How much prep do I need for this book? Thank you

Open mind idk how i said day
Prob disregard everything ive written if i made that mistake

very pleb

correct

You can read it blind if you want. What makes Ulysses the greatest English novel is the encyclopaedic nature of its prose. He's the best sculptor of English since Shakespeare (and the only one who can touch him). First time I read it I understood only like 10% of what's going on but was just blown away by how beautifully sonorous everything is.

That said, I'd recommend the following in descending order of importance:
Some familiarity with stream of consciousness/high modernist prose, so Woolf/Faulkner/whoever (just so you don't get completely lost trying to follow the thread of dialogue and miss who is speaking when)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (most important, because the main character of Portrait is a Joyce self-insert and the first 3 chapters of Ulysses are from his POV)
Dubliners (loads of the characters have cameos or are namedropped at various parts of Ulysses, and reading this helps you get a feel for the setting of turn-of-the-century Ireland through Joyce's eyes)
Hamlet (Joyce loves his Shakespeare allusions, and an entire chapter of Ulysses is a group of scholars discussing their theories of the play)
The Odyssey (useful and interesting for the structure of the novel, but nothing you'd really miss if you didn't read it)

After that, maybe shit like Dante's Inferno, Goethe's Faust, the English Romantic poets,

all the books ever
maybe even the ones that not exist
full understanding of comtemporary quantum mechanics
reading the book at least 5 times, in one day, and after that smoke dmt and salvia
all while listening all the greatest symphonies at once
then kill yourself
just then you will understand what joyce meant

you welcome

Oh, and just read the chapter summary on wikipedia before you start each chapter: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)#Part_I:_The_Telemachiad

That way you'll always have at least some idea of where you are in the novel.

call me a pleb and then basically agree with someone saying the exact same thing as me
I know I didn't mention portrait or hamlet but that's just because they're not as essential

This - and also don't assume that you have to read it without any scholarly help - don't settle for a cheap edition with no explanatory notes.

most accurate post itt, only thing I'd change is move dubliners to minor autism, it's short and easy and quite a few of the characters show up in some form or another in ulysses

be scottish

irish?

>being this new

FRESH MEMES

This, really.
You can find Ulysses Annotated on teh interwebz, so when there is a dank reference you don't understand, you can look them all up, it is quite the exhaustive book. I'd also say his chapter summaries are a bit more to the point than Wikipedia's

also fucking gullivan's travels, or treasure island, forget which

or: just be Roman Catholic

Only Hamlet

Read about stream of consciousness , Ireland's historical background and the highlights of Joyce's life. You should also read Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, as other posters have already suggested.

Hmm that doesn't sound so bad. Thank you user

A 6 month regimen working on upper body strength, it'll help you carry the weight of how fucking stupid you are.

Dubliners is for minor autism too, because certain characters that appear throughout the work often are from Dubliners. I agree with everything else though.

Greek Myth (esp. though not limited to Homer)
Dante
Shakespeare (esp. though not limited to Hamlet)
Irish history/The Bible/Irish Liturgy in general.

You could read Ulysses 'blind', but the whole book is a sort of pastiche of allusion so you're going to be missing out on a lot.

Can someone explain the meme behind this fucking book?

This

first get to know what is being cuck about, then you can read this cuck: the book, and enjoy your weak energies

How did ESL /pol/fags manage to find their way over to Veeky Forums?

literature is solid.. too bad weak cucks are also bloating in the sea of greatenss nowadays

Why would you put iliad in autismo reading list

Least useful of the list

This one is right in specifying that Wikipedia article of Odyssey is enough (but this is like Hamlet - why would you NOT read the Odyssey if you haven't?) and that knowledge of it doesn't contribute anything without being aware of the Linati Schema

Their parts are fairly pointless and come in the least interesting portion of the book, but it's short enough to be read regardless