Go On, and Faith Will Come to You

Have you read Ulysses? For most people who have tried, the honest answer is a sentence that trails off, and Philip Kitcher has spent years teaching people how to finish it. Before the first episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, he offers the advice he gives his students: how fast to read a page built like a poem, when to put the guidebooks down, what to ask of a scene instead of asking what happens, and what to make of the Greek names every edition hangs on the book. He also names the three places where nearly everyone gives up, and what a French mathematician would say to you there.