Posted on 11/30/2014 3:59:51 PM PST by re_nortex
It’s up to you, but wasting your mind on dirt is not the most uplifting way to spend a life that I could imagine.
Well they say to put yourself as much as possible into the author’s frame of mind.
In this case, hooch certainly achieves that goal. The Poetic Dresser Drawer Contents.
I doubt that FRiend! I've been reading FR since September 2001 (but only opened an account nine years later). The people who hang out at this site are indeed the smartest you'll find on any forum, regardless of whether they have some paper on the wall or some letters appended to the last name. There's wisdom and book learnin'. This is where the wise are found.
Some people build ships in bottles, others collect doll heads.
To each, their own.
If you feel you must read it, by all means, do.
Personally? No way.
I liked Atlas Shrugged, and Dr. Zhivago, but I'm weird that way. I like Russian books that don't go anywhere. Better than a french Farce.
I'm much happier reading books that I like, as in the real classics, sometimes in the original, if I read the language, and modern writers like Niven, Pournelle, and Kipling.
/johnny
Don’t know about wise, but we’re weird.
Good geography! We all live @here, in FR, WWW, the totus porcus.(Then Stephen passes out).
I have to agree with you on that. Most of Ulysses is well worth reading, if you like Joyce’s earlier stuff. There are a couple of boring sections. But Finnegan’s Wake isn’t worth touching with a ten foot pole.
It’s like pop art in literature form. If you groove on that sort of thing, well there’s no accounting for taste.
"Ulysses" is one of those books that most upwardly mobile, pretentious types purchase for their library to show houseguests how intellectual and enlightened they are. But only a fraction of them can even tell you the basic outline of what it is about.
There are quite a few books that fit this "coffee table" category, such as "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville and "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco. Frequently bought but rarely read. Looks trendy on the coffee table with the latest copy of "The New Yorker".
Not that I'm insinuating that these books are not worth the time to read. However, they are "challenging" to say the least.
I recommend reading this book with a tumbler of your favorite strong beverage. Perhaps some Glenfiddich or some Frangelico, as your tastes incline. Good luck with James Joyce and let us know if you are able to figure it out.
If you don’t like a book in the first 65 pages, move on. Life is short and there are millions of potential books.
Read what you are interested in and attracted to. Decide for yourself what is worth your time - don’t decide based on what “experts” think.
I’ve read thousands of books. Many I regret spending time persevering through. Many changed my life and have been read several times.
I now read many books on my iPad - using the kindle app. Save money and best... All my highlights are saved in my Amazon acct by book and can be saved. I have given away boxes and boxes and boxes of books. My kindle collection travels with me and takes no room.
My 2 cents.
/johnny
/johnny
The best way to read Finnegan’s Wake, is out loud. Worked for me.
I had a heck of a time getting through Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, which is over 4,000 pages, but by reading 20 pages at a time, I was soon engaged enough to finish it.
Every work of art awakens different responses: some people like it, others do not; some like it less, others more. No principle is involved: the accident of our individual disposition will decide where we stand. But in the case of modern art the separation occurs on a deeper plane than the mere difference sin individual taste. It is not a matter of the majority of the public not liking the new work and the minority liking it. What happens is that the majority, the mass of the people, does not understand it.So, knock yourself out, as they say. Read it with friends, as you should. Literature is a social thing, just don't try to jump your designated p-orbital.In my opinion, the characteristic of contemporary art 'from the sociological point of view' is that it divides the public into these two classes of men: those who understand it and those who do not. . .
Modern art, evidently, is not for everybody, as was Romantic art, but from the outset is aimed at a special, gifted minority. Hence the irritation it arouses in the majority. When someone does not like a work of art, but has understood it, he feels superior to it and has no room for irritation. But when distaste arises from the fact of its not having been understood, then the spectator feels humiliated, with an obscure awareness of his inferiority for which he must compensate by an indignant assertion of himself.
So, instead of trudging through the book, find a dark bar and drink. "Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you." _JJ
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