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Thanks very much, Margaret! I guess I was good at teaching Ulysses because I was so passionate about it (well, that's what my students said to my boss, anyway). :-) Ulysses was the book that changed my life and put me on the road to..... equilibrium? acceptance? a deep and abiding love of life? All of those things and more. I first read it as part of a 12-week course: one teacher, three students, meeting every week to take it apart and share our experiences of it. That's the way to 'read' a book like this: it's an adventure, not just a good read.

I suppose this syntopic approach would work for all the really BIG novels that you know you should read, but you never managed to get round to. For me that would be:

War and Peace
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
The Brothers Karamazov
Tom Jones
Les Miserables
Bleak House
David Copperfield
Remembrance of Things Past

They're all classics that have had scores of critical studies written about them, so there's no shortage of books there to 'read around' them.

ulysses. UK.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR ULYSSES:

What follows is a bibliography that represents the books I referenced in my own studies and subsequent teaching of James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s by no means exhaustive – there are scores more books out there, and some of these might be out of print now, but they are all useful as a syntopic study of Ulysses.

Adams, R.M. (1977) AfterJoyce: Studies in Fiction After Ulysses. Oxford University Press.

Blamires, H. (1966), The New Bloomsday Book – A Guide Through Ulysses. University Paperback/Methuen.
(Indispensable. A simple line-by-line commentary on the novel).

Bolt, Sydney. A Preface to James Joyce. (Don’t have date or publisher, but this is a good study).

Burgess, A. (1965), Here Comes Everybody. Faber & Faber.

Ellmann, R. (1972) Ulysses On The Liffey. Faber & Faber.

Ellmann, R. (1966) James Joyce. Oxford University Press.
(This is THE biography on Joyce).

Gifford, Don. Ulysses Annotated. (Don’t have date or publisher. This is a painstaking annotation of every single reference in Ulysses).

Gilbert, Stuart. James Joyce’s Ulysses. (Don’t have date or publisher, but this is a good study).

Gross, J. (1971) Joyce. Fontana/Collins.

Jameson, F. (1985), 'Ulysses In History', in McCormack, W.J. and Stead, A. (eds) James Joyce & Modern Literature. Routledge.

Joyce, J. (1984), Ulysses (The Corrected Text) (ed) Gabler, H.W. Penguin.

Kenner, Hugh. Ulysses. (Don’t have date or publisher, but this is a good study).

Norris, D. and Flint C. (1994) Joyce for Beginners. Icon Books.
(This is a very accessible cartoon book that acts as a guide to Joyce’s life and works – some excellent chapters on Ulysses).

Parrinder, P. (1984) James Joyce. Cambridge University Press.

Sultan, S. (1964) The Argument of Ulysses. Ohio State University Press.

Tindall, W. Y. A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce. (Don’t have date or publisher, but this is a good study).

ALSO:

VIDEO: Ten Modern Writers series: James Joyce’s Ulysses. Channel 4 (UK). An excellent introduction to the book with some good dramatised extracts.

There’s also the 1960s feature film version directed by Joseph Strick, but this is very dour and completely misses the humour of the book (Molly’s monologue is very good, though). Hopefully the new film version, currently in production, will be better.

VIDEO: Walking into Eternity: James Joyce’s Ulysses; A Dublin Guide with Patrick Ryan. Virtually no critical appreciation here at all, but a visual tour of the locations of the novel with evocative music and Patrick Ryan doing a fair impression of Troy McClure :-). Published by the Ryan Group of Princeton, Inc. Can be bought from the James Joyce Centre, Dublin.

CASSETTE: Try hunting down the BBC Radio 4 version of Ulysses. It has been packaged for commercial sale.

Most of these books can be sourced in university libraries. You might also try the following two addresses:

The James Joyce Centre, 35 North Great George’s Street, Dublin 1.
Email: joycecen@iol.ie Web: www.jamesjoyce.ie

The James Joyce Museum, Joyce Tower, Sandycove, Co. Dublin.
Email: joycetower@dublintourism.ie

Joyce is one of my favorite authors! How about also PhotoReading Joyce's "Dubliners" and other works? Ulysses, I wholeheartedly agree - the Ellman biography is terrific. Perfect for some insight into Joyce's writing and his life.