Posted on 01/21/2022 2:02:01 PM PST by Borges
James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in 1922, just over two weeks after the British handed over the keys of Dublin Castle to Michael Collins and his new Irish government. The other great literary event of that year was TS Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Joyce’s novel had much in common with Eliot’s long poem — it dealt with the rawness of urban life using competing narrative forms, including pastiche and myth and different kinds of voices. The Waste Land sounded a sort of death knell for the narrative poem, just as Ulysses set about killing off the single-perspective, the all-knowing authorial voice — firing the starting gun for a wave of “modernist” writing, from Virginia Woolf to Samuel Beckett, that comprehensively rewrote the rules as to how literature was approached and presented.
Ulysses, now celebrating its centenary, has grown in importance over the past 100 years, during which it has repeatedly been declared one of — if not the — greatest novels of the 20th century.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
I’ve read it and like it just fine. It’s very funny.
I could swear at one point in his press conference the other day Biden was reading random pages from Finnegan’s Wake.
I read it first in college, over fifty years ago, and I loved it at once. I’ve read it many more times since, and it continues to impress me. It is probably the only novel, or work of art, which certainly and profoundly changed my life. Really, not a day goes by, that I don’t reflect on a passage, some scene, or some insight from Ulysses.
To quote from a Britcom, “’Useless’ by James Joyce!”
I picked it up several times. Never got more than 40 pages in before the stilted prose just sent me away.
I tried reading some of his other stuff. Just as painful.
Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other frequently engaged his mind?
What to do with our wives.
What had been his hypothetical singular solutions?
Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, cup and ball, nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts, chess or backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the policeaided clothing society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano and flute, guitar and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope addressing: biweekly visits to variety entertainments: commercial activity as pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine satisfaction of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically controlled: social visits, at regular infrequent prevented intervals and with regular frequent preventive superintendence, to and from female acquaintances of recognised respectability in the vicinity: courses of evening instruction specially designed to render liberal instruction agreeable.
And the head coach wants no sissies,
So he reads to us from something called ‘Ulysses’.
—
I loved Allen Sherman when I was a kid.
Is this Joyce book the Ulysses he referred to?
I guess because people thought it was a dirty book.
“Gawd, that book was sooo difficult to get through!”
The guy had an incredible vocabulary and huge breadth of knowledge. Makes it hard to understand what he’s talking about.
Ulysses was a novel?
I thought it was an exercise in mental illness.
We are all individuals. How can one’s brain follow the “stream of conscience” of another’s brain.
Ahh, Finnegans Wake. James Joyce used the legend of Grace O’Malley (”her grace o’malice”) and the Earl of Howth in chapter 1 of Finnegans Wake.
My daughter’s name is Grace O’Malley.
Grace O’Malley is an important figure in Irish legend but was in fact a larger-than-life figure from 16th century Irish history.
One of the most enduring legends about her dates from this period and concerns Howth Castle, which still stands some ten miles from Dublin City. Returning from a voyage, she put in to the port of Howth for provisions. Granuaile duly went to see the local lord, St Lawrence, to seek his hospitality, as was the Gaelic custom. She found the castle gates locked and was told by the servants that his lordship was at dinner and would not be disturbed. Heading back to her ship she came upon St Lawrence’s young grandson playing in the grounds, kidnapped him and took him back to Clew as her hostage. Convinced the ransom would be high, Howth opened negotiations for the boys’ return. Gráinne contemptuously dismissed his offers of gold and silver. Her price, she declared, was that the gates of Howth Castle must never again be locked and that an extra setting must evermore be laid at the dinner table, lest an unexpected guest should happen to stop by. Relieved at the simplicity of the demand, St Lawrence agreed and returned to Howth with his grandson, where he faithfully kept his side of the arrangement and where, even today, the castle gates are always open and an extra place laid at the dinner table in commemoration of the family’s legendary encounter with the Pirate Queen
600 pages of
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. 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 totauftauf 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. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface
I am supposing that this is written in Gaelic, because I do not understand a word of it.
I guess I’m a moron.
If you could translate it into Italian, I’ll take a crack at it.
It’s pure
JOYCEAN.
Decipher at your own risk.
JOYCEAN.
What is that? Please explain.
I will read a challenging book if it's a rewarding experience but not if it feels like an endurance test.
Gave up both times.
Main problem - I do not care what happens to any of the characters.
I think Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist are both literary classics, but, once again, I do not have strong feelings about the characters, which means I am not personally invested, just artistically invested.
“not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac”
Jacob and Esau story from Genesis.
It’s dream language.
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