Reading Ulysses

I've started on James Joyce's Ulysses. I've long enjoyed Anthony Burgess, and he was a great admirer of Joyce, so I suppose it was inevitable. I'm not trying to spot every reference, or look up every obscure word, but just to read it like any other story book. Analysis can come later, if I fancy, and my old copy of Burgess's Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader will no doubt come in handy. 

I see fiction as entertainment and escapism - you're not going to discover the meaning of life, or your place in the Universe, or anything else "deep and meaningful" from it. If you want Truth go outside and it's right there in front of you. But if you're lucky you'll find a book that just takes you out of yourself for a while. It might be Burgess, it might be Biggles. And, if you're into that sort of thing, and it grabs your interest, then you can look into all the allusions and quotations and places and everything else in it, and fair play to you.

And is it as hard a read as we are told? Well, I've only read the first six episodes so far, and no, it isn't. I am cheating - but only slightly. RTE made a full-cast reading a few years ago, that is to say a reading of the text, not a dramatisation, but with a full cast doing all the different voices. Play the dramatisation along with reading the book, and it'll help you along. But I do find I gradually tune out the sounds, and listen to the text in my head instead, and I am enjoying it.