What’s the best way of celebrating the centenary of the first publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses? By reading (or re-reading) it, of course. The faded paperback copy on my bookshelves (a Penguin Classics edition) tells me that I read it in 1979, and the penciled notes in the margins show the efforts I made as a student more than forty years ago to grapple with the great novel. Time for a new copy, so I decided to treat myself to the edition beautifully illustrated by the great Spanish artist, Eduardo Arroyo. Arroyo completed his work many years before he died (in 2018), but Stephen Joyce refused to approve the edition on the grounds that his grandfather would never have wanted his work illustrated. That strikes me as odd reasoning because I recall seeing an edition illustrated in 1935 by none other than Matisse. In fact, I remember being shown a copy of it on a visit to University College Dublin’s library many years ago, a copy that I was told at the time had belonged to Joyce’s daughter, Lucia. James Joyce never liked Matisse’s illustrations (there wasn’t enough of Dublin in them, so the report goes), so perhaps that was the basis of his grandson’s objections.

The version with Arroyo’s striking illustrations is now available from Other Press. It is a handsome (and heavy) book, and its great value, for me at least and perhaps many others, is that it brings one back to a magnificent novel with a fresh eye. The revelation for me forty years on from reading it for the first time is that Ulysses doesn’t have to be read from cover to cover or in a single swoop. I have found myself reading small sections and paragraphs, enjoying the word play and marveling again at the genius that produced what for me is the greatest novel of the 20th century.