I've heard how gifted and influential this author was, yet I couldn't get very far in Ulysses. It's very referential and I need a dictionary on hand for every other sentence. Should I keep it up? Or should I revisit the book later in life? Why is he so revered?
No. 1. There is so much great literature to read, I don't see the point in keeping at a painful project. ... unless you belong to a fun book club that has vowed to read 20 pages at a time. The Wikipedia summary will provide the main themes. 2. Do read the short story "The Dead" in The Dubliners so that at least you have a little Joyce under your belt. Memorize the last line of that story. It will come in handy during snowfalls or moments when someone is being snotty and you want to remind them of your equality. 3. Agree that Joyce was important in his time for experimentation. If you like experimental prose, there are plenty of modern-day experimenters that you might find more readable. 4. Just in case someone says to you, "yes, yes, I will yes" listen to these excerpts from Molly Bloom's soliloquy that ends the book. If you must read Joyce, start with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I haven't read it yet, but would like to someday.Should I keep it up?
So something might read as sort of crappy, but at the time it was revolutionary. I think this is why I found On The Road unremarkable, but so many others thought it was great.3. Agree that Joyce was important in his time for experimentation. If you like experimental prose, there are plenty of modern-day experimenters that you might find more readable.
This is important. A lot of writers are still considered brilliant because they wrote what they wrote at a particular historical moment.
I think this is why I found On The Road unremarkable, but so many others thought it was great.
I think On The Road is one of those books that can be wonderful based completely on when you read it. I read it just prior to moving away from home to travel across country and live in Montana. It dovetailed perfectly with where I was at and what I was doing. I doubt I'd find it nearly as compelling if I read it for the first time now.
The Dubliners is my favorite of Joyce's work. I've read that, Portrait of an Artist..., and parts of Ulysses, and the short stories are the only ones I felt compelled to finish purely out of interest. Joyce is super dense, and there's a lot of other reading to be done if you're not enjoying it. Dubliners is, in my mind, fantastic. Especially The Dead, as you have already stated.
I read first parts above the embedded video, and it seemed natural to read it quickly through, as if the lack of punctuation compels me to talk without stop. And I got a feel for the ecstasy of a neurotic woman being proposed to by someone who understands her and she says yes, yes, I will yes. I'll settle for knowing about something if I can't know it proper, like reading the wikipedia summary of Ulysses, but I feel that's a poor stand-in for truly knowing. I'm tired of reading an abstract of everything, I feel like I'm missing out too much. I think a good idea is to keep reading, pushing the limits of your understanding, and maybe I'll be able to enjoy Joyce in the future.
I see that one of your favourite books is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I bought it and got about half-way through, but it didn't really compel me to read on. I will pick it up again as people keep talking about it, but I still do not understand the lure of it. It's possible that the books that I couldn't put down are put-downable by someone else.
For example, I was completely taken by Oracle Nights and The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster. I recommended them to a friend and she was turned off/disgusted by his use of the word Chinaman - I think - to describe a man who owned a book store. Whoops -but I feel that's a poor stand-in for truly knowing
of course it's a poor stand-in for being so grabbed by a book that it must be finished ... but if the first 100 or 200 pages don't grab you and it's a slog, I don't see how reading on will give you a feeling of getting why other people were grabbed by it.
One thing to remember is that just because something is labeled as great or classic, it doesn't mean that you will necessarily find it so. Like others have said, it is important to note that at one time a lot of these "great works" were revolutionary ideas that upset or enamored quite a lot of people. At the end of the day, they are still works of art and the success of a piece must lie within the viewer. If it doesn't resonate, then it doesn't work. From my own experience with Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man I can say that I could see that literary forms were being played with, explored and constructed, but I do not remember a single line from the book. It didn't resonate with me. In fact, I don't really care for a number of those Modernist guys, in all realms of literature. That too, is a part of the progression of artistic movements and it's what drives people to create the kind of literature, art and music that they want to in order to define the eras in which they live. If you read criticisms those Modernists wrote about the generation that preceded them, it's as if no one of any literary merit other than their heroes had ever existed.
I know that mk read Ulysses and had mixed feelings about it. Any advice mk?