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James Joyce: What say you??

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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:

--- Quote from: Narr on 28 Nov 2006, 22:46 ---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.

--- End quote ---

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...

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