― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 23:31 (twenty years ago) link
― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 23:32 (twenty years ago) link
― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 13:01 (twenty years ago) link
Well, I found it funny. Despite all the fun stuff for lit-majors and such the tone is generally pretty light.
― August (August), Thursday, 10 June 2004 17:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 14:51 (twenty years ago) link
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 19:12 (twenty years ago) link
― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:30 (twenty years ago) link
― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:32 (twenty years ago) link
― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 23:07 (twenty years ago) link
― the junefox, Wednesday, 16 June 2004 23:33 (twenty years ago) link
― Jens Drejer (Jens Drejer), Thursday, 17 June 2004 09:20 (twenty years ago) link
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Thursday, 17 June 2004 11:24 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 17 June 2004 15:12 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 16:20 (twenty years ago) link
I look forward, to finding out.
― the bellefox, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 16:38 (twenty years ago) link
― jed (jed_e_3), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 17:55 (twenty years ago) link
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 18:16 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 23:27 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 06:22 (twenty years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 28 October 2005 23:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 29 October 2005 14:25 (eighteen years ago) link
I wonder if anyone has tried to count the words in Finnegans Wake.
― steve ketchup, Sunday, 30 October 2005 03:01 (eighteen years ago) link
i have reread parts w/o a companion text, but i can't imagine figuring it out on the first go round
― fancybill (ozewayo), Sunday, 30 October 2005 05:51 (eighteen years ago) link
Of course, I am reading Ulysses as part of my own literary death match, put forth by Engineering Sux. Taking the contenders in alphabetical order, I read Gravity's Rainbow for the first time a few weeks ago. I may read other Pynchon in the future, but I can't imagine picking up that puerile, slapstick work for pleasure ever again. Ulysses won the match in the first 50 pages.
― Jaq (Jaq), Sunday, 30 October 2005 15:21 (eighteen years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Sunday, 30 October 2005 16:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― steve ketchup, Monday, 31 October 2005 07:05 (eighteen years ago) link
Which raises an interesting question - how much of a book do you need to understand for it to be enjoyable? I suspect this is largely a question of temperament: Reader A can understand 80% of a book and find it a pleasurable read; Reader B understands 90% and finds it frustratingly obscure.
― frankiemachine, Monday, 31 October 2005 10:03 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 31 October 2005 13:36 (eighteen years ago) link
But he / she is slightly and understandably wrong on one count. The Citizen borrowed Garryowen from Giltrap, who is Gerty's grandfather. The narrator of 'Cyclops' tells us the first of those two facts.
― the finefox, Monday, 31 October 2005 14:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 31 October 2005 15:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― steve ketchup, Tuesday, 1 November 2005 03:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 05:08 (eighteen years ago) link
Yes that's my point - I just can't do that. I'm not saying I need to understand a book 100% before I can enjoy it but I have a relatively low tolerance of obscurity.
he did give himself a good long while to write Ulysses, more than any of us have given to reading it, you know?
Curiously, this is not quite true. I have now spent almost twice as many years reading it as JJ spent writing it.
Someone told me that Joyce once said (I paraphrase) "all that I ask of my readers is that they devote their lives to the understanding of my work". I've never seen it written anywhere, but the guy who told me this wouldn't have made it up (it's just possible he had been misled himself).
― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 1 November 2005 09:55 (eighteen years ago) link
I'm not entirely sure "meaning" or "understanding" can be quantified. But even if you do understand "80%" of a text, what if it's the wrong 80%? What if you understand 100% of a text, but your understanding diverges with everyone else's, including the author's? A text like "Lolita" you can read all the way through and feel as though you "understood" it and then go back and reread it and discover there was a whole secret code going on during the novel that you might not have known to see the first time.
Finepox: Jaq is a lady-style person.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 10:38 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't disagree with any of that & in fact anticipated the objection. But I decided I could spend long enough trying to refine what I'm saying to remove this kind of ambiguity, probably still without total success. If we get into philosophical discussion about semantics none of us will ever get out again. I think my basic point is clear enough.
― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 1 November 2005 11:28 (eighteen years ago) link
So to "understand" Ulysses in the common sense of the word is impossible. All you ever do is get better acquainted with it. The fact that it points you at other facts, that you can learn about it from outside of it, is just a fact of the intertextuality of knowledge. Which is an interesting and often overlooked point about knowledge, I think.
― Patchouli Clark (noodle vague), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 11:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 1 November 2005 11:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― Patchouli Clark (noodle vague), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 12:03 (eighteen years ago) link
Dublin is obscure, in a sense, possibly, the first time you go there. Especially, perhaps, if you don't take any guide books or maps. But less so if you live there, I imagine.
Maybe something somewhat parallel can be said of the book.
― the finefox, Tuesday, 1 November 2005 14:01 (eighteen years ago) link
Some people, for example steve, find that not understanding large chunks of a novel are not a barrier to enjoyment: others, myself included, generally do. This is surely obvious enough. What interests me more particularly is that people will tend to assume that if steve likes the novel better than I did he must have understood it better. That obviously doesn't necessarily follow: but as I say the assumption is frequently made.
My point is a general one and not specific to Ulysses, a book I incidentally feel very ambivalent about.
― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 1 November 2005 16:02 (eighteen years ago) link
As I recall the story, Joyce was in a social situation and another guest complained to him about the convolution and opacity of Finnegans Wake, asking, (I paraphrase) "Do you really expect me to spend my whole life puzzling this out?"
Joyce answered, "Yes."
― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 18:04 (eighteen years ago) link
A better-educated friend of mine read Ulysses around the same time as I did and understood much more of it. He said he thought it was basically garbage (which is what I think of Gravity's Rainbow).
Joyce was so deeply involved in his own work that he honestly thought WWII occured because not enough people read his book (FW).
― steve ketchup, Tuesday, 1 November 2005 18:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 18:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 18:48 (eighteen years ago) link
― steve ketchup, Tuesday, 1 November 2005 19:13 (eighteen years ago) link
i like steve's remark about unknowing.
― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 03:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 03:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 08:50 (eighteen years ago) link
I can empathise with this, having felt similar things around the same age when I started to get interested in "literature" (not having been interested in much except girls, beer and playing in bands in my late teens). Ulysses was definitely part of that: I was quite dazzled and slightly obsessed by Joyce for a time and read everything about Ulysses I could get my hands on - although there were other infatuations that hit me just as hard or harder (Rilke, Wordsworth, Lawrence). I think at bottom though there was the idea that if only I could grasp this stuff properly there would be an almost spiritual enlightenment at the end of it (I was fascinated by neoplatonism and similar rubbish). Joyce, more a aesthete and less of a would-be sage than the others, probably looks like a slightly awkward fit here, but he was pressed into service all the same.
― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 10:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― literary critic, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 10:48 (eighteen years ago) link
sorry the ship of theseus
― the late great, Monday, 31 July 2023 15:45 (one year ago) link
Trigger's broom, like
― Stevo, Monday, 31 July 2023 19:50 (one year ago) link
I'm reading the Odyssey at the moment, and thinking about rereading Ulysses afterwards, to understand how the parts match. I used to just think that Ulysses was taking an archetypal epic and turning it into everyday modern life, but wow, the Odyssey is much weirder than I thought. The Proteus story, for instance, is a weird little tale inside a tale.
― Frederik B, Monday, 31 July 2023 20:51 (one year ago) link
the ending is very different - bloom chooses compassion and empathy, seeing the excitement of the early stages of romance with molly - mirrored in molly’s exciting infidelity with blazes boylan (does she notice his exemplary humanity? idk depends how you interpret the last bit of the last chapter)
odysseus goes john wick
― the late great, Monday, 31 July 2023 22:14 (one year ago) link
frederik the “tale within a tale” thing is what the professor called “novel of everything”
other examples are like divine comedy, decameron, canterbury tales, arabian nights (ayyo pier paolo), don quixote, balzac’s books, moby dick etc
i think the idea is it’s purporting to show “the broad sweep of humanity” through these episodes. idk if that idea has any traction but it’s key (or was in my prof’s mind, rip) to why he chose a story about a spectrum of human folly vs something like oedipus rex, which might be focused on just hubris etc
― the late great, Monday, 31 July 2023 22:25 (one year ago) link
he* being joyce, choosing specifically odyssey over say iliad or antigone
― the late great, Monday, 31 July 2023 22:29 (one year ago) link
so for him it was not just an archetypal epic but a very specific certain sort of one.
