Best products from r/jamesjoyce

Joyce wrote such long and complex books that no one could tell what was a typo or not, so his books were full of errors when originally published and had to be corrected. So you're not only looking for a book that feels good, but also for the best available edition.

I recommend what I think is generally considered the best available edition -- the "1934 edition, as corrected and reset in 1961". That is also the edition with standard pagination, so that it matches with Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses by Don Gifford.

You do not want the 1922 edition, as that is full of all the errors that Joyce painstakingly corrected for the 1934 edition. Some yahoo has decided to start re-publishing the error-laden 1922 edition and advertising it as though it's a good thing: "The original 1922 edition!" (I think this happened because the copyright ran out on the original edition?)

The Gabler and Rose editions are also not recommended.

[Here] (https://infinitezombies.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/which-edition-of-ulysses-is-best/) is a good discussion of thee various editions.

It seems like the [Vintage edition] (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679722769/thelibyrinth) would be a good one for paperback, but I have no idea if it lies flat like you want.

[Here's] (http://www.amazon.com/By-James-Joyce-Ulysses-Reissue/dp/B00N4J0ZCW/ref=sr_1_9) another version of the 1990 Vintage listed above -- I've seen this one in bookstores and it feels good, and it just might lie flat.

Personally, I like the [Modern Library hardcover] (http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Modern-Library-Best-Novels/dp/0679600116/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451268284&sr=1-2&keywords=ulysses+james+joyce).

Enjoy!

My 2-cents: In my opinion, Finnegans Wake is a challenge for the reader to wake up and realize that the joy of reading, or the aesthetic effect, is something the reader actively participates in. That participation is usually a story or moral to "get"--an intellectual experience; but, with this book, there is no story...you get out of it what your imagination reads into it--not only an intellectual experience but an act of creation [or, to be specific, an act of the imitation of creation, mimesis, as Aristotle and Giambattista Vico would say]. Rather than give the reader a "plot" (something that Zola would have argued improperly coerces the reader's otherwise free imagination), Joyce gives the reader a rhythm...and, what rhythm, in particular? Try reading it in a sing-song, nursery-rhyme manner [hence, all the nursery rhyme references here and in Ulysses] for a few paragraphs until you get a feel for the music in the words. One rhythm you might try is that of "Poor Old Micheal Finnegan". As you read, and potentially re-read the book (I've read it through many times), you will begin to pick out other rhythms. For instance, about every twenty pages or so you will come across one or more versions of the two references that have continued through Joyce's three narrative works, Portrait, Ulysses, and Wake. The first one is St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 11, Verse 32, "For God has consigned all to sin that God may have mercy upon all." The other is St. Augustine's comment upon that line in his explanation for why God created sin. Augustine says in Enchiridion, viii, O, felix culpa--oh happy sin, that allows for our redemption. These usually fall in contexts that the text associates with one or more of the main "characters," e.g., HCE or ALP, or either version of Joyce's Cain and Able, Shem and Ham (Shaun).

Furthermore, if you want to look at the book from the perspective of what Aristotle says (in Ars Poetica) that at a minimum every story must have, i.e., "a beginning, a middle, and an end," you might notice that the novel begins along a river running through Eden; that at the exact center of the text (p. 314), while recalling, "eve her sins"...one must "give the devil his....Due" (a reference to John Milton's "Paradise Lost"); and, at the end, one may "End here"...or, you may feel free to "Finn, again!" because the mid-sentence that began the book is only now ending, and the reader may just decide to read again a "way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's...." In other words, this book is not a story; it has no end (no ending, as in the eternal and unchanging peace of Eden); it's only ending comes when the particular Finnegan reading wakes up and decides to stop, a moment the Greeks called an epiphany, an awakening that William Irwin Thompson describes as the moment when Time-Falling-Bodies take to light. In short, as I've said elsewhere, the book becomes less a "story to get" and more of a "chant to sing."

Since you're saying you're going to "take the plunge" you have not read the Wake yet? If my assumption is true, may I also STRONGLY suggest you pick up a copy of [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Skeleton-Key-Finnegans-Wake-Masterwork/dp/1608681661) This one book helped me crack the excentricities of the novel way more than any other resource and I consider it indespensable for any kind of study of the Wake. But other than that, have fun man! Oh, you also may want to check out the album Rift by Phish. It is another interterpation of the dream cycle based loosely on Finnegan's Wake.

Norton Critical Editions have footnotes and critical essays, as well as lengthy bibliographies, so that might be worth looking into. John Riquelme's essay in Joyce's Cambridge Companion would likely help, but that cost for one essay might be a bit steep (it is a great overall source though). The 'Further Reading' section pointed me to this, which I can't vouch for but I'm sure it will be helpful if you can find a decent/affordable copy. The Portrait has generated sadly little secondary material compared to Ulysses, so studies and companions can be a bit harder to come by, unfortunately.

I like the Oxford World's Classics edition. It is well formatted on my kindle paperwhite (but no chapter breaks; I bookmarked them) and the notes by Jeri Johnson are fantastic. The text is the 1922 first edition. As of this writing it is only $1.89.

https://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Oxford-Worlds-Classics-James-ebook/dp/B006BAK9H2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1487899817&sr=1-1&keywords=ulysses+oxford+world%27s+classics

It's plentiful enough in UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ulysses-James-Joyce/dp/1847492398/

ISBN-10: 1847492398

ISBN-13: 978-1847492395

But expensive in US Amazon

ABE Books at this moment has a ~$20US copy including shipping
from UK, but other copies are ~$50US.