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[ScrambledGregs]

Over the past 4 years, I've read Ulysses, along with bits and pieces of Finnegan's Wake and Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. I both love and hate James Joyce. Maybe it's just that I feel as though I only 'get' half of what he's doing, but mostly I think I just can't decide if writing willfully complicated and obtuse literature is an evolutionary leap forward or the last dribblings from a crazy writer's pen.

[supersheep]

ARGH MY BRAIN IS MELTING WHAT THE FUCKASS ARE YOU SAYING JAMES.

That was pretty much my response to Ulysses - I think I got halfway through the second chapter and I haven't been back since. It certainly is not something you can just pick up and read. As for wilfully obtuse, I don't know. I've often read that kind of "arty" thing and had it be much easier to read, although admittedly usually in short story form.
Ulysses is still on my "Things to Do" List.

[Narr]

We're supposed to be reading Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man for my English 215 class.

I use the words "supposed to be" because I read about ten pages of it and felt like rinsing my brain.  I read the Sparknotes for the first chapter and was blown away at all the stuff that was supposedly happening in the novel I didn't even remotely see.

The English Major-In-Waiting in me is screaming that I'm going into the wrong studies for loathing reading Joyce.  But then again, I was just about the only person in my entire class that understood and thoroughly enjoyed the stuff of Kafka we went over, so maybe I'm not as out of my league as I feel.

In short, I dislike Joyce.

[supersheep]

Maybe it is because the sparknotes people are doing that English thing of reading so much into EVERY fricking detail of the story? That is one of the things that I kinda dislike about English - the way that they construct a superstructure of possibilities over what may have been written just as a bloody story. AGH.

[Narr]

That depends on the story.  The stream of consciousness stuff that Joyce wrote was meant, I believe, to be read like we English students tend to do.

When people try and give me deeper meanings to be found in stuff like, say, Huckleberry Finn?  Then I get angry.  Mark Twain said, IN THE INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK, that it was meant to be taken purely as a story and that he would be angry with anyone who searched for deeper meanings.  Which, of course, means the Great Minds Of English Studies? go and do exactly that.  "Twain was just being sarcastic."

*hits head on his desk*

I wonder if students of other languages have to deal with the same bullox we put up with when we study English literature?

[bujiatang]

but other languages can be more precise. remember, we don't know how to speak.  I spent twenty minutes explaining to a grandmother that having "Baptismal 12-09-06" was grammatically incorrect.  A language is only so precise as the people accepting usage.  Sure, being lazy, we can still communicate a point but without paying attention and being purposeful the language loses strength. 

Yeats, Heaney and Obrien are my favorite Irish writers.  I like Portrait but otherwise... eh.

[ScrambledGregs]

I guess my main problem with 'difficult' writers is....well, let's take Finnegan's Wake, for demonstration purposes. If there's this 'great work of literature' that even most modern ENGLISH PROFESSORS can hardly read, let alone understand, what good does it do for literature as a whole?? It's an interesting experiment on paper, but in my view it's a failure if the average person can't make hide nor hair of it.

Of course, this raises all sorts of questions as to what the average person is, and is capable of reading. It also raises questions about whether the English language is constantly changing, such that when we try to read older books, they become slightly more and more difficult with time. Frankly I think it's pointless to study Shakespeare in high school because not only did 90% of my classes not even bother trying to read it, the 10% which did could only grasp half of it.

[Narr]

My teacher today, prompted by my spinning off on some long tirade about how awful it is having to read stream of consciousness writings in general, basically said that Joyce is challenging the reader.  In a roundabout way, that is saying "You have to work to understand this story."

I'm sorry, English World?, I don't think that's appropriate.  The greatest writing is something you can grasp conceptually the first reading, while deeper meanings start to crop up in further exploration of the work.  It doesn't work the other way around.  I refuse to search for a story.  In "Portrait" for example, there is no story.  All the action is implied, unless it's some observation Stephen makes of what other people are doing.  I have to consciously work in order to understand ON THE BASIC LEVEL of what is occurring in the story, and frankly, that's bullshit.  That is hardly enjoyable, and literature is *gasp* a form of entertainment.  ALL literature is, in some level, a form of entertainment.  People only seek knowledge because it entertains them.  (This is my own personal philosophy, anyway.)  I understand that there are some knowledges that need to be learned in order to function in the world, but the knowledge we ACTIVELY seek is something we find entertaining.

I've heard Joyce praised in so many classes and in so many other forms of media.  Now that I've tried to read him, that literally angers me.  I am angry people think that this guy is worth reading, let alone that he is "the greatest twentieth-century author."  I don't think I've ever been quite so disappointed in an author before.  I didn't exactly like Jane Austen, and it's commonly accepted that Dickens can't write worth a damn but simply has beautiful stories to tell, but this stream of consciousness bullshit is not the art of literature.  The analogy I made in class today was that it's like modern art: you throw up in a bucket and splatter it on canvas and hey! you've got some deep art shit going on there.

[ScrambledGregs]

Weirdly, though, I love Burroughs and hate Kerouac.

[grrraham]

Narr: Sparknotes does fairly basic straightforward analyses of texts. Certainly, be wary of critical writings which try to overanalyze, but if you're finding that sparknotes are getting too much out of something it probably means you're not getting enough out.
Sparknotes are just what the name implies: notes. They aren't in-depth analyses, they are notes on texts, they summarize the ideas and content of the work, and often explain some of the references, but that is all they do.

edit: this is directed more at supersheep, sorry Narr.

[supersheep]

Never used sparknotes, so my bitching wasn't about them, it was more about what Narr said in response to my post - the whole thing about searching for meaning in texts which are just meant as stories. There are stories which have deeper levels of meaning, but a lot of the time you can construct those deeper levels of meaning which don't actually have any relevance to what the author was writing about, or are diametrically opposite to what the author conceived of.

[Narr]

Oh, I know that Sparknotes is just notes.  That's the thing.  That's why I'm so frustrated with "Portrait."  It was saying what was going on and while I had sort of gathered the gist of some things happening, the large majority of it is never expressly stated, so I didn't quite catch the specifics of what was happening as far as plot goes.

I brought up how much I am loathing reading this story in class and Professor Dransfield said that Orson Scott Card hates James Joyce with a passion as well, so I'm in good company.

[bujiatang]

I liked in "The Importance of being Ernest" when the butler said: "there were no cucumbers, not for love or money."


Myself, I don't like cucumber sandwhiches and would have great difficulty eating a platter of them out of spite. So whats the point.

In portait it is difficult to follow the story arc because from section to section years pass, and the narrator's mind wandered.  But, doesn't everybody's?  Recall when he was remembering being beaten, how there was a long digression and in a long recounting of a story isn't it easy to get lost.  I don't much care for reading Portrait becasue I had to read it twice to catch some things, but I still prefer it to epistelary novels.  I hate Frankenstein. 

[supersheep]

(The Importance of Being Ernest was Oscar Wilde... It is quite a fun play though!)

[ScrambledGregs]

I think you mean The Importance of Being Earnest. Unless...


: It's important to be me!!

[Choco]

I had to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I was in AP English last year and I read almost nothing. It was a difficult read, to say the least. But there were interesting things that my teacher told us about the book, such as if you took the first word of the book and the last word of the book, and went to the middle, the middle most word is "silence." Also, I'm pretty sure my teacher said that that was an intentional thing from Mr. Joyce. This led me to think that if someone was motivated enough to do that sort of thing, I don't think I'd be able to read any of his books.

[ScrambledGregs]

Finnegan's Wake would make you cry. It is essentially one man's self obsessed madness set in modern fiction. Allow me to just post something from Wikipedia about it:

"The progress of the book is far from simple as it draws in mythologies, theologies, mysteries, philosophies, histories, sociologies, astrologies, other fictions, alchemy, music, colour, nature, sexuality, human development, and dozens of languages to create the world drama in whose cycles we live.

The book ends with the river Liffey disappearing at dawn into the vast possibilities of the ocean. The last sentence is incomplete. As well as leaving the reader to complete it with his or her own life, it can be closed by the sentence that starts the book ? another cycle. Thus, reading the final sentence of the book, and continuing on to the first sentence of the book, we have: "A way a lone a last a loved a long the / 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.""

[Narr]

A friend of mine quoted me the beginning of the third paragraph in Finnegan's Wake over AIM.

"The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy."

My reply was "...What."  I then proceeded to compare Joyce to the webcomic "Jerkcity" which is mostly utter complete nonsense and penis jokes.  The fact that I was able to do it and have a valid point is more than I can handle.

I respect a story that is circular, like Ulysses is, where there is no beginning or ending because if you open anywhere in the story, it's "the beginning", but seriously, this is difficult to the point of ridiculousness.  There's a point where an author crosses the line from challenging his or her readers to being incomprehensible.

[ScrambledGregs]

I think you meant Finnegan's Wake, not Ulysses. I found Ulysses readable and I was able to follow the story for the most part.

[KharBevNor]

The analogy I made in class today was that it's like modern art: you throw up in a bucket and splatter it on canvas and hey! you've got some deep art shit going on there.

Oh man, please go into a fine art critique session and say that. It would be insanely amusing.

I like Joyce. He's very dense, but I understand quite a lot of his philosophical and occult/mythological allusions. It helps a lot if you keep one of the schema to hand whilst reading it. Some of the language is brilliant as well. There's a lot better writing out there though.

Now, I'll tell you who really does suck, and that's Virginia Woolf. Fucking hell...

[Narr]

Oh man, please go into a fine art critique session and say that. It would be insanely amusing.

If I ever get the chance, dude, I'm all over it.

Seriously, I remember a story of a guy who pissed in a bucket and then stuck a cross in it, titling his creation as "Piss on Jesus" and it was applauded as some serious deep art shit.  I remember wanting to vomit at the obscene amount of money the guy was paid.

@ Gregs:  Sorry.  You're right.  I have no idea why I said Ulysses.

[KharBevNor]

You mean Pisschrist?



For a start, it's a photo, not just a bucket full of piss and a cross. It's actually a very nice photo, aesthetically pleasing and well lit, which is the point of the whole piece. It's a piece that pushes the boundary between the sacred and profane to its utmost limit: the lighting creates an actually quite beautiful halo of urine around the christ figure. What ultimate meaning we draw from it is of course personal, but it's far more complex than 'HUR PEE ON JESUS HURR'. It's quite easy to read it as a Christian statement: on the misuse of Jesus' words, or perhaps a statement that even in the most filthy conditions, the beauty of God can shine through. It is, in fact, a rather complex and well-executed piece. I could easily write about it at some length, if I could be bothered. 

[ScrambledGregs]

My problem with art like that is that the artist's explanation and intent is better than the art itself. I am all about the results of something and not the methods. I could care less if an artist is an asshole or makes his art for this or that reason. All that matters to me is if I like it and how it makes me feel, if it makes me feel anything at all.

[Manta Ray]

read dubliners, you really can't get any better than that.
i'm sorry guys, but joyce is awesome.

[KharBevNor]

My problem with art like that is that the artist's explanation and intent is better than the art itself.

Yeah, but I think it's actually a rather aesthetically pleasing picture. Please bear in mind there is no 'artists explanation', except the title, which is another one of the interesting things about it: if he hadn't called it 'pisschrist', would we actually come to the conclusion that the substance the cross is suspended in is piss? IS the substance piss? We don't actually know, not just from that picture. Pisschrist is easily about the results and not the methods, although there's many great pieces of art that are purely about the methods.

Sorry about this by the way, but I'm an illustration student, my girlfriends an abstract film-maker and we live in a halls of residence with 98 other assorted student artists. I will defend the validity of modern art as an artform tooth and nail, though some of it is, admittedly, quite shit. Some of it is astounding however.

[ScrambledGregs]

Without reading your explanation for that, though, I just think "a picture of a statue of Jesus/a sculpture of Jesus with some weird yellow effects on it?? Boring."

For what it's worth, I know nothing about art, aside from flipping through collections in my college's library and thinking to myself "that's cool" or "that's shit."

[Johnny C]

I quite like modern art. To tell the truth, I find a lot of art pre-19th century to be rather dull, but maybe that's because I find a lot of everything made pre-19th century to be rather dull. The problem with neo-classicism and all its related forms is that it lent itself to this attitude that because you were portraying something as realistically as possible then you didn't need to have anything important to say. As long as it looked nice, that was the point. Pisschrist looks nice, but at the same time speaks to something deeper than just humanity's sense of aesthetics. Part of modern art's "thing" is the intent of the artist. I guess what I'm saying is don't knock modern art just because you don't like it. Subjectivity does not equal worth. Some modern art is crap but a lot of it is quite well-made.

Also, Khar, just as an aside, I'd argue that the piece is more about the elevation of the crucifixion and Christ's life from the brutal, dirty and human to this untouchable, unreachable thing, and that the overarching question is, "Is that what Jesus' message deserved?"

Oh, and Dubliners is okay but the rest of Joyce's ouvre is nigh-unreadable. I would say that Ulysses is probably the most famous book nobody's ever read.

[ScrambledGregs]

Really?? I don't know what you mean with Ulysses. I thought it was fairly readable and almost enjoyable. I think the most famous book nobody's ever read is the Bible.

[supersheep]

I've read more of the Bible than of Ulysses. Ulysses is actually LESS readable than the Bible...

[Manta Ray]

you just need to get used to his style. i think it's fairly easy to read once you get past Stephen's chapters at the start. Once Leopold becomes the main character it's quite easy to read because he's not as learned as Stephen, and there's some really good bits in the book where Joyce highlights this. There's a bit in the church where Joyce says, the priest says something in latin. Which i think is really cool because if it had been Stephen's thoughts he probably would have said the latin, because the first couple of chapters are full of latin, french, german and irish phrases.

[Ozymandias]

James Joyce is a fuck and I hope he's getting fucked in his ass in hell.

Portrait is the worst goddamned book I have ever been forced to suffer and it fills me with murderous bored rage.

[Narr]

I think the Bible is actually pretty easy to read, but then again, I'm Mormon and have therefore been attempting to study it my whole life.

There's some awesome passages, especially in the Old Testament.  If you read it at a story, the whole bit about Samson and Delilah is pretty awesome.  I still remember the part where he gets chained up to the pillars of a temple and then gets bored, so he shakes down the entire structure.

[snaps]

joyce is a genius, there's no question about that...
i've never read ulysses. i signed up for a class on it but dropped it because the prof was just too out there.
that doesn't make the text useless. no, without having even read it i have no doubt that its the most valuable literary accomplishment of the 20th century...it's just that before you delve into such things you must be familiar with its background...one simply can'y jump into a text such as ulysses without having read its influences...in a way, that's the very essence of it. but, ulysses aside, joyce is (perhaps) far and away the finest writer of the 20th century. yet consider the fact that you're only able to dismiss difficult texts because such texts have questioned the very validity of validity (say, what is good and bad, objectively).

[Felix_]

Joyce is pseudo-intellectual garbage.

'nuff said.

[elcapitan]

Gosh, you've won me with your cogent and detailed argument.

[ScrambledGregs]

Did you guys even read my post?? I said the Bible is the most famous book nobody's ever read. I didn't say it was difficult to read. I would say a healthy 90% of Christians have never read even half of the Bible, let alone the whole thing. Yet they "know" their religion because of what others tell them. A dangerous state of affairs if there ever was one.

But that's a whole 'nother thread.

[supersheep]

10% of Christians is 200 million people. Hell, even if only 1% have read the thing, that's still 20 million - far more than have ever read Ulysses...

[Narr]

joyce is a genius, there's no question about that...
i've never read ulysses. i signed up for a class on it but dropped it because the prof was just too out there.
that doesn't make the text useless. no, without having even read it i have no doubt that its the most valuable literary accomplishment of the 20th century...it's just that before you delve into such things you must be familiar with its background...one simply can'y jump into a text such as ulysses without having read its influences...in a way, that's the very essence of it. but, ulysses aside, joyce is (perhaps) far and away the finest writer of the 20th century. yet consider the fact that you're only able to dismiss difficult texts because such texts have questioned the very validity of validity (say, what is good and bad, objectively).

Consider this:

Most contemporary authors that actually get stuff published that I have personally met/looked into/what-have-you can't stand Joyce.  When I started going off on how awful I felt A Portrait... was, my teacher immediately asked "Have you been talking with Orson Card?"  I recognize why a lot of people think Joyce is great literature, but my standpoint that there's no way in hell that his tripe would even be looked at by a publisher in the world today is probably my biggest problem I have with him.  I think I'm in pretty good company when every writing workshop teacher I've ever had and someone as successful as Orson Scott Card think Joyce is crap.

[elcapitan]

It strikes me as interesting that Orson Scott Card gets held up in (presumably, since you're mentioned that you are one) Mormon circles as a commentator on literature. I wonder if he would be accorded the same respect if he wasn't Mormon too?

Not trying to insinuate anything, I'm legitimately curious.

[KharBevNor]

The authors of my favourite book (Illuminatus!) liked Joyce enough to emulate his writing style, make him a minor character and paraphrase Mollys monologue from the end of Ulysses in its entirety. The book also incoporates the Cthulhu mythos and features a cameo from HP Lovecraft that makes fun of his arrogance and bigotry. Oh, and there's zombie nazis.

Anyone who thinks the modernist stream of consciousness/internal monologue/non-linear narrative style is crap really needs to read it.

[Narr]

It strikes me as interesting that Orson Scott Card gets held up in (presumably, since you're mentioned that you are one) Mormon circles as a commentator on literature. I wonder if he would be accorded the same respect if he wasn't Mormon too?

Not trying to insinuate anything, I'm legitimately curious.

He's a professor at my college.  I bring him up for that reason more than any other.  That is a good question, though.  He got his start writing plays that were more or less toward the Mormon community and worked for a number of years as an editor of an LDS magazine.

@Khar:
I've tried reading stream of consciousness and it's all crap.

[Manta Ray]

James Joyce is a fuck and I hope he's getting fucked in his ass in hell.

Portrait is the worst goddamned book I have ever been forced to suffer and it fills me with murderous bored rage.

That is pretty fucking harsh. Joyce did not force you to read his book. Presumably your teachers did, not Joyce. I don't think Joyce would give a damn for your opinion and would certainly not expect you to read his book.
Guys, Opinion can't really be debated - you either like it or you don't. For those who don't though, take a little time to think about it, and read it some more before judging.

[KharBevNor]

@Khar:
I've tried reading stream of consciousness and it's all crap.

I bet you have not read Illuminatus!

Read it.

[ScrambledGregs]

The authors of my favourite book (Illuminatus!) liked Joyce enough to emulate his writing style, make him a minor character and paraphrase Mollys monologue from the end of Ulysses in its entirety. The book also incoporates the Cthulhu mythos and features a cameo from HP Lovecraft that makes fun of his arrogance and bigotry. Oh, and there's zombie nazis.

Anyone who thinks the modernist stream of consciousness/internal monologue/non-linear narrative style is crap really needs to read it.

I'm drunk enough that I don't know if that's either the worst idea for a book ever, or the absolute BEST. I do agree with your point wholeheartedly. I don't think all stream of consciousness is awful. I like confusing/hard literature, not to mention outright drug induced or bizarre, but Joyce is just not worth it.

[bujiatang]

I wrote a buch of essays on Wilde a while back, and I use the cucumber sandwhiches to confuse people.  Why would I make a point with cucumber sandwhiches? becasue I think it is an absurd thing to do. He did it on purpose, and so I go all Ibsen on their asses and bludgeon people with my point.  Like slamming a door.  And pissed when german theaters have her come back in.  Exactly the same. accept we aren't talking about Ibsen, or Wilde.

Confused?

this is all evil in modern thought: poorly written and glossing over major authors.

[KharBevNor]

I'm drunk enough that I don't know if that's either the worst idea for a book ever, or the absolute BEST.

It also involves John Dillinger, Atlantis, a piss-take of James Bond who goes around either shooting or fucking everyone he meets and constantly complaining about 'fuzzy wuzzys', massive consumption of hallucinogenic drugs, numerology, voodoo and goodness knows what else. It is by far the most entertaining thing ever.

[Narr]

so I go all Ibsen on their asses and bludgeon people with my point.

I must be becoming a literature geek because a year ago, that wouldn't have made any sense to me, but it's frighteningly funny to me right now.

[Hat]

Khar, this sounds EXACTLY like my kind of book.

Thank you