the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Um yes and incidentally, I do not recommend imagining someone close to you reading it out.

I just thought that the end might be a good place to start...

Joyce died in 1941 though, didn't he? Which means he goes out of copyright in 3 years.

I've never read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I find Ulysses much more 'readable', actually, but maybe it's just me.

What I should have said is that I started the Portrait, but didn't get very far as I found it rather boring. I think I'd got too caught up in the idea of reading it as a 'stepping stone' to the 'difficult' later books (which I then found were actually not so forbiddingly off-putting as I'd been led to believe anyway). I'll probably go back to it (Portrait) at some future time.

Has anyone heard this:
?

The Odyssey was (presumably) written to be read aloud rather than on paper; was Ulysses conceived in the same way?

No, R, I've read several commentaries on Joyce's work and have dipped into various bits of Portrait.

I just think Ulysses is a rather more approachable book than the accretion of commentaries around it tends to suggest, and that Joyce's output shouldn't need to be explored 'in the right order' any more than any other writer's does. That's all.

I don't think so. A lot of the effects only really work on the page, however wonderful some of it sounds when read aloud.

Yes, it is from the Latin mass, and it effectively establishes the theme of the sacred and profane (the parody of the mass by Mulligan), which works its way through this first episode in multiple ways (e.g. Stephen's inability to feel anything on the death of his mother than his own sense of being slighted), which leads into the subtext on whether there is any physical reality to transubstantiation, and indeed the nature of matter itself. From there, it’s only a short step to understanding why Joyce makes repeated reference to other works – e.g. Tristan und Iseult is of interest not simply because of the obvious connection to Ireland and exile, but because the self-immolation of Iseult is also about the transfiguration of matter. As are the processes of brewing and distillation, of course.

There are some very good books to guide you through Ulysses – the Bloomsday Book by Harry Blamires I would particularly recommend.

Finnegans Wake is possibly the dirtiest and funniest book ever written; I have given too much of my waking hours to both it and Ulysses, but I do think that they repay the effort.