/lit/ - Literature

[soedgy No.2753190]

Guys, it may only be an intuition but I'm pretty sure that for any of that aspire to be writers, James Joyce isn't really worth reading. I mean, he might worth reading, but not in the sense that you want to learn from him, to be influenced by him.
T.S.Eliot held this charge against Milton, that however beautiful a poem Paradise Lose may be, Milton can only be a bad influence on subsequent poets because he writes English like a "dead language". I'd say something similar about Joyce --- that he wrote the Novel as though it were a dead form. Indeed, Eliot and Pound themselves were a bit anxious after Ulysses was published, Pound calling every novel written after 1922 "PSU"s, "Post Scripts to Ulysses", and surely enough novelists after 1922 began to imitate the "stream of consciousness" style. He exhausts all of the literary devices and styles employed by past writers in this one novel, the novel contains countless allusions not just in content but also in style.
What's more is that his stuff really isn't that interesting. To be honest I see Ulysses as an offshoot of realism, except where realism was only concerned with giving a depiction of the real outer life, Joyce wrote the realism of the inner life, through the "stream of consciousness". But realism reached it's peak with Tolstoy, and I think Tolstoy is more worthy of study than Joyce.

[soedgy No.2753192]

If you're an aspiring writer then the 20th century writers you do want to study in detail are the "absurdists", particularly Kafka and Beckett. See, these writers were actually creating new aesthetics, new modes of literary style that are better suited to describing modern life. These are the creative types in 20th century prose work. I'm not saying that you should imitate absurdism, far from it, rather I'm saying that you should recognize it's importance and endeavour to understand it, as opposed to mastering that esoteric tome Ulysses which really establishes nothing new.

>‘My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate journalistic dirty-mindededness - what old and hard-worked staleness, masquerading as the all-new!’
-D. H. Lawrence

[Anonymous No.2753198]

>What's more is that his stuff really isn't that interesting.
You have to remember that it was written at a time before Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton.

[soedgy No.2753214]

>>2753198
u wot m8

Well it's interesting, but not as interesting as its reputation would have you believe.

[Anonymous No.2753220]

Aren't you the guy who just got done making a thread about objectifying women or something.

[soedgy No.2753231]

>>2753220
yeah, I make all the good threads on /lit/.

[Anonymous No.2753233]

Shut up and dread Dubliners

[Anonymous No.2753241]

>>2753231

I give you a 5/10 on the troll scale, your threads are well thought out with some great bait, but the topics you choose to try to troll people in are usually too boring for any effective levels of mad to be drawn in. Work on it a little and you could get some serious butthurt.

[soedgy No.2753249]

>>2753241
I suppose interesting topics are "troll bait" to you.

[Caracalla !Np4hMu1ypU No.2753280]

>thinks that there should be a curriculum of authors to train up new ones
>thinks Tolstoyan realism is the endpoint for the novel's development
>thinks Ulysses has any direct dealing with so-called Absurdism
>thinks affirmation of Ulysses (achieved by no other author in last 100 years or more) is an achievement we can be indifferent to
>caps things off with a quote by DH Lawrence, an obvious-tier charlatan and second-rate novelist (but reasonable poet)

Sure is summer here

[soedgy No.2753303]

>>2753280
>thinks that there should be a curriculum of authors to train up new ones

There already is an unofficial curriculum, they call it the 'Canon'.

>thinks Tolstoyan realism is the endpoint for the novel's development

Not at all, I said that I think it is the peak of realism, not of the novel.

>thinks Ulysses has any direct dealing with so-called Absurdism
>thinks affirmation of Ulysses (achieved by no other author in last 100 years or more) is an achievement we can be indifferent to

y-y-you too

>caps things off with a quote by DH Lawrence, an obvious-tier charlatan and second-rate novelist (but reasonable poet)

Even hacks are entitled to be right some of the time.

[Anonymous No.2753305]

>>2753233
nice freudian slip.

[Caracalla !Np4hMu1ypU No.2753328]

>>2753303
The canon's not a curriculum, it's for connoisseurs and general readers, drawn up by the few academics that don't have misgivings about it.

>Not at all, I said that I think it is the peak of realism, not of the novel.
Joyce should not be judged by these standards i don't think. that Ulysses has some contiguity with realist traits does not mean, it is a cut and dry 'realist' novel or should be judged as a realist novel is judged (that said, if you've read Dubliners, you'd see that Joyce could have given the realist tradition a run for its money).

>y-y-you too
Are you saying that Joyce's sort of affirmation (which broadly speaking could be said to be 'existential') can be linked to absurdism? Why? Isn't there important differences between the stranger and Ulysses.

>Even hacks are entitled to be right some of the time.
when it's obvious tier mirin resentment, I think we need to be a little less credulous.

[Anonymous No.2753387]

>Milton can only be a bad influence on subsequent poets because he writes English like a "dead language"

You have two things to do to stop this being a shitpost, op: (1) explain what it could possibly mean to write as if the language/form one was writing in were dead, and (2) explain why the fact that a work of literature is written as if its language/form is dead affords any reason to think said work is a bad influence on other writers.

