/lit/ - Literature

It moves in a roughly chronological fashion. Joyce just doesn't say "Then I went to school," "then I went to get a hooker," simply jumps right to what's happening.

>>938530
and that is why nobody reads him. at all. Far more people talk about James Joyce than have ever made it through any one of his written works.

>>938549
lolololol

Dubliners is one of the most widely read story collections of any 20th century English-language writer.

This just lasts for the part about his childhood.

I also had trouble at first, but this is how Joyce renders a child-like thought process.

>>938549

Compared to Ulysses (had to look up the damn spelling) and Finnegan's, reading Portrait is like a walk in the park where lithe young women are doing yoga. Still worth your while, maybe.

>>938565
Yeah, I've finished Portrait. I hated it. I severely dislike James Joyce, although I understand perfectly why he wrote in such an obtuse manner. I also don't like deconstructionists, for what it's worth.

Clarity, please.

>>938555
No, it isn't.

>>938576
lololololol

Yes it is.

I'm James Joyce and I hate the English for what they've done to the Irish, so fuck making sense.

>>938555
Nobody except college students read short stories. It's all about the nonfiction, bitches.

The first line should have tipped you off that it would be a tough read. Keep going, it gets easier as Stephen gets older.

>>938590
Fuck you, I'm James Joyce and I can't see shit!

"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moo-cow coming down along the road and this moo-cow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo."

>>938591
>>938591
>>938591

>>938690
How could someone dislike that?

>>938591

I read this to impress a girl. I also read "DaVinci Code" to impress her. Makes no sense, right?

Slow witted philistines.

James Joyce is overrated garbage.

I've started this book too. Good shit.

If you understand the history of English prose style, you will enjoy more fully what Joyce is doing. The book came out ~1915, so while the narrative techniques seem dated by today's standards, they were revolutionary when the book was first published. Add to the fact that the narrative is superb outside of these formal inventions, and you have a work of high genius.

Joyce is also the only author of the 20th century to have everyone of his prose works considered absolute masterpieces (Dubliners, Portrait, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake)

>>938805
>prose works considered absolute masterpieces

by whom? certainly not the general public.

>>938824

The "general public" generally doesn't know shit.

>>938860
they know about James Joyce. They know how shit he is.

>>938824
The general public likes thing like Transformers. The general public is a bunch of useless, easily-satisfied lumps of meat.

>>938907
The general public consumes and pays the bills.

You, and James Joyce can go suck each other off and then sit in the dark, too poor to afford toothpaste or your electricity bill.

>>938913

>>938913

Don't be angry. It's called the difference between "high" and "low" culture. We need both to move along.

>>938932

>high and low culture
>posting on 4chan, the water mark for low culture

lol

This is like one better than the hipsters that read Camus in Starbucks and turn up their noses at the common, unlettered folks

>>938932
>implying James Joyce is high culture.
>an arse full of farts

>>938932
the thing is that i doubt you have the standing to talk about high and low culture b/c you're probably middlebrow as fuck

>>938963

I'll take culture where I can get it, man.

>>938966
>>938965
>>938963

>My Visage When >>938932 was Fucking Told.

>>938972
>My visage when your visage

>>938966

Doesn't seem that I claimed any culture. I'm as plebeian as they come, thanks for noticing.

>>938805

Considered a masterpieces by who? Elitist scholars and pseudo intellectuals who never even read him?

I swear people only consider Joyce brilliant because he makes no fucking sense what so ever. I call it the Joyce effect. Whenever there is a piece of fiction or art that is completely nonsensical and utter crap, people will say it's a masterpiece only to inflate their own ego and make them selves look like they are on another level of understanding.

"Oh sure, I make total sense of this inane gribble, in fact I think it's brilliant. You would like it to if you were as smart as me".

Joyce is crap. People need to stop reading him and just admit that he is of no value and let him fall into obscurity. He tried some new stuff and can be given credit for being experimental but he failed miserable. Get over it.

>>939046

Let people read what they want. No one is coming around and knocking the Dan Brown out of your hands, right?

>>939074

>Let people read what they want.

Tell that to the people making I HAET TWILIGHT threads

>>939081

I DO tell them that, to no avail Feels bad, man.

>>939081
twilight hate is justified.

>>939074
>he actually thinks he can troll us by juxtaposing james joyce and dan brown, as if anyone who does not like joyce must, of course, ardently read brown.

>>939106

This whole thing is trolling. There's a reason people still read Joyce, and will keep reading him: Because he wore a bad-ass eyepatch. Also, Brown is awesome. I haven't seen any movies based on Finnegan's Wake, and at least two based on Brown's books.

>>939074

Actually I don't care for Dan Brown, however at least it makes sense and no one is claiming it to be some literary master piece.

