Joyce, a true great?

[burntpunk]

Haven read Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I deeply enjoyed them and can see why many regard Joyce as one of the Literature Gods.

Other than the obvious, I've struggled to pinpoint what quantifies his brilliance. Any ideas? Don't state the obvious.

[oopsycandy]

LOL Ive not got a clue!! Is he brilliant?? I must admit to never having read either, I did attempt Ulysses about 8 years ago but it was just word goop to me and I was constantly flicking to the notes that explained what the references where to, which made it unreadable.

I have recently bought another copy of it though and am going to give it another go.

An interesting topic but not a very helpful reply I know! Sorry :D x

[caliban]

Though I haven't read those two famous novels you mentioned, and I always wanted to, I did read 'The Dead', a short story collected in his Dubliners. Pardon me if this is obvious, but what struck me most is the way he employs English as a melodious language, the result of his meticulous positioning or ordering of words.

[PeterL]

You would have to read Ulysses to see why he is considered truly great.

[JBI]

You would have to read Ulysses to see why he is considered truly great.

More like, "reread" Ulysses.

[Mr Endon]

More like, "reread" Ulysses.

Yes; I've read more than half of it once (the coursework has a pace to which one must submit, however grudgingly), and my guess is that it takes one read to understand that he is a genius, and at least two + secondary reading to understand why he's a genius.

[mortalterror]

James Joyce is an excellent argument for bringing book burning back into fashion.

[Dr. Hill]

I'm not a fan of Joyce. I believe there is something to appreciate, but I'm not one to appreciate it. I think, personally, that it takes much more skill to write like Tolstoy than it does to write like Joyce. Realistic scenes are more difficult to hold together, as a writer, than surrealistic ones. While I understand Joyce's prowess, I'm not one to laud him as a writer.

[Mr Endon]

Dr. Hill, your point is well taken, and I second it. Actually, James Joyce, as T.S. Eliot, stands for everything that I dislike in literature: self-indulgent pretensiousness in the form of an encyclopedia-like writing style cluttered with references to an incredible number of sources in languages that the author sometimes doesn't even understand. However, I can see that they are great masters of the English language, capable of doing whatever they want with it.

It may have been an excruciating experience at times, or at least an uneven one (as I was reading Ulysses I was bored, then intrigued, then annoyed, then delighted, then enraged, etc.), but his genius is, I think, irrefutable. By checking the famous schemata as I read the text itself I realised its intricacy, its suggestiveness and resonance with myth and tradition, and got a glimpse of the systematic genius behind that elaborate literary apparatus that is Ulysses. Thus even though it's not my favourite kind of prose at all I'm more than willing to give his famous novel another go.

[kelby_lake]

Some of the stories in Dubliners were good, but I think there are better writers than him and I think at least half the people that claim to like him don't understand a word of it.

[quasimodo1]

Like some other posters above, I've been told Joyce is a genious since a freshman at Catholic University, a religion that at one time banned some of his writing. Portrait of the Artist is one of the great books. The Dubliners as well. Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake were for the critics I suppose. Joyce's personal life was a mess, afloat in alchohol much of the time but still there is something of the genious, for sure. Don't think I would have liked the man. The short story from the Dubliners, "The Dead" is in my opinion his best writing. Why he remains the unwavering choice for undergraduate forced reading is a mystery to me. q1

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

I am in love with Joyce as he is my favorite writer and am certainly biased in regarding him as one of the best writers to ever live. Of course he's not. If someone asked me who are I'd suggest Proust or Dostoevsky over Joyce, but I have never counted him out. But I'll tell you why I like Joyce so much. I do because there is obviously this esoteric knowledge to his books that one gains through thorough rereads, which I like. I enjoy the security, knowing I'll never read the same book once, heh. His major works (Portrait, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake) stand as three of my favorite novels. I've met brilliant people through these (actual people, and characters too I suppose...) and the ideas present in the novels are what titillates me, as in this idea of recirculation and the transition of spirit into society (met him pike hoses...) or vice versa. One could pull out many different things, whether it be a beautiful passage of prose ubiquitous to our lives or some obscure allusion, of out his works which I know you cannot do with other writers. Joyce to me is more of a celebration of literature instead of some dour realist with a hard on.

[stlukesguild]

Actually, James Joyce, as T.S. Eliot, stands for everything that I dislike in literature:

As someone who has declared something of an obsession for Samuel Beckett, I'm surprised that you dislike Joyce. There are few instances of one writer as clearly influenced by a predecessor than in the case of Beckett and Joyce. I must admit that I share your ambivalence... the feeling of being bored one minute, intrigued the next... irritated... infuriated... and then delighted and enthralled.

[stlukesguild]

I think, personally, that it takes much more skill to write like Tolstoy than it does to write like Joyce. Realistic scenes are more difficult to hold together, as a writer, than surrealistic ones.

I'm not certain I agree. Perhaps I might agree that it is no easier to write well in a realistic manner than in a Surrealistic manner (and I don't know that I'd call Joyce a Surrealist)... but I don't think that what Joyce achieved is something that anyone can pull off easily. Actually... when it comes down to it I don't imagine that such a comparison actually says anything. Tolstoy could no more write like Joyce than Joyce could write like Tolstoy. Their writing "styles" owe everything to who they were, how they were educated, when they were active, and what their intentions were. I don't imagine Joyce coming to the decision one day that he'd like to write in a difficult, convoluted, and esoteric manner.

