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Ulysses

Started by Dannyhood91, March 16, 2018, 06:25:06 PM

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Quote from: biggytitbo on May 09, 2018, 11:59:30 AM


Its "Ulysee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ees"

Its me nono small robot you know

newbridge

Quote from: buttgammon on June 21, 2018, 03:33:39 PM
Completely agree on the 19th century influences; for what it's worth, I think Joyce engaged far more with that tradition than he did with his contemporaries, and that's coming from someone who is a big fan of modernism. He didn't seem to think much of Proust when he met him, he had virtually no contact with surrealism and Dadaism and even with friends who championed his work like Pound and Ford, there is very little evidence of Joyce taking as much interest in their work as they did in his.

Of course, we can keep going back and finding more and more influences on Joyce (obvious stuff like Sterne, Vico and Bruno, but also people like Defoe, Swift and Goldsmith). One of my favourite things about Joyce is the fact that so much of his stuff - particularly 'Oxen of the Sun' and Finnegans Wake forms a history of literature in miniature.

Sterne, definitely. The O.G.

Hobo With A Shit Pun

Quote from: dr Johnson  on June 21, 2018, 03:33:39 PM
Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last

Ha! Suck it, Johnson. We are all Sterne's children now.

buttgammon

On a side note, has anyone here read Lucia, Alex Pheby's new novel reimagining the life of Joyce's daughter Lucia? I have, and I'm still not sure whether I liked it or not. It seems designed to piss off Joyce's notoriously litigious estate (no bad thing), but it feels as though the book became a bit too sensationalist to achieve this. That said, Lucia's life in fascinating, and part of the fascination is simply how little we know about her; most of what we do know is seen through the eyes of others, and the book demonstrates this well.

newbridge

Quote from: Hobo With A Shit Pun on July 12, 2018, 11:51:38 AM
Ha! Suck it, Johnson. We are all Sterne's children now.

Certain sentences can only be read in a Mark Corrigan voice.

gilbertharding

Quote from: saltysnacks on June 14, 2018, 09:11:11 AM
One thing I will say, it sounds obvious, but don't read anything you are getting nothing from. Reading should be a pleasure, it can be a difficult pleasure, but if it is difficult without being a pleasure, it becomes miserable. I use a very broad definition of pleasure here. I love Ulysses and have probably spent more time reading it out of order and just perusing than chronologically.

I can't find out who said it (in spite of hearing it on Quote Unquote), but I think it's mostly true: "There are only two reasons to read a book. For your own pleasure, or to impress someone."

I thought I might manage Ulysses on the latter account, but never have - and anyway I'm past wanting to impress anyone.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Hobo With A Shit Pun on July 12, 2018, 11:51:38 AM
Ha! Suck it, Johnson. We are all Sterne's children now.
I wonder how many people read it, still. In that vein, I reckon "Finnegan's Wake" might be the most bought-started-abandoned-and-left-on-a-shelf-for-people-to-notice book of all time.

Black Ship

I struggled through "Finegan's Wake".

It is the literary equivalent of chewing a handful of dirt and broken glass and you want to swallow but your throat is too dry.

buttgammon

I really like Finnegans Wake, but it's taken an (arguably excessive) amount of effort to get to the point where I can really appreciate it, and I still have no idea what's happening half of the time. I think the best approach is to read it in conjunction with something which explains the 'plot' (I like Joseph Campbell's A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake) and then, if you'd like a closer look, to get a copy of Roland McHugh's annotations, which decode and explain a lot of the language in the book. McHugh goes through it page by page, so you can leave it open while you're reading; my approach has always been to open the Annotations on the relevant page and then leave my copy of Finnegans Wake open on top of it.