>>939124
>implying sucess is measured by the amount of movies they make off your books

>>939138
Philip K Dick is the world's greatest sci-fi writer!

>>939138
>he thinks he's going to get away with calling someone out on an ambiguously defined term like success without defining his own conception of success.

In terms of financial success? Yeah, I think success is measured, in part, by the amount of movies they make off of your books in this day and age.

>>939046
You not being able to understand Joyce and no-one being able to understand Joyce are not the same.

You are a child with the reading level of an eighth grader. No one expects you to read, understand, or appreciate Joyce.

>>939138

Then how else do we measure success? Longevity? Elitist sentiment? How much money a book earns is as reasonable a standard as any.

Not trolling, just talking, cuz I have nothing else to do. /lit/ cats are cool cats.

>>939159
>he doesn't enjoy Joyce
>he has an 8th grade reading level

Oh, wow

Wow. Can't believe people don't recognize what Joyce was doing with his writing style.
The whole point of the lack of chronology is to reflect the nature of memory. You don't think in a series of "And then I was..." You _speak_ about the remembrance in that way. Dedalus' continuing sophistication in recalling the events in his life using words is a way of showing the way that language alters memory as well as introspection. The whole point of Portrait's style is to show how the "Artist" both consciously and subconsciously alters his craft of words (or really any craft; to use a broader term, alters his senses which are the source of inspiration for his craft) in both an aesthetic and intellectual sense, and the divisions between all of these ways of doing so.
I didn't like it much either. But to say it's meaningless is nothing less than ignorant. Joyce himself collaborated on essays and works where he explained the meanings, and many other authors in a wide variety of liberal arts have celebrated his works, not for their value as entertaining stories, but as benchmarks in literary works. If Joyce hadn't written in the way he did, somebody else would have, or at least so I hope, because he opened up a world of stylistic nuance that hadn't existed yet.

>>939165
measure it by how many people are reading it decades later
also this >>939150, if dan brown is successful from having two books adapted into film, PKD is a god

As far as meaning in Joyce goes...

Read a paragraph of Finnegan's Wake. Actually READ it and try to comprehend it. Don't just skim over the words and say to yourself "What a load of shit." Take your time with it and think about why each word (nonce or otherwise) is used and you'll see there is sense to be made of Joyce. A paragraph of Finnegan's Wake is richer in meaning than most novels.

>>939178
If you have to collaborate on essays to EXPLAIN THE MEANINGS of your novel, you are one fucking shitty novelist.

>>939193
A) It wasn't a matter of "have to."
B) You are discounting a good 3/4ths of literature.

>>939193
too DEEP for ya?

>>939191

Then by readership decades later, Joyce is doing pretty well (if, at least, we count the people who SAY they've read him). Seriously, there are really only a handful of books that last more a decade, in terms of readership, when we consider how many people in total have ever been published.

He's just fucking the farts out of your brain, OP.

>>939203

Or, too DERP for ya?

Couldn't resist...

>>939206
i never said anything about joyce

>>939124
Jealous that a great deal of the best authors were Irish?

>>939219

Point taken.

>>939223

Actually, yes. Is it the potatoes?

>>939202
I'm discounting 3/4s of literature? Because I have a problem with authors footnoting and explaining how precocious and special they are after the fact?

Novels should and must stand alone. You don't get, like JK Rowling, to declare Dumbledore a homosexual at a press conference after you've already published the final volume in a series.

If you can't write a book and let it sink or swim, I won't like your book very much.

wow, I expected there to be a few idiots/trolls in this thread, but it seems that people who appreciate joyce are in the minority here. proves once again that /lit/ is housed with illiterates who assume a work is bad because they haven't read it or can't understand it or take zero time to even comprehend the work. fits with a larger trend on this board, which is IF I DONT UNDERSTAND PPL WHO DO MUST BE ELITEST THEREFORE BAD. engaging in the most simplistic, even superstitions degradation of a work that you don't like or can't understand or both.

>>939175
That poster has an 8th grade reading level because he says, "he makes no fucking sense what so ever. I call it the Joyce effect. Whenever there is a piece of fiction or art that is completely nonsensical and utter crap, people will say it's a masterpiece only to inflate their own ego and make them selves look like they are on another level of understanding."

That is ignorance, idiocy, and a reflection of a child's mental processes. "I can't understand something! It must mean no one else is able to! They're trying to trick me! The emperor has no clothes!"

The poster didn't say he didn't enjoy Joyce. He said Joyce is incomprehensible and part of an elitist plot for people who act superior. He's wrong. He's dumb. He shouldn't post here any more.

>>939249

Man, I like Joyce too, but that's harsh, and definitely won't make peeps want to try some of that bad-ass, whisky-drinking, dirty-letter-writing dude out.

