Product DescriptionConsidered the greatest 20th century novel written in English?? in this edition Walter Gabler uncovers previously unseen text. It is a disillusioned study of estrangement?? paralysis and the disintegration of society.Amazon.com ReviewUlysses has been labeled dirty?? blasphemous?? and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision?? Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "al obsession." None of these adjectives however do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny sorrowful and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease as long as you're willing to be buffeted tickled challenged and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language. Among other things a novel is simply a long story and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses the answer might be Everything. William Blake one of literature's sublime myopics saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin Ireland on June 16 1904 a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom?? go about their separate business?? crossing paths with "allery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach?? eat?? stroll the streets?? argue?? and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep?? swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts?? emotions?? and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed i