Ulysses Ithaca

In the 1961 edition which I give preference, it goes from page 666 to page 737.

In the On Line edition provided it goes from page 874 to page 975.

The same is also provided as an e-book, pages are the same.

You can also go to the Joyce Project and press Ithaca. You will find there 40 notes about Ithaca.

It is advisable to take a look also at Schmoop (Shmoop Editorial Team. "Ulysses Episode 17: Ithaca Summary." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 4 Oct. 2015.).

This is obviously the preliminaries to the adultery and the famous monologue and the "Yes", and perhaps it is James Joyce own view as a man of what might led a woman to act like that. One very interesting detail, that is not commented by neither and maybe no one anymore is that the "dot" of the S + M = P equation which is Joyce`s most obvious clue to what Ulysses is all about shows up exactly at the end of Ithaca...(in the 1961 and previous editions...) He is telling the reader in an awkward, perhaps ashamed, way that is what he is trying to demonstrate...

A well balanced appreciation is given by Ron Rosenbaum at Slate and it is the reason Ithaca was chosen as the first project of this kind here and most appropriately he calls his article "Is Ulysses Overrated?"

To me the best and most important aspect of this whole thing is the following question and answer from his article:

So why are you rushing to the defense of just this one chapter in Ulysses?
Because I don't believe the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. (Yes, I know, this is just the sort of cliché Joyce ridicules in the Eumaeus chapter.) Ulysses is best looked upon as a grab bag of great riffs and long stretches of tedious pretentiousness. All too many readers give up on Ulysses before Buck Mulligan finishes shaving—the silver shaving bowl is like an ecclesiastical salver, see! Isn't that profound?—and never reach that beautiful, tender and meditative semifinal "Ithaca" chapter with its Q&A format. The one chapter you should read before you die.

If you have branched to all indications above, you should be wandering why not start at Telemachus, from which the Buck Mulligan article was extracted?
Once you get accustomed with Joyce you will see that everything connects and there is not really a "starting point" and the best example is the first and the last phrase of Finnegans. In our case of Ulysses, the background and basically the most important aspect of the initial chapter of Ulysses is completely tied up with The Portrait and somehow, Ulysses is "the" literary effect of The Portrait although the main subject is the one here, Ithaca, reason why I decided to start with it.

Before going to the start of Ulysses take a look on how it is divided, as it is generally accepted, and how it has been operationalized here.