-compress it and re-publish. The nuance might bloom once it has air. 60% speed should do it. Then you might have a great audio.

light over dark

I really hope that they do not take this portion away from the movie. I have truly enjoyed this book for many years and am glad to see that it has made a comeback.

Perfect

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

If one only gives up on understanding every little thing about this book (an impossible, tedious and no doubt boring task), one would enjoy a funny, intelligent and inspiring masterpiece.

Brisk and engaging as always

John Lee gives a brisk and engaging reading of this difficult book, as he always does. If you have a choice between Lee’s reading of a difficult book and someone else’s, Lee’s is almost always the one that will keep you awake. I listened to it again recently, and I have to mention something I failed to note when I first posted this review. He gives a particularly fine reading of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. It’s a two-hour monologue with (if I remember correctly) only three punctuation marks in the print edition. The sentences pour out fast and furious, and it requires some concentration, but Lee’s reading makes sense of the individual phrases AND the overall sweep of emotion, ending on a wonderfully triumphant note. His version of the soliloquy isn’t an uninflected recital; it has a shape. Some recordings have a woman reading this part, and while that may be better, I don’t think it’s really a problem here: it is, after all, a man’s fantasy of what goes through a woman’s mind. In the very first release of this audiobook, years ago, the narration ran all the episodes together without a break. Since each episode has a distinctive style, this became confusing. To Blackstone’s credit, as soon as this was pointed out to them, they re-engineered the recording and fixed it; the episodes are now clearly separated by a pause of several seconds. It's a small change (maybe not small from a technical standpoint, but to the listener), but it makes a world of difference.

This is one of the best recordings of the novel available. And the novel practically demands to be read aloud. If you’ve had trouble getting through it, give the audio a try. (And before you give it up, skip the third episode if you have to — the one where Stephen wanders around on Sandymount Strand.) As with any other reading of Ulysses, it helps to have a guidebook at hand. I think this is even more important than having the text itself. A guide like Blamires’ New Bloomsday Book will keep you oriented and explain the most important references. Even SparkNotes, as comparatively superficial as it is, will help.

It is meant for college, not just to read.

This is often listed as one of the greatest books of all time, but only if you have extensive previous background. You need to know the Homer, but the later modified version. You need to understand the history of Ireland in the early part of the previous century. It is for college classroom. If you buy this expecting to read a great book, you will be disappointed. Read Proust or Don Quixote or Anna Karenia. And any audio version is ultimately over acted, as this version is.