Because Ideas Matter...
The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences presents
Recommended Readings
Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday
Life in Joyce's Masterpiece
by Declan Kiberd, W.W. Norton & Company, 2009
Reviewed by Susan Sutherlin
Let's face it-James Joyce is a nag. His
best known work-you know the one-the 600-page modernist romp on
everyone's must read/never finished list (even Hemingway's copy of
Ulysses lies in the John F. Kennedy Library with pages
uncut) is the subject of a startling refreshing companion volume,
Ulysses and Us. Professor Declan Kiberd, University
College Dublin, provides an inspiring re-mix of how and why reading
Ulysses will change your life, or at minimum rearrange
your 'molecules.' This is likely the inoculation you'll need
whether you are a first-time or returning traveler to turn-of-the
century Dublin. Kiberd's framework reawakens us to the
movements of everyday life-eating, walking, drinking, thinking, and
loving with Leopold, Molly, Stephen, and Blazes-and the practical
magic that Joyce bestows as they mourn the dead, drink a cup of
tea, fry the liver, conceal a rendezvous, or gently protect the
university student who has lost his way home. The stream of
consciousness which everyone experiences everyday has never seemed
so accessible, wise, or instructive.
- Susan Sutherlin is an instructor in English at Butler
University