Reading Ulysses in the Break Room

A Recommendation Over Fries

I first heard about Ulysses during a smoke break behind the McDonald’s. My coworker—hairnet askew, grease on his apron—had his nose buried in a beat-up book instead of his phone. Between drags of his cigarette, he looked up and said, “You’re a writer, right? You have to read this.” The book was James Joyce’s Ulysses. I scoffed, assuming he was joking. Ulysses is legendary, heralded as both the best novel in the English language and the hardest to read. What was this burger-flipper doing with it? He wasn’t joking, though. He launched into a passionate (and profanity-laced) monologue about how the novel changed his perspective on writing and dared me to give it a shot. There we were, two underpaid workers on a greasy curb, discussing high modernist literature. It was surreal. He stubbed out his cigarette, handed me his copy, and said, “Good luck. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” I would soon learn how apt that idiom was.

I took the book home that night, the blue cover speckled with fryer oil, and felt a mix of curiosity and dread. I’m an aspiring fiction writer who’s always been cautious of pretentious literary gatekeeping, and Ulysses has always seemed like the ultimate gatekeeper. People speak of it in reverent tones or roll their eyes at it. It’s the kind of book people lie about having read to sound smart, just like War & Peace. Still, here was this unpretentious coworker genuinely recommending it. If he could get something out of it, maybe I could too. I cracked open the novel with a vivid memory of his grin, part genuine enthusiasm, part “just wait and see.” Thus, my Sisyphean journey began.

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew

Armed with nothing but overconfidence and my coworker’s encouragement, I dove into Ulysses. Immediately, I felt like I’d bitten off more than I could chew. The first chapter (“Telemachus,” I later learned it’s called) seemed okay at first glance: a hungover Buck Mulligan cracking jokes in a Dublin tower. I chuckled at some banter, thinking, This might not be so bad. But by chapter three, I was officially lost at sea. There’s a section where Stephen Dedalus wanders a beach, and his stream-of-consciousness thoughts dissolve into a dense fog of words. Sentences stretched for half a page, references to Aristotle and obscure Latin phrases popped up without explanation. My eyes skimmed the same paragraph five times with zero comprehension. It felt like someone had handed me a puzzle with half the pieces missing. A wave of literary dizziness washed over me as I realized I understood almost nothing. This wasn’t a casual read; it was a code to crack.