/lit/ - Literature

>>4876011
>I had always thought there was a good chance that anyone recommending it must be trolling

That's Finnegans Wake.

>This must be the greatest novel ever written.

Who would've thought it, after all those lists of great novels that put it at the top?

I've never been able to get further than ~100 pages in. Am I a casual?

>>4876912
>That's Finnegans Wake.
even finnegan's wake is really good
>>4876922
nah
it's not for everybody, certainly pretty dense
chapter summaries and maybe a guide would help

Another day another replica Ulysses thread where lit worships a dead hack.

>Write some mundane shit
>throw in big words
>throw in some wild cards
>throw in some twist

It's the G-g-greatest novel of all t-t-time.

>>4876011
>greatest novel ever written

nigga please

>>4877018
Exactly.

So many people are duped by this shit.

I don't Ulysses quite 'pulls it off' as a whole, it ends up feeling a bit mishapen to me. Obviously just my impression, not a real critique and Joyce was still insanely talented.

>>4877045
>I'm to afraid to feel so I'm just going to agree to disagree.

The book is shit, just accept it. Have you own opinion dammit.

>>4877071
There's a bit of a difference between 'shit' and 'a genius didn't quite pull off what is arguably the most ambitious novel ever'

>>4877018
>>4877042
how the fuck are people this dumb about ulysses. have you people even tried to read it? it's not some "lol such randum big words" masturbatory experiment, it's a fucking novel that gets a little weird in like 3 chapters. most of it is no weirder or harder to read than mody dick.

>>4877085
Child, I ripped /lit/ a new asshole last time I dissected an insert from Ulysses. Not particularly in the mood to do it again.

You're a petulant parrot--nothing more. You'll never be anything more than a boring ignorant waste of space who's overly confident and uncritical in his/her opinions.

Good day.

>>4877085
>>4877109

>>4877085
>>4877076

It's not that I didn't read it or didn't understand it. It's stupid. The premise, ideas, concepts, ambition. It's a bunch of bullshit to prove how cool and edgy he is.

If the universe was flat, Joyce would defy the concept of orbit, and move in straight lines around the edges, all with the purpose of being edgy. It might as well be "4chan the novel"

Just look at the man. He is the proto hipster.

>>4877109
im laughing at this post

what are you like, man

>>4877109
So you're just being s contrarian idiot, great. Do something useful and make this into a version of the navy seal copypasta at least, faggot.

>>4877109
is this pasta

>>4877129
i don't even understand how people get these opinions. it's a book full of emotions and reconciliation and empathy and humor. how do you get that it was made to be edgy from that? what novel are you reading?

>Just look at the man. He is the proto hipster.
sorry he needed glasses

Here's the 1967 movie version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F_zwFhjdW8

>>4877166
Look, whoever you are James Cameron, Joyce, whomever I don't care. You can put your own spin on something its not yours and making your own version of it doesn't make you a great writer. It makes you a damned hack. Joyce wrote that trash knowing well of what he was doing and he did it for the recognition. A selfish prick just like Hemingway, only interested in glory and good times.

It's ironic that someone would put their own spin on the Odysseus while being a living breath Achilles.

>>4877317

every instance of the hero's journey in literature must really cheese you off

>>4877109

You can't be this much of a self-aggrandizing pseud.

almostgotme/10

>>4877345
It does and is the reason I have what is probably a 2/10 novel to other ratio.

>hur dur look at this artistic representation of what I'm feeling and feel it with me.

Most writers or at least the famous novelists of the past were miserable cretins trying to express their little sad feelies so that other could empathize in unity rather than do something about it

P-p-poor me. Now heres a novel about how I feel, you all better Identify with it or else those mean scholars who worship literature are going to call you ignorant and mean.

>>4877129
>Just look at the man. He is the proto hipster.
not like he was almost blind or anything!

>>4877410
>incapable of empathy
>incapable of even imagining describing somebody with feelings different to your own
shame that "autistic" is such a meaningless buzzword on this site these days, it seems apt

also, 2/10 novel to other? Do poems and drama not occur to you as being much closer to an "artistic representation of what I'm feeling and feel it with me"?

>>4877590
Stop trying to feel through other people. Feel for yourself and think for yourself.

>>4877577
It has nothing to do with optics.

>>4877590
It's not my fault people are so obsessed with their bad feelings that they need to read about them instead of just fix them. Reading about feeling bad is fucking pathetic. I used to do it to and godamn how awful it was.

>>4877602
>Feel for yourself and think for yourself.
classic ironic imperatives

>>4877606
>just fix them
hahahaha

wow

>>4877602
>It has nothing to do with optics.
What then? His clothing was pretty standard for the time, his face and figure were what he was born with. There is nothing "hipster"-ish about his appearance that he could have intended

>>4877633
You can think and feel. It's called contemplation. Something happens to me and than I think about what happens to me, and than I feel a certain way about it.

And yes, fix them. Stop jerking off with books and live your life. People become so wrapped up in minute shit.

>>4877642
HIS FUCKING PERSONALITY YOU MORON.

Hipster is an identity based on persona, which is modern times is also expressed in taste in style of clothing etc.

>>4877658
so why did you say "Just look at the man"

>>4877663
what is an expression?

>>4877669
lmao

>>4877648
I do live my life
I enjoy lazing around, drinking gin, kicking back w/ friends, listening to stand-up, playing jazz
I also enjoy reading books. I've got time to do more than one thing w/ my life
My life's plenty full enough for me, it's as unremarkable but authentic life as I could hope for. Do you want me to find Jesus or something?

>>4877686
Do you like long walks on the beach? Getting caught in the rain?

