Read Ulysses Seen, A Graphic Novel Adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses

You’ve start­ed read­ing Ulysses, James Joyce’s mod­ernist clas­sic, and nev­er quite made it the whole way through. Sound famil­iar? You’re in good com­pa­ny.

So here’s anoth­er approach. Start read­ing Ulysses Seen, the graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tion of Joyce’s tome. The artist behind Ulysses Seen is Rob Berry, and he’s devot­ed to using “the visu­al aid of the graph­ic nov­el” to “fos­ter under­stand­ing of pub­lic domain lit­er­ary mas­ter­works.” He’s clear to point out that Ulysses Seen isn’t meant to replace Ulysses. Rather it’s meant to be a visu­al com­pan­ion to the orig­i­nal work. It uses the com­ic nar­ra­tive to “cut through jun­gles of unfa­mil­iar ref­er­ences” and to help read­ers “appre­ci­ate the sub­tle­ty and artistry” of Joyce’s text. So far Berry has com­plet­ed about 138 pages of Ulysses Seen, and more pages will be com­ing online at the Joyce Cen­ter web site in the near future. Accord­ing to Pub­lish­er’s Week­ly, the artist esti­mates that it will take rough­ly a decade to com­plete the full adap­ta­tion. (The orig­i­nal nov­el spans more than 700 pages after all.) In the mean­time, here are some more resources to help you get through Joyce’s great work:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

James Joyce Man­u­scripts Online, Free Cour­tesy of The Nation­al Library of Ire­land

Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses