Overview

From the creator of UlyssesGuide.com, this essential guide to James Joyce's masterpiece weaves together plot summaries, interpretive analyses, scholarly perspectives, and historical and biographical context to create an easy-to-read, entertaining, and thorough review of Ulysses .

In The Guide to James Joyce's 'Ulysses ,' Patrick Hastings provides comprehensive support to readers of Joyce's magnum opus by illuminating crucial details and reveling in the mischievous genius of this unparalleled novel. Written in a voice that offers encouragement and good humor, this guidebook maintains a closeness to the original text and supports the first-time reader of Ulysses with the information needed to successfully finish and appreciate the novel. Deftly weaving together spirited plot summaries, helpful interpretive analyses, scholarly criticism, and explanations of historical and biographical context, Hastings makes Joyce's famously intimidating novel―one that challenges the conventions and limits of language―more accessible and enjoyable than ever before. He unpacks each chapter of Ulysses with episode guides, which offer pointed and readable explanations of what occurs in the text. He also deals adroitly with many of the puzzles Joyce hoped would "keep the professors busy for centuries."

Full of practical resources―including maps, explanations of the old British system of money, photos of places and things mentioned in the text, annotated bibliographies, and a detailed chronology of Bloomsday (June 16, 1904―the single day on which Ulysses is set)―this is an invaluable first resource about a work of art that celebrates the strength of spirit required to endure the trials of everyday existence. The Guide to James Joyce's 'Ulysses' is perfect for anyone undertaking a reading of Joyce's novel, whether as a student, a member of a reading group, or a lover of literature finally crossing this novel off the bucket list.

Review

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.
―Anthony Cuda, University of North Carolina Greensboro, author of The Passions of Modernism: Eliot, Yeats, Woolf, and Mann

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.
―Mark Osteen, Loyola University Maryland, author of The Economy of Ulysses: Making Both Ends Meet

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.
―Kevin Birmingham, author of The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses

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.
―Robert Berry, creator of Ulysses "Seen"

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.
―Joseph Nugent, Boston College, cocreator of Digital Dubliners

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.
― Times Literary Supplement

Thoroughly reliable.
―Terrence Killeen, James Joyce Quarterly

Hastings manages to steer his readers between the Scylla of ignorance and the Charybdis of erudition...
―Robert Nicholson, James Joyce Broadsheet

Review

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.

-- Joseph Nugent

Book Description

From the creator of UlyssesGuide.com, this essential guide to James Joyce's masterpiece weaves together plot summaries, interpretive analyses, scholarly perspectives, and historical and biographical context to create an easy-to-read, entertaining, and thorough review of Ulysses.

About the Author

Patrick Hastings is the chair of the English department at Gilman School. He is the creator of UlyssesGuide.com.