[JBI]

James Joyce is an excellent argument for bringing book burning back into fashion.

So is Seneca (snore!).

[JBI]

I think, personally, that it takes much more skill to write like Tolstoy than it does to write like Joyce. Realistic scenes are more difficult to hold together, as a writer, than surrealistic ones.

I'm not certain I agree. Perhaps I might agree that it is no easier to write well in a realistic manner than in a Surrealistic manner (and I don't know that I'd call Joyce a Surrealist)... but I don't think that what Joyce achieved is something that anyone can pull off easily. Actually... when it comes down to it I don't imagine that such a comparison actually says anything. Tolstoy could no more write like Joyce than Joyce could write like Tolstoy. Their writing "styles" owe everything to who they were, how they were educated, when they were active, and what their intentions were. I don't imagine Joyce coming to the decision one day that he'd like to write in a difficult, convoluted, and esoteric manner.

It makes no difference - Joyce has had his copycats, and Tolstoy has had his - the difficulty is irrelevant, as, quite obviously, if you are writing like Joyce (who, by the way, was read and had direct influence on The Waste Land, which is in part based on Joyce's manipulation of a myth as a structuring device) or Tolstoy, who supposedly has had countless Russian copycats, you probably aren't that great a writer to begin with. Joyce could not write Tolstoy, and Tolstoy could not write Joyce, the actual comparison is rather ridiculous, as both artists put countless hours of effort into their work to make them work, and both are great in their own way.

Zola, for instance, had a whole a generation of copycats, that imitated his style, and were taught by the master themselves. Except for a select readership, namely my former professor, and a few specialists in naturalism, no one has heard of them, and will. No one listens to Richard Wagner's son, Siegfried's operas.

[quasimodo1]

Jaded by Joyce, bored by Seneca, ... What's next...suicide by Shakespeare?

[stlukesguild]

No one listens to Richard Wagner's son, Siegfried's operas.

Of course a great many listen to Mahler, Richard Strauss, Anton Bruckner or any number of other composers who were deeply marked by Wagner. Wagner was as inescapable or unavoidable to those who followed in his wake as was Picasso in the visual arts. It all comes down to what (and how well) the follower does with the source of inspiration.

[JBI]

Like some other posters above, I've been told Joyce is a genious since a freshman at Catholic University, a religion that at one time banned some of his writing. Portrait of the Artist is one of the great books. The Dubliners as well. Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake were for the critics I suppose. Joyce's personal life was a mess, afloat in alchohol much of the time but still there is something of the genious, for sure. Don't think I would have liked the man. The short story from the Dubliners, "The Dead" is in my opinion his best writing. Why he remains the unwavering choice for undergraduate forced reading is a mystery to me. q1

That's actually not hard to see - generally, he remains the greatest stylistic innovator of his time period. He is a great introduction to a great deal of the literary forms of his generation, and in terms of structure, has had profound influence on the novel as a whole after him. There is no Faulkner without Joyce, and I think, understanding Joyce makes it easier to understand Faulkner.

There is also the fact, that there are more undergraduates in English and literary studies than are needed, and universities try to at least bring a little difficulty to the table, in order to find who actually is able to read and who isn't (and to be honest, more people cannot read and write in even the top schools than one can image). I have written essays that I thought were rubbish, gotten good marks, meanwhile the average was still a C+. In truth, the average is always C+ in virtually every course in my university (probably the best, or second best for English in Canada, though there are about 4 universities which are of an excellent standard as comparable to Ivy League schools) and so, one wonders what the poor paper writers are actually penning. When the work gets too easy, because quite simply, people who read modern novels aren't challenged that much, I think professors like to throw in some tricky things in order to bring a little challenge to the course - and the choices tend to be rather obvious.

Joyce's Ulysses, for instance, is difficult, and also unsparknotesable if someone wants to write a good paper. Faulkner, at least some of his works at least, too is a good choice as is Rushdie's Midnight's Children. In essence though, most of my fellow students tend to be groomed completely toward prose, and mostly toward novels, which doesn't really even make one fit to talk about literature, as novels are perhaps the most accessible, and least understood forms. When the novel gets good, generally it is because of the elements that much up with poetry. However, to get at poetry, it seems that one needs to know what they are talking about, or have a course only in poetry, in order to get to that point. The novel though, especially these novels, use poetic elements to create a narrative - the narrative aspects then, are recognizable by the readers who don't read outside of narrative, whereas the poetic - high rhetorical - elements of the text, are often misunderstood or ignored, at the cost of marks. Rather than completely be unfair then, they throw these out to sort of cull the flock.

Quite simply, Ulysses is the poetry of prose. The Portrait of The Artist though, is generally looked at first (at least where I study), and that seems more accessible as an introduction to complex forms, apart from simplified forms that dominate most of the discussion in coursework.

You'd be surprised how people fall apart while reading such work - it's completely alien to them, because they can't get at the concept of form, the way a poetry reader can. In truth, when my classmates in first year, who were taking the first year narrative course (one which I didn't take, as I didn't like that it didn't have any poetry in it) were made to read Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, most couldn't handle it - the form was too poetic, such forms of narration were completely foreign - the setting unstructured was against all realistic sensibilities of narrative, and quite simply, I doubt any of those people wrote about that text on the final.

