/lit/ - Literature

>>18142247
>who even enjoys Ulysses any more? Academics, right?
Yes. And writers, which is the only relevant category in defining what literature survives time. Nabokov, Pynchon, Wallace, Bolano, Krasznahorkai and almost any relevant writer of the last 40 years references Joyce at some point - you can see his influence in attempts to do mimetic inner speech almost everywhere, as well as the renowned attention to structure you find in a lot of high literature after Ulysses came out. Most people who wrote worthy literature after Joyce were reading Ulysses, and people who are writing worthy literature now are reading it. Ulysses is the kind of literary achievement that teaches writers of future generations what you can do with the medium, which is why writers keep going back to it despite its fading popularity with the masses. The same is true for Homer and Dante. Who reads the Iliad? Who reads the comedy? Writers, first and foremost, and academics as a close second. Academics keep going back to books such as Ulysses because they keep being relevant to writers, that is, relevant for literature in general. A book does not survive the centuries because the general public reads it or because of academy - or at least, not because of these two factors alone. The most relevant factor is how much the experience of reading this book features into the works of major modern writers, and Joyce has been omnipresent since Ulysses came out. A literary work is only important insofar as it inspires other literary works, and Ulysses has undoubtedly been one of the most influential - if not the most influential - works of literature of the last 150 years.

>>18104208
The writing is bad but almost none of you could say why. You are just grossed out by the reference to shit. Here's a paragraph of Leopold Bloom shitting. Can you see the difference? Be honest. If not, go back to read more books.

>Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently, that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six.