Ulysses in 55 minutes flat

When a friend berated me a while ago because I hadn’t heard of the “best English-language novel of the 20th century” I was thinking “Isn’t Ulysses that king who left his wife Penelope at home while he gallivanted around having fun for 20 years… what a dickhead.”  Ulysses, I mean.  Anyways, NOW I know that Ulysses is also the name of a book by James Joyce.  And no, I don’t think I need to come up with a good excuse for why I hadn’t heard of it before.

But, I did think a book that got someone so het up must be worth reading, so I gave it a go.  I had to put it down after a few chapters though, ’cause I made the mistake of trying to read four books at once… and got so confused I couldn’t finish any of them.  Anyways, there’s a guy called Stephan Dedalus in Ulysses who says something really cool…

“Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.” 

Well I thought it was cool… and on the strength of that, decided I must read the whole book one day.

So, I signed up with Audible.com the other day (If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a website where you can download audible books).  Once I had finally worked it all out I browsed around for my first download and came across Ulysses by James Joyce.  And I thought “Cool, I could download Ulysses and finally find out what happened to poor hapless Stephen Dedalus and the others.”  So, I used my monthly credit and transferred the file to my ipod. 

Now, Uylsses is a big book.  I’ve seen the CD version in my library.  There are 22 CDs!  So, why is there only one chapter in my ipod?  BECAUSE I DOWNLOADED AN ABRIDGED VERSION OF ULYSSES.  And yes, I am pissed off about that.  22CDs equals at least 22 hours of listening, and I have one chapter and 55 minutes of listening.  How can you abridge 22 hours to 55 minutes?  I mean really, how is that possible?! 

So I guess I won’t be finding out why Ulysses was voted the “best English-language novel of the 20th century” this month, and next month I know I’ll be checking and double checking my selection so I don’t download any more ABRIDGED novels.