Tom McCarthy, writing in the LRB, described James Joyce's Ulysses as a ‘heavy book, a book full of weight, a fallen book’; a ‘properly obscene book’; ‘a book in which the central stake is the coming into being of the book itself’; a book for which ‘people should desist, once and for all, from using the term “interior monologue” to describe the novel’s outbreaks of unassigned first-person narrative. This is not interior monologue: it’s exterior consciousness, embodied (or encorpsed) consciousness that has ruptured the membrane of conventional syntax.’ In this episode, Toms McCarthy and Jones discuss all that and more, including why Ulysses is both a ‘book to be read with relish’ and a ‘monumental event in the development of human consciousness’.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/closereadingsmbtcFor Spotify and other apps: https://lrb.me/applecrmbtcRead more in the LRB:Tom McCarthy: Ulysses and its Wake: https://lrb.me/mbtcjoyce01Colm Tóibín on Joyce’s errors: https://lrb.me/mbtcjoyce02Anne Enright: At Sandymount Strand: https://lrb.me/mbtcjoyce03Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices