#james joyce ulysses

VERY controversial opinion of me to have as an english major, i know, but i can’t stand james joyce’s ulysses. why is this zillion-word-long garbage heap of pretentious nonsense hailed as one of the greatest novels in history…. truly i will never understand it. i don’t even think it has much merit as a piece of ‘transgressive linguistic progress’ or whatever because there’s no point in finding new ways to use words if said new ways make zero sense. joyce has shoved so many asinine, barely-relevant allusions into the nonexistent “plot” that it’s utterly unreadable to anyone except himself, and once you DO parse through it enough to vaguely understand what’s going on, you realize it’s literally just about Some Guy going about his day in dublin and joyce has essentially promised depth and Deep Meaning where there is none. my theory is that everyone who agrees that ulysses is great is only saying so because they didn’t understand a single word of it and desperately want to maintain their facade of intelligence.