Ulysses is infamously unread. Yet this reputation, every reference to it, and each time it puts off a potential reader, constitute indirect readings of Joyce’s 1922 novel. It's elitist, excessive, difficult, or plain silly; not for everyone, needlessly complicated, or over-hyped; all before a glance at its first page. In How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, Pierre Bayard notes with pleasure that not only has he not read Joyce, he furthermore can allude to both Joyce’s texts and his not-reading of them and feel neither shame nor anxiety. Bayard perpetuates a reading of Joyce: of his texts via reputation and therefore of what Joyce signifies. Complicated texts, rarely read. Responses such as these – the prerogative of any reader (direct or indirect) – also rely on and perform readings of Joyce as an author. The creator of such a difficult, labyrinthine, ‘important’ text as Ulysses must be extraordinary. Or is it that a novel by a famous, canonical ‘genius’ must in turn be remarkable, complex, out of reach? How do we separate the author's infamy from that of the text? Actual readings of Joyce's texts enact this same quandary: to what extent is our reading of Ulysses informed by how we view Joyce, and how much is our idea of Joyce dictated by what we find in the novel?

In order to respond to such questions, and show why they matter to literary criticism, we must pull at the intricate relationships between author, reader, and text – a venture which has been sidelined in both Joyce studies and the wider literary world. It has been over fifty years since theorist and critic Roland Barthes declared ‘The Death of the Author’ and ‘the birth of the reader’ (‘Author’, 148). While the response to and influence of his provocative 1967 polemic continues, interest has waned. It isn't easy now to completely escape the idea that the author no longer has complete control over the correct interpretation of their writing, yet literary culture continues to be the author-centric world Barthes describes and decries in his essay. Both in spite of and due to his ‘unreadability’, Joyce is a prime example of this. Joyce admirers have ample opportunity to indulge their fandom.