Customer Reviews

Ulysses (Cliffs Notes)

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This guide was invaluable in helping me to understand Ulysses. I could not have made it through Ulysses without it. Kopper is definitely an intense Joyce fan, who has spent many years studying Joyce and Ulysses.

The most valuable part is his detailed summary of the action in the book (which is the smallest part of Ulysses) in every chapter. The book gives a very in-depth analysis of the style, background, and subtleties of Joyce's manipulation of English.

My only criticism is that Kopper never warns the reader-"This part is a hard part to understand." But, most people will get that by page two of Ulysses anyway.

For those voyaging through the original, but murky, literary waters of James Joyce's novel ULYSSES, the CLIFFS NOTES ON JOYCE's ULYSSES is a superbly helpful guide.

This book contains contains explication on all eighteen sections of ULYSSES, character analyses, and a list of the novel's myriad characters.

If you're going to tackle ULYSSES, take this CLIFFS NOTES guide along.

You can read Ulysses without guidance. You can. Certainly it's likely that if you do, you'll miss out on a fair amount of what's going on in the novel. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, as if you're anything like me, Ulysses is a book you'll come back to again and again, and there will be something new, some whole new thread of theme or motif, some new chain of allusion, to grab you anew. It's a novel, and it's a way of reading.

I've read a few Cliffs Notes, and I've written a fair number of Masterplots entries (and other guides and reference works of that ilk), and in my opinion, if used in conjunction with a careful reading of Joyce's novel, Kopper's little book is a nice first guide. It sketches you a map that will carry you through on your first trip. Maybe, if you have the time and interest, you'll reread the novel with Harry Blamires's Bloomsday Book as a companion, or even Gifford's Ulysses Annotated. And Thornton's Allusions in Ulysses. And-- ...

But the Cliffs Notes are quite good for what they are.

When I first read Ulysses 25 years ago, I did it like this: I read an episode, then I read the Cliffs Notes, then I reread the episode, and then I moved on. That's how you'll get the most out of this tool. If you use it for what it's supposed to be and don't let it read the book for you, you could do a lot worse. When I taught the novel, I was pleased to recommend this guide to my students.

In the interest of full disclosure: I first studied Joyce as an undergraduate with Ed Kopper, but as I haven't spoken with him in at least 20 years, I think you can consider this review minimally biased at worst. Enjoy!

Ulysses is a challenge to read, but worth the challenge. It is thought-provoking, and this guide helps through some of the more obscure tracts.

I am still digesting "Ulysses." I read it while walking around Dublin a few years ago. It was marvelous to trace the steps of Leopold and Molly, and to see what they "saw," but the novel remains a distant pleasure to the reader. I must admit it is not the most accessible book ever written, but it gets four stars for its intent ... and that it is better than "Finnegan's Wake." Be warned: This novel is not for the casual reader. But I remain convinced that it is better to read Joyce than to read a summary of Joyce. Cliff's Notes is a worthy service, and generally well done, but I fear too few have actually read "Ulysses" (or several other Joyce works) so I would urge the gentle reader to delve deeply into the novel before surrendering to Cliff's Notes.