Joyce is difficult, but I think he makes more sense if you are a poetry thinker, rather than a novel thinker. After all, the concepts he seems to have taken from Homer are not really the narrative concepts, but are more often the poetic aspects, the metaphor, and mythic - the demonic parody (to use Frye's term) and the ironic - generally, the sense of Homeric metaphor, as appropriated into the modernist setting. When people see the NewsPaper heading style in Ulysses, I think they freak out, whereas I think a poetry reader, who is used to form-playing, and gimmicks of that sort can just read over it, and understand it more, and question more the effect of such a device, and how it relates to the text.

Seriously, if all people read were easy texts, things would be silly. Generally, I'm surprised most English courses where I study are as easy as they are - I could come up with most of the content in the lectures that people somehow cannot grasp - get me a good proff teaching a hard text any day over that, in terms of enjoyment. The best course I have ever taken, had a long essay due about one section in Eliot's Four Quartets, discussing how it relates to the structure as a whole. Virtually everyone chose from East Coker, most taking section 2 or 3. I think one person took Little Gidding 3, and I, from what I know, was the only person to use The Dry Salvages (the professor didn't allow us to use Burnt Norton, as it technically was not considered in the structure of the poem as a whole when it was written and published separately at first), and of all the passages, the fourth section, which is probably the least straightforward, and most subtle of all the passages (though there are cryptic moments throughout the whole quartets, the briefness of The Dry Salvages 3 makes it quite easy to miss). The person who did Little Gidding and I both got great marks, the rest, with our marks included, ended up with a c+ average, which is around a 67-69, meaning that people probably were around 65.

People don't want the same old, and the simple - they want a difficult, and complex reading, in a difficult and complex work. Looking for the easy route doesn't cut it, and can't cut it, and I guess Ulysses being taught merely speeds up a selection process. If you can't read complex works, then what good are you, in terms of potential for being an academic - and no offense to those who can't read Ulysses, he isn't meant to be read like that, and wouldn't have considered himself as writing for a casual audience. His goal, it would seem, was to stretch the limits of everything, so that people would be challenged to confront his innovations for years and years to come - his goal was not for people to read his book by the fireplace. There is gold in there, but it takes a certain type of reader to really get it, and to really appreciate it - not saying that type of reader is necessarily better, but that type of reader, it would seem, is able to think more abstractly about the use of language.

I understand this seems problematic, but I think the work generally is one designed to be reread, rather than read. The first few times you read a section, you get what is happening - then things start making sense, the jokes start surfacing, the little gags and metaphors start coming out, and things become enjoyable to some - to others, things are terrible.

It's like The Waste Land really. Some can't stand it, but quite simply, it cannot be dodged. The wasteland is perhaps easier, because there are little footnotes for everything, and it's only a few hundred lines long. But when reading it, you can't get the Waste Land, for instance, the first few times. It took me, for instance, a good 30-40 reads before the actual power of the text began to poke through (coincidentally, it helped that I no longer needed the footnotes, which are a distraction). It's similar with Joyce, except that the length is longer, which makes it far more daunting, and also the footnotes are missing, and the structure harder to grasp.

[Brave Archer]

I don't know where his greatness ranks, not my favorite, but I have read Portrait, Wake, Dubliners, and Ulysses. It is hard to say how I feel about a writer how set out to confuse his readers, lol. I guess I would say he was a brilliant mind, and a master of language, but I don't know that he was the best of his generation.

I do love the ending of Portrait, and it is one of the few books, that when coming to the end, was wishing that as I turned the last page, more pages would pop up.

[quasimodo1]

I guess there's not much of an argument that Joyce is a power in literature; I have no problem with almost all of your points, JBI. I make a point that if a genious almost destroys his family, uses them for the greater good of genious achieved...doesn't that taint the art in some way. Apparently, even Siddhartha left his family to their own devices to achieve enlightenment. A pointless progression at this point in history but an issue for me. Curriculum, if honestly employed, ought make clear these facts.

[mayneverhave]

As Eliot is my favorite poet, and Joyce among my favorite novelists, I cringe slightly to hear their names thrown into the mud.

Joyce and Eliot are interesting in that they both hold very lofty standings in 20th century literture, yet produced a fairly small amount of work. Joyce had, what, 3 major novels, a collection of short stories, a play, and some poetry - and in the popular realm, he is famous primarily (along with Eliot) for his immense difficulty - at least this was how I was introduced to him.

I have admittedly not gotten around to reading either Dubliners or Finnegans Wake, but I would place Ulysses at a level far higher than A Portrait, simply because of its scope, its virtuosity, its philosophical explorations, and its emotional pathos.



It's like The Waste Land really. Some can't stand it, but quite simply, it cannot be dodged. The wasteland is perhaps easier, because there are little footnotes for everything, and it's only a few hundred lines long. But when reading it, you can't get the Waste Land, for instance, the first few times. It took me, for instance, a good 30-40 reads before the actual power of the text began to poke through (coincidentally, it helped that I no longer needed the footnotes, which are a distraction). It's similar with Joyce, except that the length is longer, which makes it far more daunting, and also the footnotes are missing, and the structure harder to grasp.

