So it seems that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are unreadable to normal people.But what about Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ? Also, general James Joyce thread, tell me what do you like in his work etc
as an esl, he scares me
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Did God take away his eye because he refused to see?Did Joyce’s demons monkey branch to possess his schizo daughter?
Ulysses and FW are very readable for normal people, they are not readable to autists. You are not supposed to get every detail, you are supposed to understand them within your current knowledge as you do in life.
>>25071304Dubliners and Potrait are certainly easier to read, try those first.
>>25071340FW is not ‘very readable’ to anyone
Who here's read his poetry? I've managed to acquire both Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach. Going to be starting a very big Joyce read shortly and I'm going to get to those in addition to Dubliners, Portrait, Ulysses, and the Wake. Anybody have any really strong opinions about Joyce as a poet?
>>25071304>DublinersVery readable to normies. It's deliberately written in an accessible, naturalistic style. Araby, Little Cloud and The Dead are the highlights.>PortraitIt's experimental compared to Dubliners, but most of it is accessible. It's a very cool book with a writing style that evolves as the main character ages. There's tons of cool epiphanies to be had, nice little eureka or "Ah-ha!" moments signifying an internal transformation of the character, which is reflected in the evolving style of the prose. In my experience, most normies can finsh and enjoy it. All you have to do is keep in mind that it's written to reflect the age of Stephen, so throughout the 5 chapters just be sure you know how old he is.>UlyssesAs divine and supreme a masterpiece as it is, it is not light-reading. Many portions expect you to have a classical education, which means noticing many Irish history and political talking points, plus the endless references to Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. Some people can read and finish it without feeling the need to understand all of its devices and references, but many give up within 3 chapters. Give it a shot, but if you get filtered then you're not ready for it.>Finnegans WakeYou need dozens of Ph.Ds and fluency in at least 50 languages to understand this book. Don't bother.
>>25071494>which means noticing many Irish history and political talking pointsTHIS is where Joyce typically filters me, when he does. I've read enough and studied enough to get his classical and literary references, and references to broader world history, but I know fuck-all about Irish history, save what I've learned from Joyce himself. Like I still don't think I properly grasp just what a big deal Parnell was, and the big deal his downfall was, for that matter.
>>25071340>I read these books and didn't understand them and that's OKProtip: no it isn't.
>>25071442Perhaps the greatest prose stylist in English of the 20th century. However, as a poet, he is not really worth reading. Not totally horrible or anything, just pretty unmoving and uninteresting.
>>25071304I consider anyone who doesn't appreciate the last paragraphs of The Dead subhuman
>>25071340You're a dimwit of epic proportions.
>>25071304I read Ulysses in high school, it's difficult but not impossible. Finnegan's Wake is just incoherent.
>>25071340Colossally based.
>>25072140I don't understand what the big deal is and I read it twice. People act like it has some profound meaning but they can't explain it so I assume you're all just pretending to get it to seem smart.
>>25071340>Ulysses and FW are very readable for normal people, they are not readable to autists.>Finnegans Wake possesses a highly ordered, "mathematical" structure that resembles a multifractal, with its punctuation patterns and sentence lengths following precise, symmetrical, and logarithmic scaling rules...Yup, nothing autistic here.
>>25071502This is also the case with Dubliners, a lot of the stories depends on context of the way of life in Dublin at the time. And most of the stories are metaphors to some of the political and religious affairs at the time in Ireland. It was interesting nonetheless, after I did some research on the stories, I learned a lot about Dublin, but only reading the book would not have enlightened me enough.
>>25071304Early Joyce is worth reading. Later Joyce is too eccentric. —O by the way, said Heron suddenly, I saw your governor going in.The smile waned on Stephen’s face. Any allusion made to his father by a fellow or by a master put his calm to rout in a moment. He waited in timorous silence to hear what Heron might say next. Heron, however, nudged him expressively with his elbow and said:—You’re a sly dog.—Why so? said Stephen.—You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, said Heron. But I’m afraid you’re a sly dog.—Might I ask you what you are talking about? said Stephen urbanely.—Indeed you might, answered Heron. We saw her, Wallis, didn’t we? And deucedly pretty she is too. And inquisitive! And what part does Stephen take, Mr Dedalus? And will Stephen not sing, Mr Dedalus? Your governor was staring at her through that eyeglass of his for all he was worth so that I think the old man has found you out too. I wouldn’t care a bit, by Jove. She’s ripping, isn’t she, Wallis?—Not half bad, answered Wallis quietly as he placed his holder once more in a corner of his mouth.ORHe remained standing with his two companions at the end of the shed listening idly to their talk or to the bursts of applause in the theatre. She was sitting there among the others perhaps waiting for him to appear. He tried to recall her appearance but could not. He could remember only that she had worn a shawl about her head like a cowl and that her dark eyes had invited and unnerved him. He wondered had he been in her thoughts as she had been in his. Then in the dark and unseen by the other two he rested the tips of the fingers of one hand upon the palm of the other hand, scarcely touching it lightly. But the pressure of her fingers had been lighter and steadier: and suddenly the memory of their touch traversed his brain and body like an invisible wave.I wrote a few articles on early Joyce here (https://abcreading.substack.com/p/notes-on-the-sisters AND https://abcreading.substack.com/p/passages-from-stephens-life-in-blackrock). Wish I had more time, but I have to write actual essays for journals, and right now I'm more focused on drama and Ibsen. But there are hundreds of beautiful passages to quote from. Joyce is probably a more talented writer than Conrad, James, Austen, etc but threw it away on work like FW.
