Thinking Points
	"There is no justification for saying that a reading of Ulysses by a Dubliner born towards the end of the nineteenth century is 'better' or 'truer' than one by a reader born in 1970 who has never set foot in Ireland." Can this independence of time and place be equally maintained in relation to other works of literature? Ulysses is, for some, an impossible book, for others a comic work, full of humour and wit. Is the intellectual mythology surrounding the book also to blame for the reputation Ulysses has gained for being inaccessible?

As readers, then, we cannot divide up the Joycean text into absolutely leakproof boxes: original/quotation, Dubliners/A Portrait/Ulysses/Finnegans Wake, published/unpublished, fictional/historical, internal/external, and so on. Part of Joyce's revolutionary achievement in literature, and in the understanding of literature and other cultural forms, was his demonstration of the interrelations and interpenetrations of such categories. And we cannot come to the end of making sense of the Joycean text, finding patterns and structures in it, following tracks through it, and--by the same token--deriving pleasures from it. It entices us into repeated acts of interpretation by proffering us keys and promising us conclusions, but it proffers and promises with such teeming generosity that no single key or conclusion can stand for very long.

In one sense, this makes it an extraordinary oeuvre, pushing to the limits all the traditional features of the novel as a genre such as characterization, narrative voice, plot, symbolization, and ethical or political significance; but at the same time this is what makes it such a typical literary oeuvre, revealing just what a self-contradictory institution literature is, and just how much pleasure is generated by those contradictions in the ordinary act of reading. One result is that reading Joyce can make a difference to all one's reading, enriching, complicating, and perhaps even undermining it (at least until it becomes possible to substitute a fuller sense of what reading is for the narrow one that often prevails in educational establishments).

The number of entrances to the Joycean mansion, therefore, is potentially infinite; the main requisites for a visit are a sharp eye and ear, a willingness to be surprised, and of course a sense of humour. Different readers will, of course, find some approaches more congenial than others: if you like crossword puzzles you may enjoy piecing together the scraps of information about the characters' lives scattered through Ulysses or constructing a plausible plot that might undergird the linguistic extravagances of Finnegans Wake; if you value the textures of language that poets have traditionally exploited you can relish the carefully modulated patterns of Joyce's sounds and syntax; if you find coincidences, human oddities, and unexpected incongruities funny, Joyce will provide endless amusement; if you enjoy the novelist's capacity to convey the motions of thought and feeling or the sensory experiences of the body, there will be mimetic pleasures in abundance for you; if you have an interest in history, in culture, in politics, in the problems of the artist, in literary theory, you will find that any of these will open doors in Joyce's works. But these are only ways in: Joyce's writing can reveal sources of fascination and exhilaration which you were not expecting to find, and if you feel at times that Joyce is laughing at you just as much as you are laughing at him, you have begun to appreciate the delightfully unsettling energies of his art.