>>939159


LMAO it took Campbell years to decipher Finnegans Wake and a lot of scholars think even he got it wrong; so don't act like it's some casual read even for a PhD. Good luck reading JJ without a reader's guide. If you enjoy spending countless days just trying to figure out what the hell someone is saying then have at it. There are to many books I haven't read yet to do that. No book is worth such investment.

Also I am certain that not one single person on this board has read FW from beginning to end. Let alone the several re-readings that are required to actually understand it.

Unless someone offers their own detailed analysis and interpretation of a JJ book, I have no reason to assume they even read it. I had countless debates with people who claim he is someone kind of genius but never heard anyone tell me when any of his stuff means. At least not anything that would demonstrate they read it i.e. something that wasn't copy/pasted off wiki.

>>939339
Here, interpret this:

23UIBT9OWERGOUISDGBOA FGPAUB G9348H T

>>939339
Yep, this.

>>939339
If you think the point of reading any book, especially Finnegans Wake, is to be able to right a concise paragraph-long summary of the plot when you're finished, you're doing it wrong.

>>939351
RIA EHT NI CISUM SYAWLA S'EREHT DNA

GNOS YTTERP A GNIS SDRIB

EHT MORF ER'EW EREHW

>>939356
Uhhh actually, yeah, I think the point of reading a piece of literature is to be able to coherently sum up its plot. It's not the only point, but if you can't tell me in one paragraph what went down, that's not literature.

>>939339
FW is pretty much a masterpiece of obscurity. The thread was originally on Portrait, which we read in fucking 11th grade with explanations of the Latin phrases and all that, and I recently re-read at 25 and understood fairly well if my explanation of chronology and writing style hold up to scrutiny (I think they do.)
And to the moron saying "Novels should stand on their own," You are completely missing the point I'm making. They do stand on their own. That people offer their own interpretations to novels, and do so in a setting that is both coherent, arguable, and compelling, is why literary essays exist. Joyce, and almost every single famous novelist you could possibly name, had articles, essays, notes, or other works written by other literary critics or authors which offered insights into their books or stories. It's a mainstay of literature, and has been for centuries. You're a dick.

>>939339

Nah, Dubliners and Portrait are fine, too, and don't require the investment of FW (which I have not read, ok?).

>>939375

If you can't sum up FW in a paragraph, then you're doing it wrong. Or maybe you're doing it right. That's the beauty of it.

>>939375
What? You're starting to sound like an idiot, dude. Twentieth century writing, modernism and postmodernism in particular, turned away from people being able to describe their novels in a paragraph. Try describing a Beckett novel, I dare you. This doesn't mean all modernism is shitty literature, which your post pretty much says. Its ridiculous.

>>939356
>right a concise paragraph-long summary
This is a Joycean pun isn't it, you sly dog?

Well, this went a little farther than planned..

Anyways, I have this bohemian shit friend who buys a non-running Volkswagen because it's cool, doesn't brush her hair or shave, refuses shoes because people in third world countries don't have them, and fucking loves James Joyce. And after starting to read A Portrait, I can see she loves him because it's another hip thing to do..

>>939377
Yes, but in the case of James Joyce, I need those articles and interpretations to even comprehend most of his writing.

As >>939339 stated, good luck getting through most of JJ's oeuvre without a reader's guide. You had a teacher whose job was to explain the significance and give you nice tidy plot summaries along the way. Don't retroactively rewrite your experience of reading JJ to reflect better on yourself. You would have been just as fucking lost as OP is if you had been on your own.

I don't need any critical analysis of Philip K Dick. He was a competent author who layered his novels so that they could be enjoyed on a base level by a wide swathe of the reading public. If you wished to delve further into the themes opened up by _Do Androids Dream..._, you were welcome to, but the book was just as satisfying without.

I enjoy his books on their own. The interpretations offered by literary essayists? They ADD to my enjoyment. They're not necessary for it.

I don't think I missed your point. I think you're just buying into the massive amount of hype and circle jerking around this dude. Oh well.

>>939375
>the point of reading a piece of literature is to be able to coherently sum up its plot.
No. If that were the case, the back cover of a book would be everything you need - what's the point of the full novel if five sentences on a book jacket can sum up the plot for you?

>>939249

You do know that basically no one in his time (including literary scholars) understood a word of what FW meant and that even his closest friends chastised him for writing an incomprehensible book.

H.G. Wells wrote a huge letter blasting Joyce for FW, is Wells a philistine?

And even if it's understood, by what law does one have to like it? Again I have zero doubt that no one on 4chan has ever even read it, so this whole conversation is moot.