I agree with you here - but would like to add that although Joyce didn't go so far as to annotate his novel himself, others have taken the opportunity, and a fairly large amount of extraneous material exists to aid in a reading of Ulysses, far beyond anything Sparknotes is capable of. That aside, as there are moments of clarity and simplicity in The Waste Land, Ulysses is not constantly difficult. Admittedly, the second half of the novel (specifically the Oxen of the Sun and Circe episodes) was somewhat daunting, but the first half of the novel (although more difficult to understand than, say Hemingway) was hardly that difficult. Joyce's sensory skills and ability to conjure up the cityscape of Dublin, and his abilities as a narrative psychologist are ignored, and only the difficulty is focused on.

Here is a slight excerpt from [Calyspo]:

The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high.

- Mkgnao!

- O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.

The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.

Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see: the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.

- Milk for the pussens, he said.

- Mrkgnao! the cat cried.

They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.

This is hardly difficult reading. It is a beautiful rendering of a middle class Irishman's morning routine, as he bends down to look at his cat. Along the way, we see the processes of Bloom's mind: his scientific, rational nature (often pushed to clearly incorrect and comical conclusions), and his obssession with rear ends). All of these details are built on and developed until Bloom becomes one of the most developed and knowable characters in literature.

The problem with stating "Ulysses is a hard novel" is that the style of Ulysses changes often from chapter to chapter (sometimes within a single chapter), so it is impossible to make one general statement regarding the novel's style. The Telemachiad is easy, as is the first half of the actual Odyssey. The Nostos section, while difficult, is fascinating (particularly the question and answer, catechism style [Ithaca])

[JBI]

No one listens to Richard Wagner's son, Siegfried's operas.

Of course a great many listen to Mahler, Richard Strauss, Anton Bruckner or any number of other composers who were deeply marked by Wagner. Wagner was as inescapable or unavoidable to those who followed in his wake as was Picasso in the visual arts. It all comes down to what (and how well) the follower does with the source of inspiration.

His son though, was a direct copycat supposedly - same style and content and everything, though perhaps without the Richard umph.

[JBI]

I guess there's not much of an argument that Joyce is a power in literature; I have no problem with almost all of your points, JBI. I make a point that if a genious almost destroys his family, uses them for the greater good of genious achieved...doesn't that taint the art in some way. Apparently, even Siddhartha left his family to their own devices to achieve enlightenment. A pointless progression at this point in history but an issue for me. Curriculum, if honestly employed, ought make clear these facts.

Biography has no bearing - some of the worst people have been the best artists. That's the staggeringly dark thing about art - it has no real morality, and is often amoral, yet somehow, it still is beautiful. I think that is what is behind the novel Lolita, for instance. The content is revolting to any civilized, normal person, yet the artistry in which it is executed makes the text compelling beyond belief, to the point where you cannot put it down. You should be disgusted, yet the art is presented in a way that is aesthetically riveting.

Now, when dealing with biography, that is ignored. It is arbitrary - useful for content, but useless for valuing. Are we going to toss Alice in Wonderland out because Lewis Carrol had a thing for little girls? Of course not, and even though it is possible that a "Snark" could actually be a nymphet (I think the text supports such a reading), we will still read the poem, as it, artistically, is masterfully done.

We have a tendency to read works of art as works of the artist - that is the way it has generally been done, with the exception of brief periods. But I think, generally, along similar lines as Eliot, with mixed features of other thinkers - that the Art needs to be read as a product of its tradition, against its contemporary compositional setting. We overemphasize what we call the "genius of the author", at the expense of reading the work. Shakespeare was a genius, but he is invisible - Homer is essentially invisible, Eliot is perhaps the most invisible of modern poets (though some say his voice is the weak sounding man in The Waste Land section 2, and his wife the woman), Dante reconstructed himself in his art, as did Borges - the actual reality of the author isn't really important, outside of a frame of understanding. The moral character, however, is completely irrelevant to the text, as you aren't reading that, you are reading the text itself.

Out with Cicero for morality; besides which, can we safely say that Socratic conceptions of sexuality are considered perverse to our culture? perhaps Socrates though, isn't extreme enough - Sophocles made it until 90, and probably was involved with people barely pubescent if. What bearing does that have though? We will steal read Oedipus Tyrannus, and we will still read Plato (who had his share of boy-toys), and we will still read. Cicero is still read (though I think his readership is finally waning).

[Mr Endon]

As someone who has declared something of an obsession for Samuel Beckett, I'm surprised that you dislike Joyce. There are few instances of one writer as clearly influenced by a predecessor than in the case of Beckett and Joyce. I must admit that I share your ambivalence... the feeling of being bored one minute, intrigued the next... irritated... infuriated... and then delighted and enthralled.

You've been paying attention! ;) Yes, but, you see, Beckett's own obsession for Joyce started waning in the 1940's and was successfully overcome by the 50's. He eventually declared his new direction in writing to be the opposite of Joyce's:

[t]he more Joyce knew the more he could. He's tending toward omniscience and omnipotence as an artist. I'm working with impotence, ignorance

And yes, it's funny how many moods one undergoes when reading Ulysses, the whole affair's very exhausting.

[kelby_lake]

You'd be surprised how people fall apart while reading such work - it's completely alien to them, because they can't get at the concept of form, the way a poetry reader can.

