/lit/ - Literature

>>13941229
>I think the build up and the paralytic epiphanies are orgasmic.
You will love The Dead.

>>13941229
Yes, his other works do hold really well.
Ulysses is really not as hard as people say, those who say it's impossible to understand are the ones who drop it 20 pages in. Some chapters go by very fast because it is extremely fun, others are laborious to read, and it's done on purpose. Joyce emulates not only different styles of writing, but also emulates the style of specific writers of the english language. Anyhow, it's an amazing book throughtout.
That said, the books listed in the image do really improve the experience reading Portrait and Ulysses. About Finnegans, it's a book you need to re-read periodically, each time you'll enjoy more, but there isn't specific books to read before it, except for the Bible.
Also, you can read Striking and Picturesque Delineations of the Grand, Beautiful, Wonderful, and Interesting Scenery Around Loch-Earn, a very unknown and short book, but pretty interesting, and said to be a preponent of the style of Finnegans.
It's good to have a respect for these books, and to hold a certain mystical value to it, but, anon, Ulysses and Finnegans are about enjoying the experience and having fun.
Joyce for sure took them extremely serious, and has great ambitions with his works, ultimately, he said.
"The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book — or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honor of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it."

>>13941399
Did you read all of Summa Theologica? It seems like volumes and volumes of dry material. Does a cursory knowledge of Catholicism work for reading Ulysses?

>>13941399
>Joyce for sure took them extremely serious, and has great ambitions with his works, ultimately, he said.
Joyce for sure too them extremely serious, and though he had great ambitions with his works, ultimately he said.
I'm drunk, sorry.

>>13941415
my mistake, forgot to mention I haven't read summa, sorry.
>Does a cursory knowledge of Catholicism work for reading Ulysses
Sure. The bible would be nice but reading it solely to read Joyce isn't worth it, but read at least the gospel of john.
The summa, though, has lots of impact in Portrait of the artist, maybe even more so than in Ulysses, I read Stephen Hero, an alternate and unpublished version of the Portrait of the artist, and in Stephen hero, more than in the portrait, joyce talks a lot about aquinas specifically, about aesthetics of writing and such. Joyce knew his theology inside out, all knowledge you can get about it is welcome for sure.

>>13941229
his other works are okay but the best James Joyce writings are his letters to his wife

>>13941399
>Striking and Picturesque Delineations of the Grand, Beautiful, Wonderful, and Interesting Scenery Around Loch-Earn
Is this one easy to understand? Any preliminary reading?

>>13941229
I also would not go so far as to say Joyce's work is the best of his generation, he's not. I still consider the second half of the series to be more good, but I'm starting to wonder if this is really where Joyce had his peak of artistic genius. There are many things I find lacking in this book.I will never be able to get over what was lost during so much of his second life. And even now it pains me that so much of it has been lost. I'd much rather that something like "The Dreaming" still existed than not in some form. I will read this book again, but only after much more reading to catch up on the lost stuff.

bump

>>13941229
portrait of the artist is his masterpiece

>>13941415
There are several abridged versions, but you can do fine by reading the Stanford entry on Aquinas. It's very long for an article but much much shorter and easier than the summa

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

>>13941937
Yes. Just jump into it, very it's very short.

>>13942885
>>13941415
don't forget there is also the concise summa, a 400 pages long Summa Theologiae written by Aquinas himself with the most important parts, written for us mere mortals.

>>13942885
>>13944443
Thanks ill check these out.

>>13941229
You can get by with an annotated guidebook or reference work, too. I took a class for fun that just focused on the work, and while I did have the benefit of a professor, reading Portrait and using the two reference works alongside Ulysses made it totally manageable.

I've always felt that the best story in Dubliners is Eveline and its one of my favorite works from Joyce. It kind of saddens me that his work goes in kind of the complete opposite direction afterwards.

>>13941229
How did Joyce become the writer he became anons? How did he practice? What were his habits?

Is Ellman biography on Joyce worth getting? My university doesn’t have it and only has the 2013 one that just came out

>>13947505
>What were his habits?
If your intention is to imitate him, I think you are doing so uselessly.
As an example, I could say that an author reads for 1 hour daily as part of his routine. Knowing that he reads for 1 hour daily isn't enough knowledge to be able to imitate him. You don't know the mental processes going on in his head while he is reading unless he specifically tells the world about it.

>>13947537
No. I just want to learn

Bump

>>13941229
Don't bother with Aquinas as prep for Ulysses. Only really relevant to Portrait, and even then not essential. Also don't bother with Joyce's poetry till you are fascinated by his every word. Read the prose in the order it was published, then go back and read everything else.

>>13947486
The Nausicaa episode of Ulysses is the logical conclusion of Eveline. It isolates the mawkishness of the earlier story and turns it against itself, both retaining and critiquing the easy naturalistic story of a girl stifled by her environment.

>>13950137
That might very well be the case but funnily enough I don’t see Eveline as a naturalistic story but rather wholly expressionist! And not stiffed but by the end of the story she has transcended the text, her place in society and her environment. I would go as far as to say Eveline is one of Joyce's strongest characters.

ive read portrait of the artist as a young man, but i generally am not that well read. will i have much difficulty with Ulysses? i genuinely like joyce and want to read more of him. would there be a better place to start?

>>13951560
I agree that Eveline is a very powerful character, moreso than any other character in Dubliners. I have yet to read his other works, though.
>>13952023
>ive read portrait of the artist as a young man
What did you think of it?
>i generally am not that well read
I'm not very well-read either. I only started reading as a hobby in February. I'm going to say that if I read Dubliners as my first book I definitely wouldn't have appreciated it as much as I do now.
>will i have much difficulty with Ulysses? i genuinely like joyce and want to read more of him. would there be a better place to start?
Read the other posts in this thread. This is a question that has kind of been discussed already.

>>13950117
You have to read the entire summa theologica first, non-negotiable

>>13951560
It takes some pretty wilful counterreading of the narrative to find Eveline to be anything more than paralysed. But you do you, boo.

>>13952873
Disagree. Even Joyce was a partial reader, despite the illusion to the contrary he seeks in SH/P.

>>13953720
I would argue that the moment of "paralysis" was the essence of divine experience. That in that very moment God had answered her prayer.

>>13954290
OK that sounds plausible when isolating this story. But how does it fit in with the collection as a whole, which repeatedly undermines any claim towards transcendence - except, perhaps, at the end of The Dead? It also goes against the materialist rejection of spiritual alleviations that drives Portrait and Ulysses.

>>13954926
At the very least I am glad it sounds plausible but I am in agreement with you when it comes to the rest of the collection. No other story within Dubliners is open enough to support a transcendent reading, which is one of the reasons I like Eveline so much and find it such an anomaly. I wish Joyce would have to continued to write like this but he goes on to write far more structurally engaging texts (hence this thread).

>>13941415
the inclusion of summa theologica without comment is a half-troll. no one besides serious theological scholars (and, even then, those with a specific focus on expounding on it) have read it cover to cover. it's more that you need to have some passing familiarity with his thought and its impact in the world. the anon who said to read the stanford encyclopedia entry is saving you a lot of unnecessary effort.

>“You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.”

What did he mean by this?