James Joyce is an all right writer. Some of his stuff (namely, Dubliners and A Portrait) are strange and dare I say slightly avant-garde, however they're not at all unreadable. A little hard to follow, but kind of interesting. Joyce is definitely overrated, but I don't see how anyone can say he has no literary merit at all.

>>939426
What the hell is hip about James Joyce? Seriously, I can't think of any reason James fucking Joyce would ever be hip to anyone except maybe 1920s modernists. Wtf?

>>939432
No, I did not say that was the sole defining point of literature. I said it was one of the points defining points. If your plot is incomprehensible, you've written something, but I don't consider it literature.

>>939435
No one said you have to like it. Go for it.

The Joyce fans in this thread are making fun of people who say 1) Joyce love is an elitist plot to pull the wool over the eyes of readers without college degrees 2) No one actually understand Joyce's writing 3) Joyce's writing (pieces of Portrait, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake) is utter crap because there isn't a linear plot.

>>939432
>what's the point of the full novel if five sentences on a book jacket can sum up the plot for you?
Honestly? There's nothing in most books that you can't get from reading their Wikipedia entry. There is no point really.

She thinks James Joyce is cool to read specifically because no one she knows has read him and if they had they probably don't "understand it like she does"

she's kind of a twat.

>>939377
>And to the moron saying "Novels should stand on their own," You are completely missing the point I'm making. That people offer their own interpretations to novels, and do so in a setting that is both coherent, arguable, and compelling, is why literary essays exist.

What the fuck? I think you missed my point. We AREN'T talking about literary essays. We're talking about an example that you yourself gave me: James Joyce collaborated on essays to EXPLAIN THE MEANING OF HIS NOVELS.

This is not other people offering their own interpretations of JJ's novel. This is about JJ offering us his own interpretation of his novel so that people can even understand what the fuck his intention was.

His novels do not stand alone when he has to explain them after the fact.

Do you understand what I'm getting at now?

I've been arguing about Joyce's importance as a writer. I personally don't like his books, and already said so. Portrait is fairly dull, Dubliners has a few good moments here and there, FW is literature trolling that I'll freely admit I didn't even get halfway through, and Ulysses is a clusterfuck of linguistic analysis. But the guy was a genius. I don't dispute that and the ways that he stylistically altered literature is his legacy. Almost all of the Modernists and Post-Modernists people cream their jeans over in this board loved Joyce and what he did as a pioneer of language and form.
He was a literary genius. He just isn't one I personally enjoy reading. People (possibly I should use the word children?) here can't seem to differentiate between "I like this," and "This is great." There is a difference.

>>939435
>H.G. Wells wrote a huge letter blasting Joyce for FW
And not a single fuck was given that day.

Joyce once said, "All I ask of my reader is that he devote his life to reading my work." He meant Finnegans Wake to be a repository of all the world's information. It was a midden - a trash heap - for anything and everything this universe had to offer. Any idea, any allusion, any myth, any word from any language, he threw it on top of the pile so that literary archaeologists would be able to go back through with a fine comb and reconstruct the world as Joyce presented it.

Joyce said that if the universe were destroyed and only Finnegans Wake survived, everything could be rebuilt from the contents of the book. He wasn't writing a grocery store novel for people to rip through in an afternoon. He was preserving Ireland, world literature, philosophy, and the entire human race in only 700 pages for future generations.

>>939498
And he failed.

>>939495
>People (possibly I should use the word children?) here can't seem to differentiate between "I like this," and "This is great." There is a difference.

Just because you make that distinction doesn't mean I have to make that distinction. Don't force your values upon me. If I don't enjoy reading it, it has absolutely zero value for me as a piece of literature.

>>939495
How can you stylistically alter anything when no one is even reading your fucking books?

You guys seem to give a lot of weight to this boy, but you can't be influenced by something you can't even sit through.

>>939517
Hell, even Hemingway said that anyone who wants to be a writer must read Ulysses. You're on the wrong side of literary history, friend.

>>939498
You guys can talk to me all night about what he was trying to do with Finnegan's Wake, but you can't even finish the book. JJ is a failure of a novelist. He's a great provocateur. That doesn't make him a genius. It makes him a troll.

>>939498

Well then that's the problem. He tried to accomplish to much, and he failed miserably.

>>939529
>implying that there's a difference between a great writer and a great troll...

>>939528
Hemingway wrote nothing like James Joyce. He can talk and talk and talk and talk all day about how Ulysses is the holy grail of literature, but look at how Hemingway writes. He writes clearly and concisely. He is James Joyce's polar opposite. I enjoy Hemingway's books, but I don't agree with his assertion that Ulysses is necessary for a writer to read.

Fuck literary history. So Hemingway says I should like it and therefore I should change my opinion? You realize that you sound exactly like the kind of person we've been lambasting all night here, right? The kind of person who circlejerks over James Joyce because everyone else is circlejerking over it.