Joyce is difficult, but I think he makes more sense if you are a poetry thinker, rather than a novel thinker. After all, the concepts he seems to have taken from Homer are not really the narrative concepts, but are more often the poetic aspects, the metaphor, and mythic - the demonic parody (to use Frye's term) and the ironic - generally, the sense of Homeric metaphor, as appropriated into the modernist setting. When people see the NewsPaper heading style in Ulysses, I think they freak out, whereas I think a poetry reader, who is used to form-playing, and gimmicks of that sort can just read over it, and understand it more, and question more the effect of such a device, and how it relates to the text.


I don't quite understand what a novel thinker is- do you mean someone used to reading straight-forward literal narrative?

I guess I'm a theatrical thinker? In the sense that I can analyse and appreciate literary devices to an extent, but I look for a strong drive in what I read.

[JBI]

I don't quite understand what a novel thinker is- do you mean someone used to reading straight-forward literal narrative?

I guess I'm a theatrical thinker? In the sense that I can analyse and appreciate literary devices to an extent, but I look for a strong drive in what I read.

The bulk of the readership in this world, does not read poetry. The bulk of undergraduates I have encountered, have only encountered poetry in high school classrooms. To really understand poetry requires a mode of thinking outside of the novel, as the forms and devices are quite different - especially in later poetry. One, for instance, does not look for the reliability of the poem's narrator, as the poet is always crafting an unreliable projection (if he is any good at least). One does not look for the "setting", in the sense that one would when reading a novel, or for the characters, and the plot. Generally, one is more inclined to look for the metaphors, and the images, and other tropes, and examine how they play together, and how the sound of them together constructs the poem; one looks for "how the poem means", as the meaning in the poem is derived from its process, instead of its exclamations.

Joyce works in a similar vein really - the actual plot of each episode is on the whole, rather minimal, and it is the exchange of words and thoughts that come spilling forward - and also images and and stylistic devices - that really craft the story. I think a novel reader is trained instinctively to look at what is going on, and to explain it in terms of "why does this happen", whereas a poetry reader is really trained to construct what is happening, by looking at the exchange between words.

A drama reader would probably be more trained to look into the consciousness of characters, as what is going on, from my understanding of drama, is overtly presented, and the power of the drama lies within the elliptical psychology of the characters (and how the actors construct them). That is a very important training (one which, perhaps, I am lacking in), but it probably won't do much when reading Wallace Stevens - it's a whole other train of thought.

Joyce, deep down in side, I would argue was a poet (though his poetic work is essentially all rubbish) Ulysses reads more like poetry, and Finnegans Wake has very little novel, or prose in it, and reads like one long, disjointed, obstructified poem. look at these schema that Joyce and critics have crafted for understanding the composition of each chapter: http://www.ulysses-art.demon.co.uk/scheme.html ; these, if they are to be believed (and I haven't read the text against all of them, though I think Joyce himself to an extent can be trusted) would seem to imply a compositional emphasis that functions more like poetry than a novel.

[JCamilo]

Joyce is difficult, but I think he makes more sense if you are a poetry thinker, rather than a novel thinker. .

I think I want start from here, because since the momment prose took over the place of poetry, the prose writers tried to work with the language to recover the complexy of the poetry language. Prose is not a "plain language" as it was in the XVIII century. And Joyce is the guy who better did it, in the form of Romance or Novel. He would be an awesome poet, the way he places the words - they not just combine, but the sequence always seems to be the perfect sound in the perfect order - but he lived in the XX century, poetry, much less "epic" poetry was something outdated. So, his ambition - giantic, but it is needed and the amazing thing is that he didnt failed - lead him to Ulysses and FW.
Understanding Joyce is not important (even because anyone claiming a fully understanding of him will probally be mocked) to like him. I do not think any writer (or if any, perhaps only Dante) could explore language possibilities as much as Joyce did. With him, it seems like a single word - and I am not talking about the crafted words, they are just a consequence of this - is a book on itself. While they are part of a whole, the individual sentences seems to be an individual story. Much of difficulty (mine, of course) of reading Ulysses is the difficulty to focus. It was not hard to lift the eyes from the paper and started to drift, because the power of one sentence. I can not think about encyclopedias (even with Joyce using a lot of research), because I think the multi-reference work is not the most relevant aspect of his work. I think of Biblical, in the sense that it is a book with many books within. I do not even consider that relevant the possiblity of reading out of order that exist in FW (and actually in any book), like the Cortazar's Hayuellas, because even in the proper order, Ulysses and FW are constantly bringing other books - some possible and some that exists. No wonder, FW seems to be written only to be read by Borges and he, like Joyce would point out, failed. Borges short stories have the same effect.
After Joyce, I think it is needed a considerable talent to insist on Novels and Romances. The guy did what was possible with Ulysses and then, FW, that is more a elegy for the genre. The final return all written just like Keats name. Content, form, substance, style, everything meeting in one single product.
As for the argument to burn books, I never knew they are out of fashion. Fire and pages always seemed to get along so well...

[mortalterror]

I understand this seems problematic, but I think the work generally is one designed to be reread, rather than read.

I re-read Dante. I re-read Shakespeare. When I re-read Joyce, my contempt is only deepened.


