/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.729483]

Why does /lit/ like this book so much? I just started reading it. Pretty boring so far.

[Anonymous No.729498]

cuz its gud

[Anonymous No.729503]

[Anonymous No.729504]

>>729503
What do you mean? I'm just asking.

[Anonymous No.729509]

it only gets more boring

it's not about the plot or being gripping

more like the theory behind the novel and kind of deconstructing consciousness and everything

its kind of masturbatory, excessive, and pretentious but Joyce is a genius and really fucking good at what he does so its worth reading

[Anonymous No.729512]

>>729509
lol...no
it sucks and even the writing style is awful

[Anonymous No.729515]

>>729512
>the writing style is awful

TROLL METER IS OFF THE CHARTS

[Anonymous No.729528]

>>729515
yeah because someone couldn't possibly have different tastes than you

[Anonymous No.729571]

>>729528

then why not explain why don't find it to your liking?

besides just saying it sucks and is awful

[Anonymous No.729582]

just read it if you enjoy it.
if you don't enjoy it, put it down and don't waste your time telling people it's pretentious.

[Anonymous No.729588]

Why would anybody want to read a book called Useless?

[Anonymous No.729592]

>>729483
I just bought a Bunker Buster that makes Ulysses look like it was written in cranyon. And it can read it to me.

[Anonymous No.729597]

>>729528
There's a difference between not enjoying something and saying that it's awful. If you weren't such a troll or possibly immature, you'd realize this.

[Anonymous No.729599]

>>729597
He said the writing style is awful. That's a subjective statement. How is that being a troll?

[Anonymous No.729601]

>>729599
Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's bad.

Come on, /lit/. You're better than this.

[Anonymous No.729605]

>>729601
Yea, it does mean it's bad. What's wrong with you?

Have you never said "this is bad" before. If you had a dinner that you didn't like, you wouldn't say "this dinner is bad?" Your logic is retarded.

[Anonymous No.729607]

OP here.
I have only replied once, lol. trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls

[Anonymous No.729609]

>>729605
Some people don't like The Godfather, and prefer Disaster Movie. Does this mean The Godfather is awful and Disaster Movie is a classic?

[Anonymous No.729626]

>>729609
To them, yes.

[Anonymous No.729652]

>>729626
Okay, nigga, you dumb.

[Anonymous No.729657]

>>729609
No, but I prefer Ingmar Bergman films

[Anonymous No.729660]

>>729652
>doesn't understand that what makes art good or bad is subjective

[Anonymous No.729683]

>>729660
I've attached a very tiny picture with two works of art: Dali's Persistence of Memory, and a picture of a stick figure I drew. Which is better?

[Anonymous No.729690]

>>729683
I like the stick figure. Good job man.

[Anonymous No.729695]

>>729683
The one on the right, but I prefer Monet

[Anonymous No.729713]

>>729683
This picture, included in the French National Museum of Modern Art, in Paris, is highly celebrated and considered one of France's premiere modern art treasures.

I wish I was fucking joking.

[Anonymous No.729711]

>>729683
The way you've juxtaposed the black man against the background of red, of passion and anger and hatred. The man stands out as a figure that represents black frustration with racism and past slavery. The piece of the left really speaks to the common African-American male in away that few things do nowadays. The artist is clearly showing a deeply repressed sense of guilt over what his white forefathers have done to the blacks of the past. There is so much emotion in this piece.

That piece on the right is just some melting clocks, fucking dumb.

[Anonymous No.729708]

>>729695
Yes, but at a certain point it gets debatable. Monet and Dali are of comparable quality.
So tell me. What's so awful about Joyce's prose?

[Anonymous No.729716]

>>729483

I personally had a lot of trouble reading it, but I did read it... depending on who I'm talking to I either say how much of it I missed, or am surprised at myself about how much i really did get out of it. I loved the main character Stephen, because he's a way over-educated poet and not taken seriously by society. On the other hand, Bloom is oppressed because he is a Jew in a mainly christian Dublin... plus his wife is a filthy whore. When they meet it's interesting, because their oppression bonds them, even though they're practically strangers.

but yeah... it's basically a huge allusion to the Odyssey or the Iliad and I think one of the character's names is Ulysses, or something...