>>939529
>JJ is a failure of a novelist.
If you mean "novel" like "page turner from the grocery store that anyone with a spare half hour and a ninth-grade education can read without a dictionary" then yes, you are right.

He wasn't trying to write the type of book you are interested in reading. That's ok. Don't let it upset you. He was preserving all of human history. He claimed that Dublin could be rebuilt brick-by-brick from Ulysses.

You want something you can read with your hand in your pants and the TV on in the background.

>>939555
Nope. I want something I can read without a reader's guide.

so guys, what book of Joyce's should I read first?

>>939549
Hemingway saw the value of Joyce's work and was heavily influenced by him. You haven't yet understood that there is more to a book than the Spark Notes summary - Hemingway knew that there was.

You don't seem to be interested in literature. You are interested in pew-pew lasers and space ships and spies and conspiracies in the Vatican. You aren't Joyce's audience. He wasn't writing for you.

>>939565
Finnegan's Wake

>>939466

Plots and themes are not the only reason to read. The author's way with language can't be summed up in a paragraph, and can't be copied from a wikipedia entry. There's a reason that so many great books make shitty movies. It's because what makes the books great is the way the language is used. Not the plot.

That said, I've never read anything by James Joyce. I'm just speaking about literature in general.

>>939565
Dubliners. It's a book of short stories. If you like it, go on to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

>>939566

Actually, I'm pretty sure ALL OF THOSE THINGS are in FW. Weird, huh?

>>939566
You're really full of talk. But I know that you got through Ulysses only with the help of a reader's guide or a professor who themselves got through it only with a reader's guide.

I don't like to suffer through my entertainment. I turn off bad movies that drag, and I put away James Joyce's books. You do. That's cool, man. Keep on rocking in the free world.

>>939549
>Hemingway wrote nothing like James Joyce. He is James Joyce's polar opposite.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. Even a guy like Hemingway, who refused to tolerate bull-shit, who hated every comma, who took a red pen to every unnecessary word, appreciated the timelessness and mastery of Joyce's writing. If you really love literature, you ought to give Joyce a try. There's something special there that no other writer has captured before or since.

>>939528

Ya, just think there was once a time where people wrote books with out knowing what Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk meant. I wonder how War and Peace was even written.

>>939596
How many people can you have a nice conversation with about a work of Hemingway's?

How many people can you have a nice conversation with about James Joyce's works?

That number will always skew heavily towards Hemingway. Hemingway was accessible. I don't believe in the reader suffering for the sake of the artists' pretensions. I meet the artist halfway.

>>939591
Yes, I did use reader's guides and the help of my professors. I did the same when I read the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Greek plays, the Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Beowulf, the Poem of the Cid, the Song of Roland, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Don Quijote, Paradise Lost, etc.

I'm not sure I see the problem here...

>>939596

>You really ought to give Joyce a try.

I already have, man. I've read through Ulysses and Portrait. I hated both books. In both cases, I was constantly referring to the footnotes to elucidate tiny minutiae. It was like reading a textbook. Fuck that.

>>939610

You're arguing with an intellectually lazy asshole. He just doesn't want to think when he reads.

a) if you can't write so that the average person can understand you, you're a shit writer
b) if you can write so that the average person can understand you, but you choose not to, you're a shit person

>>939603
The thunder words are from Finnegans Wake, not Ulysses, buddy.

>>939610
>I did the same when I read the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Greek plays, the Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Beowulf, the Poem of the Cid, the Song of Roland, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Don Quijote, Paradise Lost, etc.

Ah. What period was James Joyce writing in?

James Joyce is the only writer on your list to write in modern English. Almost every other one you've listed, you almost certainly read in modern translation. That's quite different.

Are you seriously comparing the Odyssey written by some dude we don't even know existed named Homer to James Joyce, writing in the early 1900's?

ITT: Recent high school grads who think they know literature.

>>939566
>>You don't seem to be interested in literature.

Right, so someone can read, understand and enjoy every literary book ever written but if they don't like Joyce they don't like literature. . .

This is why I hate Joyce. He is pushed on me by his cult followers who never read him. Even if they say they don't they do setting an unjustifiable test that says if you don't like Joyce:

>>You don't seem to be interested in literature.

Honestly, blow me. Reading defines me as a human being, I don't need to hear this crap.

>>939644
>ITT: /lit/

>>939642
>James Joyce is the only writer on your list to write in modern English. Almost every other one you've listed, you almost certainly read in modern translation. That's quite different.
Cool beans, so when is the English translation of Joyce coming out?

>>939647

>Honestly, blow me. Reading defines me as a human being, I don't need to hear this crap.

Then go, the only person you're making angry is yourself.

>>939660
I'm working on it as we speak.

