Finally, the Last Word on 'Ulysses': The Ideal Text, and Portable Too
The 100 best novels / No 46 / Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
By RICHARD ELLMANNJune 15, 1986
ames Joyce's theme in ''Ulysses'' was simple. He invoked the most elaborate means to present it. Like other great writers, he sensed that the methods available to him in previous literature were insufficient, and he determined to outreach them. The narrator figure who often in earlier novels chaperones the reader round the action disappears. In ''Ulysses'' his place is taken by a series of narrators, usually undependable, who emerge and disappear without being identified. A whole galaxy of new devices and stances and verbal antics, extravagant, derisive, savage, rollicking, tender and lyrical, is held in Joyce's ironic dominion. Behind all the manifold disguises can be felt the pervasive presence of an author who never in the book acknowledges his existence.