[iwatobe !K17Ye0c08k No.2753421]

>>2753328
>Are you saying that Joyce's sort of affirmation (which broadly speaking could be said to be 'existential') can be linked to absurdism? Why? Isn't there important differences between the stranger and Ulysses.

I don't think he ever said Ulysses was linked to absurdism: >If you're an aspiring writer then the 20th century writers you do want to study in detail are the "absurdists", particularly Kafka and Beckett.
I don't see how he linked Ulysses to absurdism, he actually said that the ones worth reading are the absurdists (that and the critique he is making about Ulysses actually imply the opposite)

>>2753387
>You have two things to do to stop this being a shitpost, op: (1) explain what it could possibly mean to write as if the language/form one was writing in were dead, and (2) explain why the fact that a work of literature is written as if its language/form is dead affords any reason to think said work is a bad influence on other writers.
About Milton he might mean that he wrote in an archaic use of english wich was pretty effective in Paradise Lost, given that the biblic story of the genesis is itself something supposed to have happened many many years past. That being said, using archaic language to tell a story unfolding on the present might be a terrible decision

[Anonymous No.2753454]

I don't listen to the literary opinions of anyone who uses the wrong form of "its" twice.

[Caracalla !Np4hMu1ypU No.2753489]

>I don't think he ever said Ulysses was linked to absurdism: >If you're an aspiring writer then the 20th century writers you do want to study in detail are the "absurdists", particularly Kafka and Beckett.
I don't see how he linked Ulysses to absurdism, he actually said that the ones worth reading are the absurdists (that and the critique he is making about Ulysses actually imply the opposite)

Stylistically, kafka was making few advances (although he wrote genius tier stuff and developed possible responses to modernity quite astutely); Gogol could have written the metamorphoses (although he would have found it hard to write anything approaching the genius of the Trial and obviously couldn't have written something like Amerika). Beckett was more pioneering stylistically, but I would say a lot of his work does little to explore the human condition in its modern guise; Ben Jonson could have written the interpersonal drama in Godot, a trick is missed in ignoring the gender issues in Happy days, only Krapp's Last Tape achieves much in advancing and developing what art could be interested in. For a celebrated dramatist, this is a real flaw, although he makes up for it in his general flair and stylistic trailblazing.

Joyce was probably more trailblazing than both of them, in developing stylistic and thematic responses to modernity from portrait onwards. It's fair to say, few rival him on that level. Absurdism in general produces a lot of crap; Camus and Sartre's output is often frankly embarrassing. It seems a bit of get-out clause in some ways, 'oh it doesn't matter anyway, everything is absurd' and in that sense a hindrance to developing the thematic concerns of literature.

[iwatobe !K17Ye0c08k No.2753584]

>>2753489
I am not discussing wether one or the other made more advances in literature and te exploration of human nature. I just thought that you thought that the other anon was saying that absurdists and Joyce were linked. In response I was telling you that the other anon didn't say they were linked, he merely opinionated that the absurdists were the ones worth studying as an influence. Sadly I haven't read Joyce yet so I can not give an honest opinion about how they compare. I do agree with you that Amerika and The Trial are genius works of literature, and some of Kafka's short stories like "In the penal colony" are also amazing

[soedgy No.2753608]

>>2753489
sorry, I've been out. I didn't link Ulysses to absurdism. I said absurdist literature (Kafka, Beckett) was worth studying more than Ulysses, that's all.

[Anonymous No.2753614]

>>2753489
>Camus and Sartre's output is often frankly embarrassing
why?

[soedgy No.2753617]

>>2753387
I'm just going to refer you on to an essay by Eliot because it was his opinion that I was citing anyhow.

http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~rlstrick/rsvtxt/eliot.htm

[Anonymous No.2753618]

>>2753617
>taking Eliot seriously as a critic

[Anonymous No.2754366]

>>2753614
Seconding this question.

[Glassjaw !T5ibCwPVyU No.2754390]

>>2753618
>taking anyone seriously

[Anonymous No.2754396]

>>2754390

[Anonymous No.2754407]

>>2754390

yea.

also does anyone else think that picture of joyce looks oddly similar to a young robert deniro (like in taxi driver)?

[Anonymous No.2755218]

Bump

[soedgy No.2755233]

>>2753489
> It seems a bit of get-out clause in some ways, 'oh it doesn't matter anyway, everything is absurd' and in that sense a hindrance to developing the thematic concerns of literature.

I agree with this to an extent, but I feel that it is warranted considering the state of our living. If we're all being metamorphosed into inhuman vermin like Gregor Samsa then our "human condition" is a bit one-sided. Absurdism does consider life from a very dramatic, encompassing view, but that's part of the reason as to why it's so poignant a mirror of our more and more one-dimensional lives.
Still, I'm not saying that writers today should imitate absurdist literature, but the theme and style of absurdist literature are so peculiar to 20th century literature that it makes them worthy of consideration.