After more than 15 years, I am reading Joyce's Ulysses for the second time. I have made it through a little more than the first hundred pages, and it is coming fairly easily so long as I do not try to force the pace. I have to pay close attention, or I lose track of the speaker or the subject. Joyce has a tremendous power of description; he can do with words what Picasso could do with a few lines on paper. The book is full of vivid sights, smells, and tastes. The associations between apparently disparate images and themes are dazzling. However, it is not an easy read.
My wife dislikes Joyce because she believes he is too self-aware of his own cleverness. More troubling is that she thinks I like him for the same reason.