>>25072545Nobody else could write FW successfully. You would have the most talented writer in history aim for perfection in conventionality instead of letting his ambitions soar? He already accomplished the former at that point, and he arrived at the style of his later work through a logical progression of increasing complexity.
>>25071304Ulysses and The Faerie Queene are the only books in English I avoid.
>>25072992What?
>>25072999
>>25072992chickenshit weakling
>>25072545There are times when Joyce's aversion to quotation marks becomes an outright mental disability.
>>25072992who avoids ulysses but not finnegans wake
There's no way I'm ever reading hundreds of pages of a jew's inner monologue.>b-but Joyce wasn't...Yeah, but Bloom is.
Dubliners is excellent and very readable. Especially enjoyable if you're familiar with Dublin. Portrait of the Artist is readable but probably not of much value unless you're either Irish or very into Joyce.
>>25071304>tell me what do you like in his workThe depth.FW & Ulysses are both great
I'm halfway through Ulysses right now and it's so goddamn comfy.
One nice thing about Joyce is that he didn't really write a LOT so it's possible to get through his entire corpus without having to structure your entire life around it.I'm planning to do a big read of Joyce's entire body of work this year. So far I've got, in chronological order:Chamber MusicDublinersA Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManExilesUlyssesPomes PenyeachFinnegans WakeAm I missing anything?
>>25073345he's only half jewish
>>25073428A door can only be open or closed.
>>25071340>Ulysses and FW are very readable for normal peopleIncorrect. Most people consider them boring and pretentious, though that's also incorrect.>they are not readable to autistsPartially true I suppose, as modernist prose and the light plot elements tends to cause melties among the people with little penchant for humanities, but autists with enough discipline can definitely enjoy later Joyce.
>>25073432An argument can only be correct or retarded
>>25073345He doesn't appear until chapter 4, so you can read the first three and give up like all the other midwit normies.
>>25073413>he didn't really write a LOTBut what he did write needs to be read multiple times.I read Ulysses 3 times and feel I've understood it as well as I can. I've only read Finnegans Wake once, and fuck knows how many re-reads I'll need to do.
>>25073342To be fair, he said "in English."I don't know what language the Wake is written in.
>>25073413His letters--and I don't just mean the fart ones--are pretty entertaining, if you're into that sort of thing.Ellmann's bio on Joyce is good.
I like in Finnegans Wake when Sean gives a parable to someone.There is an exchange between several characters and a Nuvoletta who, judging their character, remarks "there are menner".This is my favorite wordplay that I have seen from this author. I will ruin it here: both men more men than they, or contrastively, manna, as in Christ's manna from heaven.This can be further made clear in that Nuvoletta is the loanword used for a comic strip's thought cloud for a given character.
>>25073454English.
I recently read Giacomo Joyce and enjoyed it a lot. It is a good balance between his prose and poetry. It has potent descriptions of sensory experience and captures well a feeling of quiet longing.>Padua far beyond the sea. The silent middle age, night, darkness of history sleep in the Piazza delle Erbe under the moon. The city sleeps. Under the arches in the dark streets near the river the whores’ eyes spy out for fornicators. Cinque servizi per cinque franchi. A dark wave of sense, again and again and again.>Mine eyes fail in darkness, mine eyes fail,>Mine eyes fail in darkness, love.>Again. No more. Dark love, dark longing. No more. Darkness.
>At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue come bursting out through your lips and if I gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. 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.
I believe this to be an accurate assessment.>Dublinersreadable>A Portraitborderline unreadable>Ulyssesunreadable>Finnegans Wakebeyond unreadable
>>25072982The problem is that FW is sterile. It contributes very little if anything to the technical heritage. Madame Bovary is an example of a work that leaves a wealth of techniques, characters, themes etc for the future writer. Joyce himself learned much from this novel and employed what he learned to good purpose. I would have much preferred a steadier development like that of the early to late Henry James. FW was simply not worth doing. Is it, after all, better than Hamlet or Othello or The Divine Comedy? I doubt it. FW is a warning. Talented writers should strive to make real and solid contributions to our cultural heritage. Innovation is a wonderful thing. But FW is so far outside the literary tradition that nothing can really be done with it.
>>25074667It necessarily stands apart from everything else because it's meant to be an eschatological apocalyptic sort of book, like a literary philosopher's stone, the ultimate of what the English language is capable of as a medium. It's possible that his ambitions were Quixotic, but you have to respect his intentions. Let geniuses do ingenious things, leave boring conventionality to the mediocre.
>>25074327>DublinersReadable>PortraitMostly readable, some chapters are borderline readable>UlyssesUsually borderline readable, sometimes borderline unreadable>Finnegans WakeRhetorical/linguistic equivalent of dividing by zeroYou're welcome for fixing that for you.
>>25074871>Rhetorical/linguistic equivalent of dividing by zero
If you can't discuss things adulty, maybe you're the one who belongs there.
>>25071304Portrait is unreadable. Not because it's difficult but because it fucking sucks
filtered mccarthy kiddie lmao
>>25075019>>>/co/
>>25074327So you can't read. Got it.
>>25074667Where else was Joyce supposed to go after writing Ulysses? It was literally intended as the ultimate novel.The miracle was that he actually found a way forward in Finnegans Wake, even if the rest of the literary world is still catching up.
>>25075503>miraclekek
>>25074667>Is it, after all, better than Hamlet or Othello or The Divine Comedy?Yup.
>this book is unreadableLiterally just read it aloud, numbnuts.
