Philippe Forest's Year-Long Reading of Joyce's 'Ulysses'

Critic and novelist Philippe Forest has published 'Beaucoup de jours d’après Ulysse' with Éditions Cécile Defaut, part of the new collection 'Le livre la vie' directed by Isabelle Grell. The collection's premise, inspired by Roland Barthes, is to take a classic book and relate everything in one's life to it over a year. Forest chose James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. The book recounts his personal journey with the novel, from his first purchase at a now-vanished bookstore near the Jardin du Luxembourg to his evolving understanding. Forest admits initial incomprehension but persistent curiosity. He engages with the Linati schema but finds it insufficient, suggesting it may be another ruse. He shares his preferences and dislikes among chapters, notably his difficulty with chapter seven and his preference for Bloom's dreamy walk and Dedalus's library lecture on Shakespeare. A key revelation is the connection between the deaths of children in 'Ulysses' (Bloom and Molly's stillborn son), Joyce's own loss of a third child to miscarriage, and Forest's own loss of his daughter, as written in 'L'Enfant éternel'. Forest also reflects on the deaths of parents. He questions the value of his own commentary, acknowledging that if successful, readers might abandon his book for Joyce's. The work is a blend of literary criticism and personal memoir.