The Cauldron: Ulysses in 80 Days

Do you have a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce languishing on your bookshelf with only the first few pages, if any, read? If that’s you then do not be ashamed. Ernest Hemingway’s personal copy (housed at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum) reveals an interesting truth. Books used to come bound with folded, untrimmed sheets, and the reader had to physically slice the pages open to read them. The uncut pages in Hemingway’s copy indicate that he, who famously praised the book as "a most goddamn wonderful book", consumed only a few chapters while skipping others.

Ulysses is a modernist novel which was first published in 1922. It’s widely considered one of the most influential and challenging books in English literature. It transformed how novels could be written, but it’s also known for being difficult because of its dense language, literary references, and unconventional structure. As Charlie Durante points out in his excellent piece Ulysses in a Nutshell: “Unfortunately, the popular idea of Ulysses is of a long, intricate and opaque book, reserved for scholars and eggheads. This is a great pity as Joyce intended to write a novel that would be read and enjoyed by everyone.” Durante goes on to explain that the storyline is quite straightforward and easy to follow; it is the technique and form which pose problems for the uninitiated reader.

I was one such reader in the autumn of 2024 when I decided to embark on a creative quest to write a play for Gibraltar’s first ever Bloomsday celebration. I was lucky enough to be able to ask Charlie Durante for advice, but he went a step further and offered to be my guide and private tutor. The first thing he told me was to buy the Penguin Annotated Students' Edition with notes by Declan Kiberd, to get familiar with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and read Homer’s Odyssey before our first tutorial. I followed all these instructions to the letter and was suitably primed to start Ulysses. I likened it to preparing to run a half marathon, you think it’s easy as anyone can run, right? But no! You need the correct tools and advice and must take things slowly, build up week by week in order to meet the challenge, and not fall at the first hurdle and give up through injury.

A lot of readers hit resistance around episode three, Proteus, where Stephen Dedalus walks along the beach at Sandymount Strand. It’s full-blown ‘stream of consciousness’ where you’re essentially trapped inside Stephen’s mind as he free-associates between perception, memory, theology, language, and abstract ideas. After Proteus, the book becomes more readable because Leopold Bloom enters as the main focus. Bloom’s inner life is warmer, more concrete, and easier to follow than Stephen’s. In my opinion it’s impossible not to love the anti-hero Bloom, and from hereon in, the reader is sucked into a world where one ordinary day in Dublin turns into an epic journey about modern life.

By the end of February 2025 my copy of Ulysses had multiple page corners turned inwards and was full of passages and words underlined in pencil. I’d had half a dozen tutorials in The Royal Calpe pub and was ready to create a work of theatre based on the great book. From the beginning of the year, I had become obsessed with the novel and joined online groups devoted to James Joyce and Bloomsday. I bored people and annoyed people who couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. In contrast my younger brother Nathan was inspired and decided to get on board with me and now we are both Ulysses nerds. All this scholarly activity led to the creation of the play “Molly’s a Llanita!” which was performed by a brilliant group of amateur actors beside the Molly Bloom statue at the Alameda Gardens on 16th June 2025.

While I was scurrying around down Ulysses rabbit holes I came across the ‘Ulysses in 80’ project which immediately piqued my interest. It’s a simple idea: group-read episodes of Ulysses over 80 days. Initiated by Cliona O'Farrelly at Trinity College Dublin, it first took shape during the pandemic as a virtual book club. It developed alongside an early group of collaborators, including Deirdre Mulrooney, Loïc Wright, Carl Vogel, and PJ Murphy of Sweny's Pharmacy, and launched its first full reading on June 1, 2022, marking the centenary of the book's publication.

The project was brought to my attention online by Mark Sanford Gross. Mark began as a reader and later joined Cliona in helping to expand the experience into a growing global community. What began as a daily email among a few, quickly went public. On each of the 80 days a set of pages were shared on X (formerly Twitter), where readers responded. As the community grew, so did the places. BlueSky was added, along with a Facebook group, Ulysses in 80, where more than 1,900 readers connected. For those who preferred to stay off social media, the dedicated emailing list remained at the core.

The group began hosting weekly Zoom conversations with guest speakers and in 2025, those conversations became a podcast, Reading Ulysses in 80, which I listened to one Sunday morning whilst doing the ironing. I was immediately gripped and wanted to join in. Even though I had read the book earlier that same year I promptly signed up. My second reading of Ulysses was far more relaxed as I did not need to make notes and could just relish the ride!

Now, in its fifth year, the free-to-all project has just launched a website: Ulyssesin80.com. If anyone wants to read Joyce’s great novel ‘Ulysses in 80’ is an excellent way to enjoy this unique work, and understand and navigate the tricky bits. Tackling about 10–15 pages a day (depending on the book you have) the 80-day challenge runs exactly from June 1st to August 19th. The organisers make it easy and list page numbers and lines for various editions: Gutenberg, Bodley Head, Penguin, Wordsworth, US Vintage Gabler or you can listen to the brilliant RTÉ Players version, a landmark dramatised production available on all the main platforms.

As the saying goes; “If anyone couldn’t understand a passage, they should just read it aloud, and if that didn’t work, they should change their drink!”

Rebecca Calderon is an author and playwright. She was actively involved in politics in the past, having been an executive member of the Gibraltar National Party and later the Gibraltar Liberal Party. She subsequently stood as a candidate for the Progressive Democratic Party in the 2011 general election. She has not been a member of any political party since 2013, but since 2022 has been an active member of Action for Housing, a voluntary pressure group.