James Joyce

CharlasGeeks who love the Classics

Únete a LibraryThing para publicar.

James Joyce

1Cien
Editado: Feb 25, 2007, 12:19 am

I've seen him called the most important writer of his century. I've also seen people say that statement is an ignorant one by an intellectual elite that merely chooses things for their haziness.

What do you think?

What of his work have you read?

Were his experiments in stream-of-thought successful?

Are you able to slog through Ulysses? Do you even consider it a slog?

Do you mind the vulgarity in some of his work?

What do you think of his earlier work as compared to his later work?

2Sandydog1
Mar 16, 2007, 8:49 pm

I've only read the easy and the early, ie, Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I like to rely on study guides (teaching company, internet sources) when reading the tougher works. I'm sure I will be doing that heavily when I decide to tackle Ulysses.

3ithuriel
Mar 17, 2007, 3:54 am

Yes, "Ulysses" is worth reading.
Yes, the stream of thought is successful.
It is not a casual read but far from a slog.
The scatology is troubling mainly because it is childish.
The early work is excellent but in no way can be considered
preparation for "Ulysses".
Don't worry about the Joyce Wars.
Nabokov has an essay, adapted from his classes on Joyce, on "Ulysses". It is in his "Lectures on Literature" book. Read that.
It's all you need.
Strikes me you will form your own conclusions. Good Luck.

4keigu
Mar 17, 2007, 10:12 am

I agree that the stream of thought is fine, it does not completely peter out like overly abstract work but flows about things and braids together, but do not think that most who read Ulysses and Finnegans Wake should even try because the joy you get is dependent on your polylingual ability and imagination.

In my case, I am afraid I put too much time into Japanese to have enough left over for European languages -- i do fairly well with spanish, can do portuguese with a dictionary and forget all my russian that is not in a song -- my greek is zilch, my latin is poor, german but a wee bit of understanding from studying up swedish when working away back to the US on La Traviata (a bulk freightor for the OW line) 25 yrs ago, and my french, well, the spanish helps a bit...

In other words, I know I miss far too much to thoroughly enjoy all the layers of pun, which, remind me of Japanese poetry because of the way the puns do not only joke but link things together. As a literary art, however, i suspect i would prefer japanese poetry to Joyce even if i shared more of his languages because dense writing is best taken in tiny chunks, so one can thoroughly chew and digest it.

Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!

5BookAddict
Mar 17, 2007, 12:38 pm

Keigu, that is quite a good review :)
I haven't read Ulysses. I've only read Dubliners and I wasn't impressed particularly. I prefer French and Russian writers myself. I know I read a quote by a Russian writer recently but I can't think who said it, it was something like

"Why do we need Joyce when we have Tolstoy?"

I think I have to agree although it's really unfair because I haven't read enough of his work to comment. I just know that because I don't have a lot of time left to read I probably won't read another Joyce. I felt that the book that I did read didn't expand my knowledge, influence my perceptions, or entertain me in the least. It was rather bland actually. *preparing for the Joyce lovers to attack now* lol

6jhowell
Mar 17, 2007, 5:31 pm

Ulysses is on my TBR shelf; I am gearing up. I see ithuriel's suggestion for a companion read. In general do those of you who have read it think I should purchase some sort of 'cliff notes' or just jump right in of my own accord?

I have never read anything by Joyce, am American, and have never been to Dublin, or Great Britain for that matter. I have never formally studied literature, but I read alot. On the up side, I have read Tolstoy and have no problem following his narratives.

7almigwin
Editado: Abr 14, 2007, 10:47 am

#6 jhowell:
I don't think that having no trouble with Tolstoy means no trouble with Joyce. I second the advice to read Nabokov's lecture on Joyce in Lectures on Literature. One of the things Nabokov does is follow the book through a street map of Dublin.

The Joyce , in my view, is like a new art form - containing a pastiche of styles: Poetic - Molly Bloom's soliloquy, surrealism of "Ulysses in Nighttown', realism of Leopold Bloom cooking breakfast, Romantic drama-the Madame Bovary-ish adiultery of Molly and the nebbishness of her husband, tragedy-the sadness of their lost child
and all this within a picture of the city, its people and the times.

It doesn't have noble or heroic or aristocratic figures like War and Peace, and no war at all, but I think it is truly truly a masterpiece, and led the way for other experimentation - Virginia Woolfe , Dos Passos, may others.

I also recommend the book Joyce by Harry Levin and the one by Gilbert Highet. They comment and follow the threads in the Joyce that follow Ulysses in Homer.

I have read it every 5 years or so since 1948. It gets better all the time.
See if you can rent the movie Ulysses made in Ireland. It's wonderful.