we talked a lot for example about about how it (ulysses, don quixote) is sort of like a bildungsroman (another “archetypal epic”) but also not actually a bildungsroman (that was portrait of the artist anyway)
― the late great, Monday, 31 July 2023 22:31 (one year ago) link
Right, and the 'everything' in The Odyssey is a lot weirder then I suspected. The world is still steeped in trauma from the Trojan war - nobody can have a conversation without mentioning someone who died there, it seems - but it's also at the cusp of it becoming history. A new generation, including Telemachos of course, weren't there. They just still live with the aftermath, with Ithaca still being in chaos, and the whole thing begins with news that Orestes has FINALLY slain Aighistos and avenged the murder of Agamemnon. It's like a time of anarchy is closing, but also a time where the heroes saw wonders and magic in strange places - including Menelaos meeting and capturing Proteus.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 10:35 (one year ago) link
My standard line has been that these sort of Modernistic 'everything' works - Ulysses, Proust, The Waste Land, The Cantos - are trying to put the world back in order after WWI, but Joyce seems more complex. I read Finnegans Wake last year, and I got the feeling that it was quite significant that it was begun at the time of the Irish Civil War. I'm wondering if it means something, that Joyce is writing Ulysses and FW while Ireland is going through it's birth, which is traumatic, but in extremely complex and evershifting ways as well. He never really makes order, he creates shapeshifting and ever-changing worlds, where order is always fleeting and still fought over.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 10:39 (one year ago) link
That is, he seems more postmodern than modern already.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 10:42 (one year ago) link
loling at repeated use of "hey, presto" in the bull chapter
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 11:14 (one year ago) link
xp to frederick that's getting into the part that they reserved for the follow up class. this was like an upper division "interest check" class for a senior seminar taught by the same guy that you might take if you are considering entering "joyce studies" or "irish lit" ... and so he really focused more on situating it in modernism vs getting in-depth into the cultural history parts (which i believe they did in the follow-up)
i do remember the professors pushed the line that it is not the "birth" of modern ireland, it is the "rebirth" of an irish heritage, in the same way that modern day zionism purports to be a rebirth of the original jewish state (and which, in their own ways, both bloom and stephen walk away from, then spiral back into)
― the late great, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 20:15 (one year ago) link
or, if you prefer, spiral out of, into (yes) a world wider than our (his) experience of modernity
― the late great, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 20:16 (one year ago) link
one of the big hurdles in oxen of the sun is wondering why all these young men have chosen to go on a massive bender in a maternity hospital.
― organ doner (ledge), Friday, 2 February 2024 14:59 (seven months ago) link
Heh
― Al Green Explores Your Mind Gardens (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 2 February 2024 15:02 (seven months ago) link
A couple of them are students there iirc
― glumdalclitch, Friday, 2 February 2024 16:17 (seven months ago) link
yes, and on shift, and the others are paying them a visit. it's not wildly implausible, but still odd. it honestly was a factor in me giving up on my first attempt many years ago, without any online guides. sure the language was the main thing but i just didn't have a handle on the big picture. they're having a big piss up? but they're in a hospital?
― organ doner (ledge), Friday, 2 February 2024 16:48 (seven months ago) link
I imagine the standards of the day were somewhat different
― wang mang band (Noodle Vague), Friday, 2 February 2024 17:57 (seven months ago) link
Lol
― Al Green Explores Your Mind Gardens (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 2 February 2024 17:58 (seven months ago) link
Boys but don’t think I don’t know what you are about in that hospital of yours!
― Al Green Explores Your Mind Gardens (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 2 February 2024 17:59 (seven months ago) link
I read it at 16 without any guides too and yeah, they are necessary for any number of reasons. But I still enjoyed the headiness of it all. On my recent reread I availed myself of Harry Blamires, Jeri Johnson etc. Cleared up loads of mysteries.
