Posted on 11/30/2014 3:59:51 PM PST by re_nortex
Time Finnegan might disagree. :-)
Sorry, meant ‘’Tim’’.
I once spent a summer reading Critique of Pure Reason.
On wine.
“God created whiskey to keep the Irish from conquering the world.” Who am I to disagree?
Geez, Now I regret reading it. Er... listening to it.
How about. Its one of many works of modernism, theories aside, an anti-traditional experimental innovation which was all the rage at the time, who knew people would take it seriously?
I wonder sometimes, if Joyce wasn’t being truthful when he stated that, he had read much and understood little.
Ulysses is a lie. It’s actually a really pathetically terrible book touted by the literati to make other people feel stupid. Joyce loved tormenting the English language, stringing together words for long effect and no real meaning, he saw no reason to say something in 5 words he could just as easily say in 25. Don’t bother.
Others have made most of the points I would, at this point. Few other observations.
1. James Joyce himself said that the book was deliberately constructed in such a way to send the academic literary community up the wall trying to figure out all the puzzles and inconsistencies he left in the text. This appears to have actually been the entire point of the book instead of relating a story; Carl Jung once posited that indeed the puzzles and such were the entire point of the book and that there was no substance beneath them.
2. There are *no* complete and correct editions of Ulysses. The first edition had thousands of errors and errata. Nobody’s been able to find source material to actually fix it. It’s pretty bad.
3. You will need one if not several guide books. Be advised that many of them contradict themselves. I prefer the Campbell work mentioned upthread, but then I like Campbell’s other work and find his prose approachable if sometimes rather dense.
4. Even very intelligent people who liked Ulysses have commented that many parts of the book are not understandable and may be quite insane.
5. A lot of the book consists of turn-of-the-century European political pop-culture and political references. Great if you were the contemporary reader. Not so great in this day and age when most of the peccadilloes of the day have long been lost to history.
6. In my opinion, Joyce is far overrated. I find him a competent at best writer who was elevated because of the deliberate puzzles he left in his work. Academics often will elevate works that they can’t figure out as “works of genius” whether they are or not. He does have a gift for characterization at times and interesting turns of phrase. Some other very verbose writers of the day didn’t like his work; their reaction can be summed up as “WTF is this crap???” - especially for his stream-of-consciousness bits.
After being forced to read William Faulkner in college, I have come to the conclusion that any author who is too stupid to learn punctuation isn’t worth reading. Pitch the book.
You like Kipling? I’ve never kipled, so I wouldn’t know.
Get four Irishmen together and ‘’fifth’’ shows up.
Can’t help you with Ulysses but I loved ‘Crime and Punishment.’
Allen Sherman’s mention of “Ulysses” was probably an allusion to the book, since his routines included references to controversial and racy writers such as Arthur Miller.
The intelligentsia of the Academy tell us it is so because *they* don’t understand it either.
Excellent post ottbmare. Sounds like Joyce is parallel to lots of contemporary visual artists... In Curtis Bowers’ movie “Agenda - Grinding America Down”, it is admitted that much modern art is created intentionally to turn on itself, to disturb, and to fake intelligence.
“...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish Wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. “
This is the end. I would start here and read it out loud and scream out every life affirming yes from Molly, which is the way I heard one critic describe it. If you like it then you can dive into the rest.
Oh my. I bought it a couple of decades back when I still had my wits about me. I’ve tried in vain. My efforts to read Joyce have been unsuccessful. Every year or two I would begin again. Once I even started in the middle thinking I might trick him.
I am less worried now that I may die without reading Ulysses. For me - that’s progress:)
Some preparation is useful, but not really necessary. You could read Portrait of the Artist, but I would consider watching the wonderful 1967 Joseph Strick film version here instead. You will understand the basic outline and flow of the narrative, and get a taste for Joyce's style. Of course much has been left out, but the basic core is there. BTW, Milo O'Shea is Leopold Bloom for me now, and Barbara Jefford does an outstanding interpretation of Molly Bloom's 50 page, one-sentence, soliloquy.
Press on, read the book. Just remember, you're not reading it for a grade, but for your own amusement and enjoyment. You won't regret it
Anyhoo, thanks to all for the comments. I left this thread for a while, because in spite of my lofty literary aspirations, I'm enough of a prole to have gotten absorbed by Sunday Night Football.
One of the worst books I have ever read. I’m 62 and have rarely been without a book since a lad, and I cover the gamut from history to classics to bios to contemporary science. I’m as comfortable with Follett as I am with Tolstoy or Kaku, but I can still remember what a piece of crap this was when I read it over 40 years ago. Maybe it’s one alky recognizing the sneaky self-indulgence of another, as I have little use for Faulkner or Fitzgerald as well.
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