The Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses(annotated)

Entire chapters are written as a dialogue, incomprehensible slang words are strung together, or the prose is transformed from Old English into modern everyday language over several intermediate stages. And then, there is the technique of the stream of consciousness, perfected by Joyce, which throws the reader directly into the often-chaotic world of the protagonists' thoughts. The novel breaks all convention. Due to its less spectacular plot, the tricky structure and, last but not least, the linguistic alienation, the book was denied great public success. Even today, the novel is an intellectual pleasure for literarily educated readers