Reviews
Written with warmth, affection, clarity and insight, [The Guide to James Joyce's "Ulysses"] is full of observations and witty asides that remind readers that Ulysses – whatever else it may be – is a comic novel. Hastings's book is thoroughly useable, and many first-time Joyceans will find it indispensable as they embark on the lifelong adventure that is reading Ulysses.
Thoroughly reliable.
Hastings manages to steer his readers between the Scylla of ignorance and the Charybdis of erudition...
An admirably written, thoroughly researched, and eminently usable guidebook to Joyce's gargantuan masterwork. Its audience will be wide, varied, and (best of all) grateful for the book's witty clarity. I would assign it to my undergraduates and recommend it to friends and colleagues in other fields.
Clear, witty, and crisply written, Patrick Hastings's guide to Ulysses provides first-time readers with many essential tools for appreciating Joyce's masterpiece. I strongly recommend this book for undergraduate classrooms and for lay readers seeking a reliable navigator for their journey through the greatest novel in the English language.
The Guide to James Joyce's 'Ulysses' is indispensable for first-time readers and veteran Joyceans alike: chapter overviews orient us, cultural backgrounds immerse us in Joyce's world, and incisive analysis shows us just how deep our readings can go. Like the wisest of guides, Patrick Hastings turns from answers to questions and from essential scholarship to the masterpiece's great mysteries.
That first-time experience of reading Ulysses is one that endures for artists, teachers, and Joyceheads all their lives. Those mingled feelings of bafflement, discovery, joy in the language, and cautiousness about one's own understanding of things have created a worldwide community of devotees. Hastings's work welcomes everyone into that community.
With chapter-by-chapter summaries, commentary, maps, and a host of images, The Guide to James Joyce's 'Ulysses' provides everything it says on the tin—and so much more. Patrick Hastings's affection for Joyce and Joyce's Dublin emerge from every page of this wonderfully inviting, clear, and concise little guide. Like a friend by your elbow, Hastings's book will ease the first-time reader's anxieties while gently guiding them along the paths of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus—paths that will enrich your life as surely as they have the lives of readers for a hundred years.
Book Details
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
Episode Guides
Chapter 1. "Telemachus" Guide
Chapter 2. "Nestor" Guide
Chapter 3. "Proteus" Guide
Chapter 4. "Calypso" Guide
Chapter 5. "Lotus-Eaters" Guide
Chapter 6.
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
Episode Guides
Chapter 1. "Telemachus" Guide
Chapter 2. "Nestor" Guide
Chapter 3. "Proteus" Guide
Chapter 4. "Calypso" Guide
Chapter 5. "Lotus-Eaters" Guide
Chapter 6. "Hades" Guide
Chapter 7. "Aeolus" Guide
Chapter 8. "Lestrygonians" Guide
Chapter 9. "Scylla and Charybdis" Guide
Chapter 10. "Wandering Rocks" Guide
Chapter 11. "Sirens" Guide
Chapter 12. "Cyclops" Guide
Chapter 13. "Nausicaa" Guide
Chapter 14. "Oxen of the Sun" Guide
Chapter 15. "Circe" Guide
Chapter 16. "Eumaeus" Guide
Chapter 17. "Ithaca" Guide
Chapter 18. "Penelope" Guide
Acknowledgments
Appendixes
A. A Chronology of Stephen's Day
B. A Chronology of Bloom's Day
C. Money in Ulysses
D. Ulysses Schema
Notes
Selected and Annotated Bibliography
Index