"Proust might be a mountain and his enthusiasts the bibliophilic equivalents of extreme adventure freaks; but at least they don't need oxygen bottles, picks and pulleys, thermal gear and a sherpa to help surmount him. It's impossible to really understand Ulysses without help.
Joyce seems to have intuited as much when he publicised his chapter notes so that readers could grasp the exact nature of the Homeric correspondence alluded to in the title (Ulysses is Latin for Odysseus). Ezra Pound thought they were so obvious that "any blockhead can trace them". I don't agree."
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