/lit/ - Literature

ITT: COMFY reads (besides all the in depth descriptions of hell and stuff)

Pic related. Got about 50 pages left but thinking about dropping it as I get through maybe 15 pages in an hour. Haven't touched it in a few days and I can't remember anything that happened after the long descriptions of hell, which were great. Does it get better or should I drop it and read The Red And The Black instead?

Are you kidding me? Steven Daedalus is such a submissive nerd. I could barely get through this otherwise enjoyable book without continuously cringing at Steven the archetypal virgin

Just read part 3 of this (the description of hell & Stephen's confession), what an absolute slog. I get it's supposed to be agonizing, but it goes on and on for page after page to the point that I lost the will to visualize it, and instead the act of reading itself is what became agonizing. Not only is it hard to take seriously, but the time Joyce spends covering Stephen's sins is infinitesimal compared to it so it didn't really feel earned.
Am I missing something, or am I just too secular for it to have made an impact on me? I can't be the only one who hated this. For what it's worth, I loved everything that came before it.

>Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race… Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead
bros this is so moving I wanna cry

>>16348323

What is the best biography of Joyce? Ellman or Bowker?

books like this and Dubliners? I love Ulysses but it's very different

>Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

>Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

>Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

>Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

Portrait of the artist is the perfect book for you, op. It's all about the artist finding himself and overcoming the beliefs that were imposed onto him.

>Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

>Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

why should i read this

alguien ha leído pic related en inglés? me intimida un poco

The description of hell in portrait of the artist as a young man has legitimately fucked my head up to the point where I can't think of anything else. It's so terrifying that I am unironically considering going to a Catholic priest to confess my sins. Thinking about the hell in this book makes my hands shake and I've gotten panic attacks thinking about it. I am so afraid of dying and going to hell that I avoid going outside as much as I can.

"As the waters of baptism cleanse the soul with the body, so do the fires of punishment torture the spirit with the flesh. Every sense of the flesh is tortured and every faculty of the soul therewith: the eyes with impenetrable utter darkness, the nose with noisome odours, the ears with yells and howls and execrations, the taste with foul matter, leprous corruption, nameless suffocating filth, the touch with redhot goads and spikes, with cruel tongues of flame. And through the several torments of the senses the immortal soul is tortured eternally in its very essence amid the leagues upon leagues of glowing fires kindled in the abyss by the offended majesty of the Omnipotent God and fanned into everlasting and ever-increasing fury by the breath of the anger of the God-head."

I love Portrait.

Just read this a couple days ago,my first Joyce book.
Is all his work this dense with references?The edition i had 500 endnotes to explain all the little things that would be easily missed or i would have no idea about them without the notes.
Kinda detracted from the reading experience but the description of the suffering a sinner would endure in hell was terrifying.
What does /lit/ think about it?

Did you enjoy this? I thought it was good, albeit very hit and miss. I wouldn't agree that it's the greatest bildungsroman.
I enjoyed the argument at the Christmas table, the outing with his father, the priest's class lecture on hell, Stephen's conversation with his friend at the very end, and the camaraderie and competition of school and uni. At the same time large parts of the book just didn't resonate with me, maybe because I'm not from a religious background, overly familiar with Irish history, or an artist.