The main points of “Against Ulysses” by Leo Bersani are that James Joyce’s novel isn’t so hard to grasp and that it’s more traditional than critics tend to allow.

In his essay, Bersani doesn’t speak against the book Ulysses, but he counters interpretations of Ulysses as inevitably avant-garde or revolutionary. Bersani makes the point that Joyce’s early-twentieth-century text has many of the hallmarks of traditional novels. He produces a “detailed study of characters” with Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus. Bersani says it’s “snobbish” and “critically wrong” to think the novel is about the disintegration of the self. He argues Joyce advances a “conservative ideology of the self.”

More so, like standard novels, Joyce’s Ulysses plays around with style and brings in external texts. Bersani makes the point that the abundance of intertextuality and fragmentation—particularly in the “Circe” episode—isn’t so bewildering. It’s not Joyce making a mess of literature; rather, it represents the “domestication of literature,” since all of the references are held together in Joyce’s book. He minimizes Joyce’s so-called “stylistic intrusions” by claiming that all literature is “just that”—a stylistic intrusion.

For Bersani, Ulysses is a commanding text that brings together other texts, builds well-rounded characters, and sharply represents the alienation of modernity. His foremost point seems to be that all of these elements make Ulysses a captivating read, so it doesn’t have to be approached as if it were a fundamentally baffling, experimental work.