James Joyce??
Perhaps some learned Freeper can explain the supposed greatness of this virtually unreadable author to me. I don’t get it and I have tried. The stream of consciousness business just makes for labored reading for me. Apparently not for others. In fact I have an Irish acquaintance who claims to read Joyce every night. But to me the Joyce mystique remains a mystery.
Now Jane Austin is a different story. She should top the list. Readable over and over.
Re: “virtually unreadable author”
That’s exactly how I perceived, “Sanctuary,” and “Requiem for a Nun.”
I with you on that one. I received nothing from the effort I put into Joyce (admittedly, not very much).
I really don’t care for Joyce’s later stuff (as in, completely incomprehensible to me!) but “The Dead,” one of his earlier works, is excellent. Well worth a read.
Read Dubliners and ‘Portrait of the Artist’. They are wonderful and perfectly readable.
Jane Austin is wonderful-—she really understands human relationships and feelings and has such timeless wit. Her prose is easy to digest.
I studied James Joyce in an English class and he is brilliant—I would have never appreciated his work without the class, though.
Joyce is to writing, sort of like David Lynch is to film. I think that might be the direction the lit. types are coming from, but don’t know.
Besides, what’s not to love about this opener (first complete sentence) of Finnegans Wake:
“Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea,
had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this
side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight
his penisolate war:
“nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee
exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while
they went doublin their mumper all the time:
“nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf
thuartpeatrick:
“not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended
a bland old isaac:
“not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers
wroth with twone nathandjoe.”