I've harbored a wholly unsupported, yet persistent, notion that no one really likes Ulysses, but that it's become an "emperor has no clothes" situation, where those who decide which books are "great" picked it on a lark, and dared others to say they didn't like it, knowing that none would lest they appear as the rube who couldn't appreciate great literature, resulting in a lineage of thinkers who encountered the beast, read it in horror, then told their colleagues about how much they loved it because obviously it's the brilliantest work of English, all while secretly hoping they weren't grilled too closely about it.

I love Ulysses because of what it says about growing into middle age, facing irresolvable insecurities about yourself, and the solace against these that you can find in friendship—the way you can feel your soul sing when you find someone who wants to understand you. It's a very beautiful and humanistic book. I'm sorry that you weren't able to connect with it.

I confess a little envy of your enjoyment of it. I wanted to like it and wish I could've gotten as much out of it as you did. It just didn't hit for me.

I wish I could find a kinder way to put this but... Don't you think that sounds like something an Ayn Rand villain would do?

Having not read Ulysses, nor having ever moved in the kind of circles where many if any acquaintances had, I can't really vouch for whether it has any specific literary value. Not am I really that interested in finding out for myself, from what I do know of it. But the idea that there's some grand cultural conspiracy behind it sounds just a little bit paranoid.

I don't mean to attack you personally, I don't know you and if I had more time I'd write a more sensitive post. I just wanted to make the Rand connection because I see little mention of her villains when she's brought up, and your post reminded me of them so strongly!

Hah, I could live with being a Rand villain. I suspect it’d be closer to a David Foster Wallace kind of subplot though.

I don’t actually think that’s what happened. However, if it came out that it did, I wouldn’t be entirely shocked. It’d be less “I knew it!” and more “huh, that explains a lot”.

Fair. People sure can act in that sort of way, for all sorts of reasons. We do what we can to navigate the social world we're part of, and if that means lying about having understood a word of Ulysses, then that's what we'll do!