[GERGE]

Ulysses is one of the greatest books I have read.

I remember the first time I encountered Ulysses. I was in high school; it was years and decades ago and the girl sitting next to me, who was my absolute best friend back then, bought its very recent and very newishly popular Turkish translation. Being very bored of calculus, I tried to read Ulysses in class instead. It was a terrible experience, so harrowing that it felt like class took even longer than what calculus would have made me feel, which I shared with the translator later, not knowing who he was. Having trouble believing such a well-regarded book could be so terrible, I stopped eating lunch at school for a week to hide some money in my wallet and when enough was hoarded, I ordered an English version of Ulysses and promptly started waiting 2 months for the delivery. We didn't have e-books back in those days of yore, therefore wanting to read in languages not native equaled either waiting for weeks or paying more than the book for shipping. Ulysses arrived in time. It was sublime. It made me cry. It made me lose my sense of self. It wasn't written in my language, so I could easily lean back from the everyday language and thought patterns I was using and look at it as a marvel of linguistic engineering, it was as if I were traveling through an alien country and words constituted an architectural festival just for my mind. It was as if I was learning to think again in a solipsistic world. The people in Ulysses were me, the environment in Ulysses was all around me. It was consummate.

That said, I really like Ulysses. You should read it.