I would awake before the pod shut down to various conversations and descriptions. I have been listening to them off and on for several months now as bedtime story to go to sleep to. I put them in an iPod and tried to integrate the chapters. I had downloaded the radio play and had ripped the audiobook version. You can listen to and/or download the production here (big thanks to reader Eve for sending the link in!). There is brilliance and peace and transcendence. There is chaos and calamity and confusion. There is chanting and chawing and brouhaha. There are songs (and dances) and music (and musing) and humming (and hemming and hawing and reverb). This innovation propels the narrative forward with dramatic power, and clarifies the oh-so indirectness of Joyce’s free indirect style, making the plot’s pitfalls and pratfalls more distinct and defined.

Leopold Bloom gets his own voice, as does Stephen Dedalus and Molly (and all the characters). The Irish players bring sensitivity and humor to their roles, but beyond that pathos, the energy of RTÉ’s troupe is what really makes the book sing. This recording is not as widely available as LibriVox’s (free) full cast production or Jim Norton’s Naxos reading, but, after sampling both, I’d argue that it’s better. I listened to, absorbed, choked up at, guffawed about, cackled around, and generally loved RTÉ’s 1982 dramatized, soundtracked, sound-effected, lovingly detailed recording of Ulysses, a work crammed with voices to match (if perhaps not equal) Joyce’s big fat work. I reviewed it a few years ago, and wrote: I’ve tried a few audio versions of Ulysses, and none can hold a candle to RTÉ’s 1982 full cast production. There are any number of strategies for tackling the great tome (although enjoying or experiencing are more fitting verbs here), but one that many readers might overlook is listening to an audio recording. James Joyce’s Ulysses might seem like a prohibitively difficult book, but it’s not as hard to read as its reputation suggests.

Ulysses rte