Colm Tóibín on the challenge of reading Ulysses

Colm Tóibín has an interesting and informative article in the weekend edition of the Financial Times on James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Ulysses was first published in 1922 just over two weeks after the British handed over the keys of Dublin Castle to Michael Collins and the new Irish government. That same year TS Eliot’s The Waste Land was published. Both works deal with the rawness of urban life

Joyce began Ulysses in Trieste in 1914 and finished it in Paris in 1921.

It is considered to be the greatest nov el of the 20th century.

In the piece Tóibín mentions that Joyce knew Patrick Pearse.

Tóibín writes that for the ordinary reader, it has the same cachet as running a marathon has for the ordinary athlete. It is a challenge and then, for those who have read the book, a matter of pride.