Here's the first paragraph of A Portrait:

I'm James Joyce and I'm a writer who is purposely inaccessible. I would write coherent novels, but I'm terrified of, you know, being judged on the same plane as my competition. If they can't understand me, they can't criticize me, right?

>>939642
>Are you seriously comparing the Odyssey written by some dude we don't even know existed named Homer to James Joyce, writing in the early 1900's?
Yes. Joyce was writing stories meant to be remembered, studied, and loved for thousands of years into the future. He wasn't writing for a pay check.

>>939642

If Homer didn't exist then how did he write the Odyssey?

>>939683
The epic ballads attributed to Homer were the very definition of "writing for a pay check." They were popular war stories meant to be consumed by the masses. They were sung by the fireside to a wide audience.

How many people have read Finnegan's Wake all the way through?

>>939675
Do you really think this guy gave a shit about criticism? He defines Haters Gonna Hate.

>>939687
Homer (Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος, Hómēros) is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. The ancient Greeks generally believed that Homer was an historical individual, but most scholars are skeptical: no reliable biographical information has been handed down from classical antiquity,[1] and the poems themselves seem to represent the culmination of many centuries of oral story-telling and a well-developed formulaic system of poetic composition. According to Martin West, "Homer" is "not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name."[2]

Homer is a placeholder for a collective work. Oral ballads are collaborative by nature, being passed down through the generations and transmutable.

>>939610

I could read all those with out a guide or a pocket professor. It would take me a bit longer but it wouldn't be a major problem, in fact it would be fun. Maybe Don Quijote would be a challenge but Paradise Lost and Shakespeare would be easy. Plus both are so ingrained in our culture that you should already have a more than basic understanding of both before you read it.

As for reading FW without a guide. . . No thank you. I wouldn't read it even with a guide. FW is just painful. I don't care if Joyce was a genius, history has produced a plethora of genius, I'm not going to punish myself for no other reason then to acknowledge how clever he was. I need to be getting something out of it or else it is an epic waste of time.

>>939693
>The Iliad and Odyssey were the very definition of "writing for a pay check."

>>939696
Agree 100%.

>>939701

So were they all blind, too?

>>939709
You should take notice of the scare quotes I place around the phrase, and the ensuing explanation. :)

>>939714


One time I got into a fight with Joyce. I almost had him, until he pulled out Ulysses in the left hand and FW in the right hand and bludgeoned me half to death. Shit was cash.

>>939721
The great Greek stories are composed of layers upon layers of allusions, myths, tricks of language (hexameters, anyone?), and literary sleight of hand to make everything fit into an idealized model.

Remind you of anything Joycean?

>>939636

I know, I was assuming he meant we had to read Joyce as a whole. Plus it would take me an hour to quote his 1,000 + word sentences at the end of Ulysses to prove my point of how ridiculous this notion that we have to read Joyce to [insert pompous allegation].

>>939765
You obviously just don't get it. Not a big deal. Not everyone can be smart.

>>939765
It doesn't hurt to be well-read if you want to write well and create something novel.

If instead you want to write derivative bullshit about wizards or post-apocalyptic teenagers, that's cool too.

>>939764
The great Greek stories are composed of layers upon layers of allusions, myths, tricks of language (hexameters, anyone?), and literary sleight of hand to make everything fit into an idealized model.

They're also entertaining to listen to, and easy to follow.

So, no, it doesn't remind me Joyce at all.

>>939797
I want to write something that has a snowball's chance in hell of being widely read. I think I'd better avoid James Joyce and read Cormac McCarthy, instead. I hear they're making a movie out of Blood Meridian, now.

Any word on that adaptation of Finnegan's Wake?

>>939797
>>Implying once again that everyone who doesn't like Joyce doesn't read and enjoy the rest of the literary cannon.

>>939820
ho ho ho you funny guy, I kill you last.

>>939820

Since when does the quality of the book have to do with whether or not they're making a movie out of it?

>>939820
Guys, guys. Joyce was an academic. His books are studied by academics. Unless any of you geniuses have PhDs in Modern Languages, none of you have a "snowball's chance in hell" of writing like Joyce, or of layering your writing with as many allusions.

Don't flatter yourself.

>>939800
You're reading a nicely translated, made for modern-day readers edition of those works.

In actual Greek, everything is messed up. Words are strewn seemingly randomly throughout a sentence - with inflection you can parse meaning, but it's a struggle, even for a native speaker of Ancient Greek. No one actually spoke that way. In place of adjectives or common nouns, the writer(s) substituted the names of Greek Gods or other mythological characters which stood for well known ideas, themes or illusions. Unless you're extremely well versed in Greek myth, history, and literature, you'll have no idea what's going on.

This is what Joyce was going for.

