/lit/ - Literature

>>18968789
I fucking hate James Joyce. Unstructured rambling is not groundbreaking.

What a load of fucking bullshit

Is the prose here alone excellent enough to read it in the original or can I be excused for reading a translation in my native language?

Pic unrelated.

Let's talk about a mystery I've uncovered. The elusive Death Eater, "Maldber". It said he's one of the DoM Death Eaters. Note: he's not.

He doesn't appear in any of the books. However, when I was thirteen, I registered on this Persian Harry Potter webstie, Jadoogaran. It had a roleplaying section. You had to register as one of the characters of the book. Back then, 6th was the newest book. One of the characters was a Death Eater called "Maldber" or "Muldber". I chose this character, adn went as him until I got banned six months later by mods=fags.

But then a few years ago I googled both "Muldber" and "Maldber" and he's a prevalent character in the fanfics. Just google both names in ff.net and WattPad.

Who is he? Please help me solve this mystery.

Thanks.

*retroactively dethrones you*

My mother tongue is Persian. I just wrote this. Please tell me I'm good at English I am insecure I don't have any friends I"m just a lonely coder ;__;

In the late sixties, Dr. W. javdani, a resident of Mashhad and an excellent OB/GYN in his own rite, was gifted a mint late 1890s edition of his favorite French Romanticist novel, The Three Musketeers Trilogy. Despite the gifter's warning not to actually read the book as it had withered due to the ravages of time, he started reading it, as he believed that books are meant for reading, and not devised to be mere collector's items.

He had previously read a translation of the book by Z. Mansouri, a French-Persian literary translator, a very lettered thespian. Dr. javdani found some odd occurances, such as passages that he did not remember reading in the translation, or entire chapters that existed in the translation, but not in the original facsimile. There was no internet at the time, and people whose fluency in French rivaled that of his were rare at the time (it still is, as Iran is a desolate wasteland full of religious freaks and uneducated imbeciles). So he fired up his authorized Hilam Arrow clone and headed to Tehran.

Upon arriving at the headquarters of the magazine that originally published the translation, he demanded to speak wth the Editor in Chief. The security flippanty tried to expel him from the premises, but he won them over by showing his Medical Association ID card, wtih a single-digit incremental number. The EIC was impressed, and asked him if he wants to collaborate. "NO!" he exalted, "I'm here to ask why your translator deceived an entire nation by printing lies upon lies." -- demanded Dr. javdani.

"He's actually giving a lecture at the Amir Kabir Polytechnique. You can visit him there, he shares an office there with the janitor and the Dean of Theology." EIC replied, informingly.

Dr javdani drove to AKP and asked the information booth where Mr. Mansouri's office is located. They directed him to the utility shed next to the pool, where a collective group of young male and female students were flirting and sunbathing. He found Mr. Mansouri in his a three by four room.

"I am avid fan of yours, Mr. Mansouri." Dr. javdani greeted the translator.

"Good Heavens! What can I do for your?"

"I wish, nay, I demand to know why your translations deviates from the source so much?"

"Because I don't owe the reader a translation true to the source. I'm not an interpreter, I'm not a 'dilmach', I'm a translator. I owe the readers something that they actually enjoy. Do you think a Persian tailor would enjoy the ramblings of a 19th century womanizer? No. They want something with which they can escape their mundane life."

"But it's like stealing books!" Dr. javdani exclaimed.

"If you're gonna steal something, let it be a good book".

-

The turtleman has dark green skin, a thick, spongy surface, like wet clay. The turtleman lives by the lake. The turtleman has long, smooth legs, and even longer, skinnier arms. The turtleman reads fiction. The turtleman writes screenplays, hoping he will eventually sell one to Hollywood, but he doesn’t let his hopes get too high, because he knows a lot of depressed screenwriters who have long since lost their creative spark. The turtleman has a mere bump for a nose, slits for nostrils, and two large eyes, cartoonish, mostly white. The turtleman has a shell. The turtleman walks on two legs, like the teenage mutant ninja turtles, although he looks nothing like them, he thinks, being much taller and lankier, although, sometimes, out of fascination, late at night, looks up YouTube videos of the live-action ninja turtle films from the 1990s and watches, with fear and fascination and a grotesque, uncanny sensation, the same way a normal man might feel watching the puppet character in “Mr Meaty”.

