Q: How Irish is Ulysses?
A: The main character has a lucky potato.
That's some serious Irish (apologies for multiple "I-words"). I'm glad I followed the recommended Joyce reading order of Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist... before Ulysses. Dubliners gives a idea of the scope and feel of Joyce's Dublin and it's useful to have read Portrait so you know what an unsatisfied wiener Stephen Daedalus is when he pops up in Ulysses.
Some of the non-Shakespeare literary references in the beginning sailed over my head, but once the book got into the experimental sections I really enjoyed it. Specifically the drunken hallucination play script of "Circe" and the FAQ-style "Ithaca." It's amazing to think of someone fucking with the novel format almost a hundred years ago when someone who attempted it just recently is being hailed as a visionary. Joyce shows it's possible to convey feeling and narrative information in vastly different ways. Whatta guy!
I haven't been reading much this week: I'm a few hundred pages into Tristram Shandy and I read a few more Updike stories.
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