[Anonymous No.729720]

>>729683
The picture on the left is beautiful in its simplicity. The one on the right is too busy and doesn't make any sense.

[Anonymous No.729722]

>>729713
But... he discovered that color

[Anonymous No.729729]

>>729708
Joyce's prose is amazing

[Anonymous No.729737]

>>729722
>implying you can discover a color in the goddamn visible light spectrum

[Anonymous No.729738]

>>729711
You clearly value political interpretations over aesthetic ones and for that I can't take your opinion seriously

[Anonymous No.729744]

>>729713

There's a great short story built on the theme of that painting called Zima Blue.

[Anonymous No.729748]

>>729744
Somehow I doubt that it's great (not so much because of the painting)

[Anonymous No.729759]

>>729744
vonnegut had a really good section in breakfast of champions (i think) where he defended abstract expressionism by having his fictional artist explain what the painting meant. maybe this is what all abstract painters ought to do. they could hang the explanation on the wall next to the painting.

[Anonymous No.729763]

>>729748

It's actually really good, its got a bit of Borges in it which is always good, and a pretty unique premise.

[Anonymous No.729771]

>>729759
Abstract expressionism does not need Vonnegut to defend it

[Anonymous No.729770]

>>729713
By who? Some pretentious fucks who wrote about it at the time? I'd argue that the way you can aproach works of art with the truest objectivity is to find a middle ground between the critics and public opinion. Thus, blue-on-canvas becomes stupid and pretentious and the true classics remain the classics, personal taste excluded.

[Anonymous No.729775]

>>729770
Because we all know the truth is somewhere in the middle. Thanks for making that clear

[Anonymous No.729787]

>>729770
ultimately its the artists of the future who legitimize the artists of the past by stealing/builiding/elaborating/ on their technique and themes

everything else is ephemeral

[Anonymous No.729812]

>>729770
The French art community, for one.

I mean, it IS posted in the biggest modern art museum in Paris, and IS considered one of the central exhibits. It's pretty obvious what the French art community is treating it as.

[Anonymous No.729816]

ITT: no one has actually read the book, which is why every argument is vague and along the lines of "it's crap", "the writing is bad", "the plot is stupid".

[Anonymous No.729873]

>>729605
There is a big difference between not liking something and something being bad.

A person may not like something because of their strong personal taste/bias, for example I hate shrimp because I'm allergic to it, it doesn't mean that the shrimp itself was cooked badly.

On the other hand one of my favorite video games is Chaos Legion, which I wouldn't give higher then a 6 out of 10 if I was rating it and wouldn't recommend it to anybody, I just like it because I'm really gay for a certain aspect of the game.

[Anonymous No.729876]

speaking of Joyce...

anyone read his raunchy love letters?

http://loveletters.tribe.net/thread/fce72385-b146-4bf2-9d2e-0dfa6ac7142d

Good shit imo.

[Anonymous No.729881]

>>729876
It's become one of this board's most popular memes, unfortunately

[Anonymous No.729885]

>>729881
It's been so ever since this board was created in fact

[Anonymous No.729892]

[Anonymous No.730055]

>>729812
Modernism marked a more or less permanent turn in visual art in the West. Mimetic art faded away and conceptual art replaced it. Like it or not, the conceptual framework assigned to a piece (by the artist, or by the critical establishment) is what carries the most weight in the art world nowadays. So yeah, extremely abstract art can seem silly or pretentious to an outsider, but the real truth is that art museums make decisions about what they exhibit within this insular community that the vast majority of people can only sort of peer into. And what's important to them isn't always what's important to your average museum-goer.

In my opinion, the rise of conceptual art has produced some incredibly interesting stuff, but as with anything, you can go too far. I don't know enough about that blue painting to say whether or not its conceptual framework justifies its extreme simplicity.

[Anonymous No.730061]

>>730055
Oh, right. This thread's about Ulysses. OP, if you're finding the beginning boring, you're probably not going to like the book. Later in your life, if you develop a really keen appreciation for language-as-music, try it again. I just think if you're the sort of person who could read the first few pages of Ulysses and call them "boring," you're not in the right mindset.

[Anonymous No.730082]

>>729716
it's The Odyssey. Ulysses is the Roman name of Odysseus. Romans have a Roman name of every greek name. Jupiter = Zeus