The turtleman tokes. The turtleman wakes and bakes, and then before breakfast, and then before driving to work, and then on the drive to work, and then at his first break at work. The turtleman has a job at Dunkin Donuts. The turtleman thinks the job is shitty, but he does not care what he thinks. The turtleman considers himself mindless and insignificant, and does not have a trace of self-interest, ambition, or ego. The turtleman is viewed by his coworkers as remarkably friendly and cooperative. The turtleman is responsive to people, like some kind of liquid moving around their solid, fuller existence. The turtleman steals white powdered munchkins throughout the shift, but only when he is working alone. The turtleman is nice to customers. The turtleman is never on his phone, but he does not correct coworkers who do use their phones, who read Twitter until customers grow visibly angry and shift or move something on the table to make a noise and get the coworkers attention, or say “hey” under their breath, because the turtleman understands why they would rather be on their phones than paying attention to their work.

The turtleman knows that his coworkers could give a shit about their work at Dunkin Donuts. The turtleman still does his job well. The turtleman is Dunkin’ Donuts employee of the month. The turtleman freaks his boss out, because she said once he seems like “a fucking robot,” although she apologized later, so the turtleman was confused, although he understood where she was coming from. The turtleman understands people really well, and has a lot of compassion, and understands human flaws.

Anyone got a chart
for getting into Ulysses and actually understanding what's going on?

Apparently it's pretty hard to read.

Which printing should I get /lit/? With annotations or no? I was thinking about the everychad's edition but it's really fucking expensive and I can't be bothered.

Which book is your "the one"? Which one made you fall in love with literature?

I've need reading Ulysses on and off for 2 years, usually between picking other books to read. I've been reading seriously for 3 years, so as you can imagine most of Ulysses goes straight over my head but I keep coming back to it and I'm not entirely sure why. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time but then I'll come to a sentence that blows me away, but every 50-100 pages or so, the rest is like driving through a blizzard. Do I push through to the end (I'm on page 550/900+)? Do I put it down and pick up where I left off at another time? Do I put it down and restart it entirely after I'm better read? If it helps, I put it down a few weeks ago and read Borges' Ficciones instead, and it was one of the best experiences of my life, but now I finished it and am back with Ulysses. Do I just keep it in this role of continuing it during these in-between times while I pick another book to read?

>>11589074

It's so dense. Every single sentence has so many allusions going on.

MASTURBATORY PROSE

Is there a greater monument to the beauty of the Jewish soul than Joyce's Ulysses?

>—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.
>Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.
>—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.

Was Joyce retarded?

The fuck is this nigga trying to say?

I got to chapter 3 and this nigga ain't even speaking english

You can stop pretending it's not shit now.

>>11371619
>Any historian that covers more than 200 years is a psued to the highest extent
yeah tottally..

I want to understand the allusions itb and how Joyce is making allusions, so is there a recommended guide to reference so to understand such things?

>tfw this is actually a very entertaining book filed with jokes and genuine heart and compelling characters and the references don't actually bog things down a lot and are easily researchable because it's the 21st century and the fucking internet exists

What are other novels that do the same but for other languages?

I am trembling with anticipation to begin the second page.

Fellow readers, I am left in awe at Joyce's way with words. More has been said to me in these 200 odd words than the last book I read, which was 1984, and the last before that was Harry Potter. Being the third book I have read in my life, I don't know what to expect in the following pages, but if this first page is an indication, I am reading one of the literary greats.

Brothers and sisters of /lit/, please hold my hand as I dive into this masterpiece's second, and third, and fourth pages. I am not prepared for what I am about to read, but I know in my heart it is my favorite book I've ever read!

Explain Sirens.

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