Patrick Hastings

One hundred years of Ulysses

A few years ago, the private school where I teach asked me to offer an evening class on James Joyce’s Ulysses to adults. The idea was to remind alumni, parents and other community members what it feels like to be in one of our enriching classrooms. For over a decade, my Ulysses senior elective had been a major feature of our course catalogue; now, a few adults were about to pop the hood on this infamous tank of a book. As course registrations began to trickle in, I recognized the surnames of current and former students. Then an administrator joined the course, and I had a flutter of nerves at the realization that one of my bosses was actually going to read Ulysses and encounter the disreputable content that lurks within. My cover was blown.

Ulysses