Modern translators gloss all this over so you can have your "entertaining to listen to, and easy to follow" book.

>>939853
>implying Joyce had a PhD in modern languages
No, bro, no.

>>939853
>Joyce was an academic.
So basically a waste of air, space, and money.

>>939856
So you've read the Iliad and the Odyssey in its original format, then? How are you able to tell me how confusing it is to read in the native tongue, when you yourself cannot speak the native fucking tongue. All you do is tell me what other people have told you. You yourself have no engagement with the original material. It's been mediated to you.

Perhaps I'll enjoy Finnegan's Wake in 3000 years when it comes out in a digestible translation.

>implying anyone will give a fuck about Joyce.

>>939875

And he still wrote better than Dan Brown. Imagine that!

Lot of angry people here. We should all meet tomorrow night and do this again.

>>939905
Keep knocking over that straw man in the hopes that you can somehow magically affiliate us with Dan Brown.

>>939914
I mad, man. I mad. Fuck James Joyce.

>>939915

No magic needed. You are damned with your own words!

"James Joyce said he wanted to encapsulate Ireland and the world..."

"James Joyce wrote collaborative essays to explain the meanings..."

"Hemingway said Ulysses was necessary for all writers to read..."

Not a single piece of evidence can be held up by the defenders of James Joyce's works that come personally from them. They spout the reasons given to them by the literary critics. They spout the reasons given to them by their reader's guides, their professors, their favorite writers. You eagerly lap it up so that you can join the club.

You have been indoctrinated into liking a piece of shit. I'm sorry.

It is possible to reverse the effects of brainwashing. Have hope!

>>939891
>How are you able to tell me how confusing it is to read in the native tongue
It was part of Greek style. It's also done in Latin. All metered poetry in highly-inflected languages plays with word order.

No, I haven't read the Iliad or Odyssey in Greek. Nor have I read Beowulf in its original language, or the Cid, or Roland. I trust people who have devoted their lives to studying those works to define the context and fill me in on the details. A half-hour with Wikipedia won't be able to do what a lifetime of experience will.

Joyce said, "All I ask of my reader is that he devote his life to studying my work." He meant it. He had a message embedded in his writing that must be teased out. In Finnegans Wake he writes about a "crossmess parzle" - that's what FW is. It's a crossword puzzle mixed with a Christmas parcel all messed up together. If you don't enjoy crossword puzzles, you don't get the reward.

>>939944
What reward? James Joyce's nuts in your mouth?

>>939936

Sounds like a Dan Brown argument. The work is unassailable, so you mock the readers?

>>939944
What reward? James Joyce's nuts in your mouth?

>>939944
"If you don't enjoy crossword puzzles, you don't get the reward...."

And there we go again. Another example of a defender of Joyce using some nebulous concept like "reward" to justify the effort involved.

>>939944
WHAT REWARD? JAMES JOYCE'S NUTS IN YOUR MOUTH?

>>939970

If you post once more you get a reward, indeed.

>>939969

>implying literature doesn't offer nebulous rewards to begin with.

>>939977
nebulous
nebular
nebula

>>939972
I'm out of that cat's face

>>939980

Sad. It was getting kind of Joycean.

>>939995

>>940009
I move that we archive this shit now.

>>940009

FUCK.

>>940012
Seriously. This is actually one of the best threads I've ever read on 4chan that wasn't obviously made with the intention of being "epic" or something stupid.

>>940024
That's because you've only been here since the summer invasion began. Back when kids actually went to school we had real discussions pretty often.

you know that part where we say don't feed the troll? yeah, don't feed the troll.

>>939628
>a) if you can't write so that the average person can understand you, you're a shit writer
>b) if you can write so that the average person can understand you, but you choose not to, you're a shit person

You either agree with this or you don't. I think it sums up the thread well.

If you agree, you're a writer. You have an interest in reaching as many people as you possibly can.

If you disagree, you're an academic, happy to stay cloistered in the ivory tower. You are quite satisfied if what you say is only heard by 20 other specialists scattered in departments around the world who share your own narrow interest.

>>940024

This was a good thread? It was basically just
>James Joyce
>He's terrible because nobody can understand him
>Stupid Dan Brown lover
>Pretentious hipster
>implying implying implying herp derp de do

>>940068
The average person in the United States reads at an 8th grade reading level. You really think that anyone authoring anything more complicated is not actually a writer but instead an academic interested only in being read by 20 people scattered in various departments throughout the world?

>>940068
except

a) the average person is stupid
b) no

people don't write things just so the average reader can read it they write things because they can write things. i've never read joyce and i know little about him but what you just said is complete fucking rubbish. i bet you wouldn't even understand high school level stuff, does that mean it's useless and the author is a hack? no it means you the reader are a hack for caring that you don't understand it.