It's like The Waste Land really. Some can't stand it, but quite simply, it cannot be dodged. The wasteland is perhaps easier, because there are little footnotes for everything, and it's only a few hundred lines long. But when reading it, you can't get the Waste Land, for instance, the first few times.

I got The Wasteland immediately and responded to it on an instinctual level, the same as I did with Hemingway and Beckett. On a certain level they just resonate with my experience and I understand intuitively what they are trying to do. Over time, as I've studied them, I've cleared up a few details but the message was always coming through loud and clear and I can't say that I enjoy them any more than when I was first introduced to them. I think that reaction, that natural affection, is something you can't teach and which can't be learned. I know a lot more about Virgil and Milton than I did when I was first introduced to their work, but I'll probably never really like them.


Cicero is still read (though I think his readership is finally waning).

I'm half way through De Oratore right now, and I'm probably going to hit up Invention and the Philippics before the end of the year. And by the way, he talks about dividing parts of speech the way that poets do. Demetrius, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus also outline rules for the proper writing of prose in ways reminiscent of poetry. I haven't finished my Quintilian but I wouldn't be surprised if he had a few choice things to say on the subject. Let's not pretend that this poetic prose or detailed composition is anything new that Joyce invented. This stuff goes back to Corax at least, and I don't think that poets have a monopoly on that kind of thinking.

Oh, and you might remember that we had more or less the same discussion in May of last year. I actually did some outside reading to help bolster my arguments and I still have some notes and quotations taken from Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle that I never got to use. I don't feel like going too in depth and writing an essay around these, but I still find most of his insights authoritative, profound, and at least worth the mention.

p166 I do not think that Joyce has been equally successful with all these technical devices in Ulysses

p166 It has always been characteristic of Joyce to neglect action, narrative, drama, of the usual kind, even the direct impact on one another of the characters as we get it in the ordinary novel, for a sort of psychological portraiture.

p168 Ulysses suffers from an excess of design rather than from a lack of it.

p171-2 If we pay attention to the parodies, we miss the story; and if we try to follow the story, we are unable to appreciate the parodies. The parodies have spoiled the story; and the necessity of telling the story through them has taken most of the life out of the parodies.

[JBI]

You took what I said about Cicero out of context - I was merely pointing toward his politics, and lack of any sense of morality that we would consider normal. As for his style, and rhetoric - he was merely using the poetic illusions that are made possible with metaphor, and clever language playing and implying them on a political level. Poetry is a great deceiver - metaphor in itself is always a lie, and the manipulation of ideas and sounds is a process in which the poet is able to deceive the readership. That's as good as fact - Cicero merely used Latin rhetoric for a certain purpose, but as a poetic force, I don't think we particularly would like much of that in contemporary reading. The closest thing in the English language to Cicero is probably Abraham Lincoln, and he was no poet. Obama right now is showing signs of that sort of grandeouse rhetoric that Lincoln favored, but from parsing his rhetoric, it seems he relies on only a few tricks, notably, ellipsis, parallelism of clauses, and repetition, with the casual indulgence in anaphora, and anadiplosis. He also likes to throw out epanaleptic phrases, and the occasional chiasmic catch phrase, but on the whole, parallelism and ellipsis seem his most favored techniques.

This is perhaps the perfect example of his rhetoric, "We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." It's no new, but it is a nice touch; the double metonymy with the parallel clauses. Of course, nobody questions what the metonyms mean, or what exactly is meant by "We" and "you", which, by means of the rhetoric, and transposed as "hand" in essence, a peace offering, and "fist", a violent gesture of hateful warmongering. The parallelism only enforces this comparison, by systematically grinding it into a comprehensible binary, and facilitating a false dilemma. Compared to his predecessor's "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" he comes off as the more subtle rhetorician, but the point is rather similar, except that the desired effect is altered slightly to deceive better, rather than overtly displaying the huge logical slip in itself, and the crummy emptiness of the statement.

But that isn't poetry, that is politically rhetoric. Political rhetoric is designed to be invisible, and sway without the audience knowing they are being duped. Readers of poetry, I would argue, know what they are reading is a lie. They indulge in it though, because it is an enjoyable lie; metaphor is deceptive, but for a brief moment, when experiencing a strong metaphor, the lie is able to become a truth within the reader's head.

That's generally how Joyce works. He likes to have fun within a constructed reality, and play with everything to create an effect. The rhetoric is always questioned, yet is a lot of fun if that is what you like to read. Nobody forces people to read Ulysses, unless they are studying it, and if you are studying it, you need to cope, since, quite simply, we can't all read exactly what we want all the time.

The text has had a significant enough impact to ensure its place historically for a long time.The debate is ultimately futile, as I think I have demonstrated elsewhere, as the artists themselves have chosen Joyce as a hero. Whether a general readership likes him or not is of no concern, in the scheme of his genius - and either way, high school kids are given Araby or other stories, so he isn't all that incomprehensible - his short stories are probably as important as Hemingway's in the scheme of literature, at any rate. The question comes down to his two later works, more often than not, and quite simply, anything either of us will say will change anything. He isn't going anywhere any time soon, and he can't. Anyone interested in modernism, is ultimately interested in Joyce. anyone interested and working closely in theoretical work outside of cultural criticism, will ultimately come across Finnegans Wake sooner or later.