8jhowell
Editado: Abr 15, 2007, 6:09 pm

Well -- almigwin -- I read your reply about 2 weeks too late. I finished Ulysses without much of a companion read (just online Spark notes). I definately struggled. It both infuriated and amazed me. I choose to look at it like a poem -- in many places it is more important how the words sounds and the emotions evoked, than understanding what is actually transpiring. I am planning on trying to track down the movie. .. And maybe someday (when I retire, which likely will be a long ways off) -- I will read it again with the proper aids. For now though - I am glad I read it, and equally glad it is over with.

My reply to Cien#1's questions now -- It is the only Joyce I have read. I do think his stream of consciousness writing was successful. Wildly so. But in toto I did find it a slog, to be perfectly honest. The vulgarity didn't bother me in the slightest; sadly, at times it was the only thing I understood.

9almigwin
Abr 15, 2007, 7:49 pm

jhowell, I really wanted to help; sorry I wasn't there sooner. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and Pomes a Pennyeach are all well worth reading, even though they preceded Ulysses and are not really experimental. There is an Angelica Huston/John Huston film of one of the stories in Dubliners (The Dead). I hope you won't turn your back on Joyce. Also, Richard Ellmann's biography of Joyce is very interesting, and so is Brenda Maddox's biography of his wife Nora. Joyce's friendships with Pound, Svevo and Beckett are also interesting, as is the story of Sylvia Beach's bookstore in Paris, Shakespeare and Co. which published Ulysses first. also there was an American named Quinn (I think) who bought manuscripts to help writers survive. He was a help to T.S. Eliot also.

10mysticskeptic
Jul 5, 2007, 3:30 pm

The good news about Ulysses is that it is only really difficult about a third of the time. The even better news is that even the really difficult parts are quite understandable the second time you read them.

My opinion is that the stream of consciousness elements are the weakest parts of the novel. They are just not believable in terms of how human beings actually think (or muse). In these sections you can feel Joyce struggling.

Overall, the novel (which is - underneath all the experiments - what it is) is a masterpiece with a few non-fatal flaws. The story works extremely well as long as it stays with the perfectly realized characters, not so well when Joyce indulges himself with linguistic showing-off.

Having said that, the 'Night Town' part of the book is one of the best pieces of writing I have ever read. Wonderful surrealism, characterisation, language.

I finally decided to have a go at the novel after reading (for about the fourth time) Daniel S. Burt's essay about it in his fantastic book The Novel 100. I am very glad I did. Ulysses can be very hard work at times, but what great book isn't?

11Sandydog1
Jul 15, 2007, 8:48 pm

Este mensaje fue borrado por su autor.

12Sandydog1
Jul 15, 2007, 8:48 pm

Does it help to listen to an unabridged audio? How about the Teaching Company lectures or similar guides. Interested if anyone has tried these. I've read the first pages and got a bit overwhelmed.

13varielle
Jul 23, 2007, 10:23 am

I only made it to just past the breakfast scene in Ulysses. This was about 15 years ago. One day I do intend to continue the slog.

14wenestvedt
Mar 7, 2008, 12:58 pm

I've tried three times to read Ulysses. I had the most success one summer in the late 1990s when I made sure to have a drink in my hand whenever I read. This eased my tension over the novel's "importance," and also loosened my attention so that I felt comfortable skipping whichever parts got too weird or long-winded.

Some would say I sacrificed part of the novel's richness, or something, but I would tell those people I already read Clarissa and to leave me alone.

15sqdancer
Editado: Mar 7, 2008, 1:06 pm

</i>
Just closing the italics.

16leccol
Editado: Feb 16, 2012, 3:17 pm

The Teaching Company has produced a very good course on Ulysses. It is taught by a a Princeton PHd whose name I have forgotten. I don't think I would have made it through without going through this one first.

17MccMichaelR
Editado: Abr 30, 2021, 1:42 pm

>1 Cien: James Joyce gets better and better the more you read (and re-read!) his works. Ulysses is well worth the kudos and brickbats and redoing: not an easy walk in the park -for me, Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest were less complex. The Dubliners I liked, Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man also is very good.
Some day ... this year?? ... I'm determined to tackle Finnegans Wake

so, yeah, maybe I've 'drunk the Kool-Aid' and you should listen to someone else!

18L.Bloom
Dic 7, 2021, 10:58 am

I read it as a total layman and loved it. I comprehended maybe 60% of the text but it struck a lot of the right notes for my personal taste: History, philosophy, language, and imagery.

I will also say that it inspired me to go through the western cannon staring with the ancients in the hope to learn some more of what Joyce was on about. For that I am grateful.