> Despite Quinn’s persuasive argument—Ulysses was so dense and convoluted that no one could possibly understand it, much less be debauched by it, he argued—a three-judge panel, using the Hicklin test, concluded that the book had the potential to corrupt youth and was therefore obscene. LOL. The kids are too dumb to be corrupted by this book! The best part is that it is true. If you have enough constitution to be able…
The difficulty in reading this book is usually greatly exaggerated. It takes a while to come to grips with, but it is not in the least impenetrable. It’s one of my favorite novels. It’s certainly no Finnegan’s Wake , which I pick up and read a page of every few years, only to put it down, saying, “not this time”.
The book is a circle so it doesn't really have a proper beginning, and the way the narratives are intermeshed to the point that they are incomprehensible means that the narrative is secondary, so concepts such as beginning and middle don't really matter anyway.
It is the language and wordplay of the book that is the enjoyable part. If you sit there by yourself and read it silently, it's mostly a boring academic exercise. When you read it out loud the playfulness and humor of the book comes through. There is one part that is written such that if you read it aloud you sound like a drunken irishman, and one part which is simultaneously a description of a pantry (or perhaps a grocery) and an erotic scene. The main thing I think people miss about the book is how funny it is!