YMMV / Ulysses

• Critical Dissonance: Regarded as one of the most important novels of the 20th Century by critics and literary scholars, but lots of general readers find it difficult to get through.
• Epileptic Trees: There are numerous fan theories about the identity of the mysterious man in the brown macintosh, and some of them are downright bizarre. Some have suggested that he's God, Satan, the Grim Reaper, Hermes, the ghost of Leopold's father, or possibly just one of the many minor characters mentioned in various other chapters. Vladimir Nabokov speculated that it's James Joyce making a Creator Cameo.
• Even Better Sequel: Most literary critics consider it to be an even more impressive and vital work of literature than A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is a pretty acclaimed work in its own right. Opinions tend to vary a bit more among general audiences, who also generally find Ulysses a far more challenging read.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At one point during the extended dream sequence in "Circe", Bloom is accused of sexual harassment by various female acquaintances in a surreal courtroom sequence. After one woman shares her stories about his lecherous behavior, several other women jump up and shout "Me too!" while brandishing dirty letters that he sent them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The unnamed narrator of "Cyclops", who hangs out with uber-patriotic Irish nationalists, likes to claim (perhaps sarcastically) that every single important figure in human history (including Shakespeare, Dante, and Benjamin Franklin) was actually an Irishman. Not unlike a certain Russian Starfleet officer.
  • Zero Mostel played Leopold Bloom in Ulysses in Nighttown, a stage play based on "Circe". He later went on to star in Mel Brooks' The Producers opposite another character named "Leo Bloom".
  • Special mentions for Proteus, Oxen of the Sun, and Penelope. Dear God, Penelope.
• Values Resonance: The book was written in the early 1920s, but its frank portrayal of antisemitism and extreme Irish nationalism would seem a lot more timely in the wake of the Holocaust and the Irish Civil War in the ensuing years. Notably, the latter began just a few months after the book was published.
• The Woobie: Bloom and Dedalus, though in different ways. With Stephen it's a bit more obvious if you've read Portrait of the Artist, where he's about to launch himself on a literary career; here, he's tried it and it hasn't happened for him. Bloom has it bad too, between having a dead father and son, being a Jew in a casually anti-semitic society and generally seeming to most of the citizens as though he's not quite one of them.

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