The Thousands

Ulysses follows one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, tedious Dubliner who spends his day defecating, ogling women in stockings, pointing out dents in his friend’s hat, eating gorgonzola cheese sandwiches, pissing in the backyard and masturbating. It bizarrely ends with Bloom’s wife, Molly, orgasming on the full stop, the only punctuation in the last chapter.

Joyce indulges throughout in incomprehensible slang, attempts to parody the style of every writer he can think of, abandons punctuation and clobbers readers over the head with symbolism so heavy one is lucky to emerge from reading this tome without an aneurysm.

There have been to date eighteen different editions, because no-one can agree on what are mistakes and what Joyce intended. Unimaginable movie versions have been attempted, but by far the best adaptation has been the 1981 French/Japanese animated series, Ulysses 31, which at least makes it interesting by updating the story to the 31st Century and giving the protagonist a lightsaber, as well as a robot that eats nails.