Besides which, the amount of energy you put into bringing Joyce down would make it seem to one that you have a secret crush on him. Perhaps it comes from the fact that people are more want to discuss the difficulty of Joyce, as apposed to the text of Joyce. It would be interesting, actually, if we got a good reading group going, but knowing how my school work is going, I highly doubt that being possible for me at least at the current moment.

Out of the whole Ulysses though, I'd say about 5-8 of the episodes are particularly difficult. Finnegans Wake is difficult, beyond belief, all the way through (though they have a decent e-text of it up now with clickable annotations which facilitates things greatly). The first 3 episodes of Ulysses are not particularly difficult, at least, no more than As I Lay Dying, or Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion. It's actually quite surprising, really, that you have it in for Joyce so much - if anyone is supportive of keeping classical traditions alive, it was him. But alas, he can't please everyone, and would probably laugh at you if he were here, such is his humor.

[mortalterror]

But alas, he can't please everyone, and would probably laugh at you if he were here, such is his humor.

If he did I'd punch him in his good eye, or I'd contrive to sic my dog on him in a thunderstorm.

[Lynne50]

Has anyone heard about the scandal with the Oxford professorship of poetry. It seems that Derek Walcott was going to get the honor, but then another poet named Ruth Padel ( a descendant of Darwin), another candidate, started sending derogatory emails to try and smear Walcott. Seems Walcott had in his past a couple of sexual harrassment claims against him that were never prosecuted. Padel admitted sending the emails, so has taken her name out of contention and Walcott is completely uninterested now.
I didn't know poets could be so cutthroat. I guess we have to wait and see who will finally accept the post. I like the way the Philadephia Inquirer's writer, John Timpane, finished his column. " Stay tuned. Seldom has the poetic world known such suspense, or tasted such bile."

I originally posted this in one of the poetry sites, but someone thought it would have been better to post in General Literature.

[Sweep]

It's many years since I read Joyce. I must admit I read him when I was young enough to have heard about unreadable books and feel I really needed to read them.

But what stays with me is something that tends to get lost behind Joyce's difficulty - his humanity.

In Portrait we have the careful sorting through of religious indoctrination, political pressurings and so on, and the winning through to some kind of clarity of vision. The humanity may not be so noticable here, but there's a belief that clarity of vision is important, and by implication people's freedom to percieve and experience is important.

In Ulysses though, there's an acceptance of people even in their silliness, degradation, confusions and so on. And the whole book ends on the affirmation of life not of an intellectual, or even a reflective thinker, but of a woman of limited education and intellectual activity. Joyce isn't really about difficulty and intellectualism, but about people in all their aspects.

That's even more true of Finnegans Wake, where contemporary notions such as the Freudian view of the human situation are taken up and celebrated. Again, it isn't about intellect. It's a perfectly average and normal Irish publican whose unconscious life reflects both the all too human problems of ageing and sexuality and the wider issues of connection with the rest of the human race. The dreamer of the book may be an ordinary person with some dubious sexual issues related to anxiety about ageing and so on, but his very ordinary experience matters to Joyce, and he believes that should also matter to the reader. The dreamer of the book and his wife and family belong to the human race and partake of all of it - every turn of history, every aspect of being human, even every river and feature of the world.

If that doesn't make Joyce a great writer on both an epic and a deeply human level, I don't know what would.

[kelby_lake]

That's generally how Joyce works. He likes to have fun within a constructed reality, and play with everything to create an effect. The rhetoric is always questioned, yet is a lot of fun if that is what you like to read. Nobody forces people to read Ulysses, unless they are studying it, and if you are studying it, you need to cope, since, quite simply, we can't all read exactly what we want all the time.

We can all play around with words and write things that no one understands.

I'm sort of a poetry reader in that I'm used to abstract, metaphorical, tragic drama- therefore I can look beyond the literal- but literature should be for a purpose. What is the purpose of Ulysses? If it has no purpose, why don't I just type out all the different names of cereals and publish that?

[JCamilo]

As if Joyce didnt had a purpose and as If the only reason why Joyce is hard to be understood is his language games. Soon we are going to burn down Kafka, Dante and Borges because everyone can also write short stories, poems, etc. but their poems, short stories and novels are hard to be understood, despite the clear language they use.

Ulysses is hardly the only work that have more than one reading possibility, that asks for a reader with a reference guide at his side, that appeals to the contraditory. Plus, hardly any writer was so dedicated to a vision (his purpose) like Joyce in the XX to the point he changed the form of reading. Just because his purpose is an enigma, does not mean there is no purpose.

[leobloomsbury]

I'm not a fan of Joyce. I believe there is something to appreciate, but I'm not one to appreciate it. I think, personally, that it takes much more skill to write like Tolstoy than it does to write like Joyce. Realistic scenes are more difficult to hold together, as a writer, than surrealistic ones. While I understand Joyce's prowess, I'm not one to laud him as a writer.

you ignore the idea that joyce's writing, and that of modernism, is far more realistic than tolstoy's. joyce was able to detail the inner workings of the female mind in the penelope episode, and indeed the interior thoughts of bloom and daedalus throughout the entirety of ulysses. joyce's style is simply the only methodology available to communicate such a vastly natural subject. realism masked by seemingly obscure styles does not equate surrealism.

[leobloomsbury]

We can all play around with words and write things that no one understands.

