How did people back then read Ulysses?

My question is how tf did people understand and read Ulysses back then when it first came out or even decades after it came out when there weren't as many guides or companion books to help a reader understand wtf Joyce was saying? I've heard stories of Virginia Woolf berating the book but how exactly could she have resented it if it was such a colossal and complex work that can barely be understood at the time? And also I've heard Hemingway praise Ulysses for its brilliance, but I have a hard time believing that even a well-versed and culturally literate writer like Hemingway could pick up on all of the nitty-gritty and esoteric historical and literary allusions. I can probably think of many other people and critics from that era that read it when it first came out and even the general public, and my question is how did they pick up on it? How did ordinary people even come to comprehend the sheer breadth of Ulysses in its initial conception? (even if it was banned for a decade and then brought back into the public in 1933-4) Genuinely curious.