>>4877658
Sorry close friend and acquaintance of James Joyce, I suppose that because someone's intelligent, ambitious, and has a sense of humour means that they must be a "proto hipster"

(there's nothing hipsterish, of course, about trying to dismiss one of the most acclaimed and famous authors of the past 100 years in the most obnoxious way possible. that's very individual and mature behaviour.)

>>4877686
>Drinking gin

The plebs will never understand <3

>>4877697
you forgot the piña coladas

>>4877700
I wish tha youth would calm it with their liquor snobbery and accept gin as nectar and ambrosia in bottled form

>>4877663
Ok, so I used an expression. I'll be more literal next time. Examine Joyce's persona.

>>4877686
Is that where you are going to go with this. You contribute nothing to society. You consume. You are a -1.

>>4877699
Are you going to appeal to authority?
>this guy is this guy and you are you therefore you cannot be correct.

>>4877669
>>4877729
samefag

>>4877648
You do know this is literature forum, right? What's a good, non-masturbatory book in your eyes?

>>4877729
The only reason to contribute to society is so that other people can also kick back, relax, and do the things that they enjoy. But seeing as you're so focused on "thinking for myself" and not getting caught up in other peoples' sob stories, I should probably just continue not doing much indefinitely.
What do you do that makes you an individual who, boldly casting off the shackles of empathy and enjoyment, finds TRUE MEANING in the VERY SERIOUS THING called life?

>>4877648

It's funny because thanks to literature I have formed some of the strongest bonds in my life.

>>4877735
>2 people agree
ITS A SAME FAGGGGGGGGG
Yea, no.

>>4877736
Whats your point. Freedom right? I can do whatever I want right?

>>4877741
No. You do for others by continuing societal maintenance. Healthcare, education, governing, neet shit, etc. There are however many jobs that are literally just people expressing their popular opinion and gloating all day. The most infamous example being something like womens studies.

>>4877765
And so have people who all watch reality TV shows. Ba dum tisssssssssssssss.

>>4877829
People who watch reality TV forged the strongest emotional bonds of their lives through literature?

>>4877829

How can you possibly live with yourself?

>>4877833
Did you not understand the technique I was using at all? Are you autistic?

>>4877844
Same questions back at ya' bub

>>4877842
I contribute to society. That's all that matters. Maintain the framework and provide a necessary service. Love your service. We're all indentured.

>>4877846
You are saying that literature helped you form strong bongs. I am telling you that reality tv helps people also form strong bonds. You making such a statement was pointless. People form bonds over commonalities and usury .

Asking "am I a casual?" makes you a pleb. If you don't wanna read Ulysses don't. Shakespeare never read Ulysses. Was he a casual?

>>4877871
EXACTLY.

I mean, thank you. It's so glad to know someone can phrase it so simply. This puts it into perspective.

>>4877121
>Deal with him, Hemingway!

>>4878253
>be small gremlin patrician seeking attention
>hide being big drug depressed friend who poses as a manly man, but writes about men broken by love

Hemingway and Joyce were two betas who got into writing. One obsessed with language and the other love.

>>4878269
That got sad.

>>4876011

Have fun wasting your life.

>“To call it my favorite novel is, I see, shame-fully inept. It is the work I have to measure myself hopelessly against each time I sit down to write fiction.”

Those words are Anthony Burgess’s on Ulysses. I have never read Ulysses, but plan on doing it soon. I really hope that the work would be a truly feast of humanity, the quality that its main admires have mostly remembered (along with the language, but I really don’t think that in the realm of language any writer in any language can really be greater than Shakespeare). I really want to gain new perceptions on how to mold and sculpt literary characters. I hope that Ulysses can be one of my main teachers.

Since Anthony Burgess loves this work so much it really must be outstanding. Burgess wrote the novel that, for personal reasons, it’s my favorite one: “Nothing Like the Sun”. To me War and Peace is the greatest of all novels, and I really don’t see it being dethroned by other work. But I simply love “Nothing Like the Sun” with all my heart, and identify myself almost completely with the main character, with its resignation and acceptance of life and its flaws.

I am also planning to read In Search of Lost Time, and hoping that it, too, would be even greater than its fame.

>>4881247
>along with the language, but I really don’t think that in the realm of language any writer in any language can really be greater than Shakespeare

Whether or not Joyce's language is on par with Shakespeare's is rather irrelevant, as any writer attempting to reach that level will rarely succeed.
That said, what makes Joyce such a joy to read is often the language. One of my favourite episodes is Sirens, where he still allows for narrative development adjacent to The Odyssey, but also creates a literal fugue out of language; words become melodic motifs through their audible qualities such as rhythm, tone and texture, which are then structured in such a way to build tension and allow for release, and the conclusion of the episode resolves itself on a perfect cadence of a single, stressed word: done.

>>4876922
No, you just know how to use your time better than reading a pointless piece of shit that is praised purely on the amount of metaphors and languages joyce could put into one book without progressing the plot at all.

What happened to simply enjoying a book then setting it down and masturbating while absorbing Japanese anime

>>4877042

>Special Anniversary Edition- Only $10.00

Is anyone seriously going to be enticed into buying Infinite Jest based on the price alone? Are there people out there who desperately want to read Infinite Jest but can't afford a $20.00 book (and for some reason can't get library membership either)?

>>4882349
sort of? i mean imagine you are sort of an on and off reader who had heard a lot of hype about infinite jest but hadn't gone out to get the book. then imagine you are at the bookstore and you see the new special anniversary edition. you might think now was the time to buy it, and go ahead and buy it

>>4881507
Sounds like you read gay-ass books about lasers and elves.