Re the hospital, I don't know, my assumption is that as it's a teaching hospital there are facilities/spaces for the students to eat and drink (and even board as well?), and as NV indicates, the kind of status that male students had in those days, and the leeway they were given, is rather different from today; so the place feels halfway between a college and a hospital, essentially. I could look up what took place at Holles Street Hospital, but this is what i take from it, and I trust Joyce is not inventing it.
― glumdalclitch, Friday, 2 February 2024 23:27 (seven months ago) link
To me Scylla and Charybdis feels more incongruous, the other fellas are clearly not all that interested in what Stephen has to say, they have stuff to do, and yet they indulge him in his monologue. I very much doubt Stephen cannot see their bored or unamused expressions, but he ploughs on, probably trying to impress AE. I feel Joyce's desire to express his Shakespeare theory trumped his sense of the veridical, and he knows someone would likely have told Stephen to pipe down.
― glumdalclitch, Friday, 2 February 2024 23:51 (seven months ago) link
“After 10 attempts at reading and completing James Joyce’s magnificent ‘Ulysses’ and only making it to page 10 each time, on attempt number 11, I finally did it! Hallelujah! ‘Ulysses’ should be a real inspiration to anyone interested in breaking the rules in any art form.” -Ron📚 pic.twitter.com/m0Hhdavi6y— S P A R K S (@sparksofficial) April 26, 2024
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 30 April 2024 10:23 (four months ago) link
He finally made it to page 11. Now for the rest of it.
― I've left the box of soup near your shoes (Tom D.), Tuesday, 30 April 2024 10:27 (four months ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOO5S4vxi0o
― Billion Year Polyphonic Spree (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 30 April 2024 14:32 (four months ago) link
well that may inspire me to pick it up again
― Are you addicted to struggling with your horse? (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 30 April 2024 15:28 (four months ago) link
"The Lady is Lingering" on Indiscreet borrows some lines from a Henry Miller book, Ron can make something out of literary inspiration.
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 30 April 2024 16:10 (four months ago) link
Nearly done with Circe. Honestly a bit underwhelmed this time around. The connections to the Odyssey don't really add that much, without that the structure falls a bit apart. And without the structure, it seems like a bunch of experiments brought together, and some of them work a lot better than others. Those that work, though, are obviously incredible, I''m not hating. But reading Finnegans Wake two years ago was a bigger experience.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 1 May 2024 11:46 (four months ago) link
I've never managed to make it very far in the Wake.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 2 May 2024 15:38 (four months ago) link
tbf neither does the Wake
― Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 2 May 2024 16:35 (four months ago) link
I keep finwake as an open window on my phone and re-read bits of it when I have time. The annotations are great. I like to read it aloud to myself, half the enjoyment is in the mouthfeel of it
― your dog is fed and no one cares (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 2 May 2024 20:34 (four months ago) link
what annotated version are you reading on your phone?
― default damager (lukas), Thursday, 2 May 2024 20:41 (four months ago) link
I told a Joyce professor I met that I was afraid of the Wake, he laughed and said "be afraid. I've spent 50 years programming myself to read this book." So that was encouraging.
― default damager (lukas), Thursday, 2 May 2024 20:44 (four months ago) link
Two things I took away from the Wake:
1) Even though all the words stayed mostly incomprehensible throughout, it's often easy to grasp the tone/discourse of the text. If it's a lesson, a flirty conversation, if it's satire, elegy, mystery, etc. So in some way you can just float along, and get an emotional experience out of it. And enough things recur to get a sort of grip on a sort of plot.
2) Nobody understands Finnegans Wake anyway, so you're free to just make up your own interpretation. While Ulysses seems a lot more settled, the meaning of Finnegan's Wake is still up for debate. To me, it seemed to be about the Irish Civil War in a lot of ways. Or something like that. About trauma, the way so much modernism is about trauma, but a very different trauma than WWI.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 2 May 2024 21:35 (four months ago) link
finwake [dot] com!
The book comes alive when you read it aloud to yourself, it’s as much music as it is text
― your dog is fed and no one cares (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 2 May 2024 22:26 (four months ago) link