However you feel about Ulysses, The Dead is the most moving, heartfelt short story in the English language. It is also "accessible," imo

>>940098
You're lazy. You don't want to do the work necessary to make your ideas accessible. An 8th grade reading level is more than sufficient to explain almost anything I could want to explain.

It is far more challenging to write the article for Nuclear Fission on http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page than it is to write the article for regular wikipedia, coming from the mindset of a physicist. It forces them to step outside of the esoteric lingo used in their closed-off field.

>>939610
and I also use reading guides (well, http://pynchonwiki.com/)) when reading books like Gravity's Rainbow. Surprise, another highly praised book written in modern English that requires a fair bit of work on the reader's part.

funny as hell too

>>940114

>anti-intellectualism

>Amerifag detected

>>940122
>intellectualism

>Amerifag detected

>>940114
>An 8th grade reading level is more than sufficient to explain almost anything I could want to explain.
You are an 8th grader. That is why everything you could want to explain can be explained with 8th grade language.

Adults, however, will continue to use the language of adults. Someday you will graduate high-school and understand this.

I have read Ulysses.

Every goddamn word.

It was a damn great book.

That is all.

>>940146
>my face when I'm an editor of a literary criticism journal, and you're not

>>940159
ZWG doesn't count, bro. Neither does your high-school newspaper's literary supplement.

>>940177
>literary criticism
>you cite ZWG

wat?

Wow, sure is full of cloistered intellectualfags in here.

>>940159

>my face when you lie on 4chan and I don't

And if you really are what you claim to be, goddamn, that must be the shittiest journal on earth.

>>940201
It's shitty like all academic journals are shitty. It's for cloistered academic circlejerks that people like you like.

None of it matters. But I pull a nice pay cheque from it, and I enjoy reading the unsolicited poetry submissions from across the country. Great fun.

>>940216
>I pull a nice pay cheque from it
This is how I know you're lying. No one makes a nice pay cheque by being an editor at an academic literary criticism journal.

>>940225
Managing Editors do. Our Head eds, Reviews, and Poetry are all volunteers from the upper echelons of the department.

Anything else? :)

>>940114
i have never heared a physics prof use 'esoteric lingo' to explain fission. is 'esoteric lingo' just words you dont understand?

>>940232
Just look at this guy.

I'm reading Dubliners. Some of the stories are really good. A few of them suck, a note even said Joyce wanted to revise one of them.

I read portrait of the artist. I really liked it because I grew up in a strict religious household and was an introvert. Sometimes it was a little confusing trying to figure out how old he was in a scene. But Joyce knows how to do atmosphere well.

I could not make it through Ulysses. I'm sure you know the chapter I stopped on. I was looking forward to meeting Bloom too. I'm not sure what this says about Joyce's quality as a writer.

Finnegan's Wake: lol Large book of prose poetry. I like turning to random pages in it.

>>940232
And while they don't "make a nice pay cheque" by being an editor, they're compensated for their volunteering by being given relief from teaching classes. They draw a very comfortable tenured professor's salary, but they don't have to teach. So, yeah, in a way you do make a nice pay cheque by being an editor at an academic literary criticism journal if it's affiliated with a major university.

>>940271
You're reading Finnegans Wake in the right way. Just go to random pages when you have some down time, read them aloud if you can. It's beautiful.

>>940280
Anyway, what was that about me being in grade 8 again?

>>940318
You have the mental capacity of an 8th grader if 1) you think every thought is best expressed with the language of an 8th grader 2) you think claiming you are a well-paid editor of an academic literary criticism journal affiliated with a major university makes any sense.

>>940336
why you so mad though?

>>940341
I just think you're an 8th grader, that's all.

PRO TIPS FROM A UNI. ENGL. MAJOR WHO JUST STUDIED THIS NOVEL:

THE STORY IS LIMITED TO A PERSPECTIVAL FRAME, MEANING YOU ONLY GET TO EXPERIENCE WHAT STEVEN EXPERIENCES. SO, IF ANYTHING HAPPENS OUTSIDE HIS EARSHOT, THE READER MISSES OUT TOO. ALSO, ANY GAP OR LEAP IN HIS MEMORY IS JUST SOMETHING THE READER HAS TO PUT UP WITH AND TRY TO FOLLOW, UNFORTUNATELY.

it is actually interesting to follow how the quality of the narrative develops with Stevens age.

hope OP was able to catch this, though he's probably long gone by now.

I just wanted to thank you, /lit/. This thread has provided me with about 30 minutes of entertainment in an otherwise boring-as-shit day. I love you guys.

Hey....is there really an editor of a literary journal on here? Lorin, is it you? If so, prove it by telling me the title of "John Bloom's" article.