I'm sort of a poetry reader in that I'm used to abstract, metaphorical, tragic drama- therefore I can look beyond the literal- but literature should be for a purpose. What is the purpose of Ulysses? If it has no purpose, why don't I just type out all the different names of cereals and publish that?

you are a classical scholar lost in a modern and post-modern world of literature, it might be best for you to flee.

[JBI]

you ignore the idea that joyce's writing, and that of modernism, is far more realistic than tolstoy's. joyce was able to detail the inner workings of the female mind in the penelope episode, and indeed the interior thoughts of bloom and daedalus throughout the entirety of ulysses. joyce's style is simply the only methodology available to communicate such a vastly natural subject. realism masked by seemingly obscure styles does not equate surrealism.

No, he was able to create the illusion of trapping their thoughts. They are constructs, yet his construction is designed to deceive us into believing we are hearing real thoughts. Try, for instance, repunctuating Penelope, and you will find it a lot less insightful - still insightful mind, but more like a Browning monologue than anything else. By removing the grammar though, Joyce was able to deceive people, into believing we are hearing the half sleeping thoughts of a woman reflecting on her day, and life. It's a clever gimmick, but it is a gimmick, as all the "realistic" bits are gimmicks. There is nothing real, but the beauty of his style is able to make us believe, for a brief time, that these are what real thoughts "sound" like.

[mayneverhave]

No, he was able to create the illusion of trapping their thoughts. They are constructs, yet his construction is designed to deceive us into believing we are hearing real thoughts. Try, for instance, repunctuating Penelope, and you will find it a lot less insightful - still insightful mind, but more like a Browning monologue than anything else. By removing the grammar though, Joyce was able to deceive people, into believing we are hearing the half sleeping thoughts of a woman reflecting on her day, and life. It's a clever gimmick, but it is a gimmick, as all the "realistic" bits are gimmicks. There is nothing real, but the beauty of his style is able to make us believe, for a brief time, that these are what real thoughts "sound" like.

But since words are only symbols of real objects, and language is always to some degree suggestive since it can never be absolutely precise, "realism" in the strictest sense is impossible. Molly Bloom's monologue only resembles or suggests the inter workings of a human mind, but of course it very well isn't - 1. because the mind does not necesserily work as it is portrayed, and 2. Molly Bloom does not exist.

The stream of consciousness is not used throughout the entirety of Ulysses, as some may think, but is used sparingly throughout the first two Parts of the novel (the Telemachiad and the Odyssey), and then is used completely in the [Penelope] episode.

Throughout these earlier episodes, the inner monologues are constantly at mix with descriptions of exterior occurances:

Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.

It is through these mental asides that the majority of the comedy and pathology of the novel arises. It is only in the final episode that the exterior world is completely forgotten, and the stream of consciousness dominates the text.

As for the actual stream of consciousness. Consider this passage from The Sound and the Fury:

Just by imagining the clump it seemed to me that I could hear whispers secret urges smell the beating of hot blood under wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and see evil done for a little while its not always and i it doesnt have to be even that long for a man of courage and he do you consider that courage and i yes sir dont you and he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more importance than the act itself than any act otherwise you could not be in earnest and i you dont believe i am serious and he i think you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm...

Whether fictional Quentin Compson actually thinks like this or not is irrelavent. I for one, even during occasional neurotic periods, never think in "and he..." or "and i...", so in that sense, Faulkner has failed to capture the workings of how at least my mind works. This does not matter, as the textual stream of consciousness is only suggestive of the interior workings of thought, and not the thought itself.

That aside; the problem with this thread is that the detractors of Joyce are merely writing him off as a mere propagator of word games, a virtuouso of language with no other agenda other than to mess with readers. Not enough are using actual textual examples to make their points, and I doubt many of them have even read the novel. With Ulysses, it is not enough to simply pull any one section out and take it as a microcosm of the novel. Each episode is sui generis, subject to its own style, structure, rules, and literary goals.

[JCamilo]

Altough JBI point stands, calling Joyce a realist is stretching the word meaning. He is more close to the magical realists, but of course, those guys didnt used a language that seemed to be unreal, rather a sittuation that was unreal, while Joyce often was talking about the trivial happenings. It is not bad to forget that Lewis Carroll is very relevant to Joyce and he is not a realist by any means.
And yeah, hardly any work have a stronger structure and organization than Ulysses or even Finnegans. Joyce didnt spend more than a decade creating enigmas, but working with those gimmicks to be part of the structure and purpose of the work. Finnegans have a strong philosophical meaning, it is hardly to believe how this can be ignored.

[Dr. Hill]

you ignore the idea that joyce's writing, and that of modernism, is far more realistic than tolstoy's. joyce was able to detail the inner workings of the female mind in the penelope episode, and indeed the interior thoughts of bloom and daedalus throughout the entirety of ulysses. joyce's style is simply the only methodology available to communicate such a vastly natural subject. realism masked by seemingly obscure styles does not equate surrealism.
It's not seemingly obscure, it is obscure. His writing borders on nonsensical, and while it can be seen as realistic because people are nonsensical, which is the only argument in Joyce's favor I can think of, Joyce is not doing the job of a writer. He is not giving us what we need to analyze, digest, and understand his work. He is being facetious, and I'm sure he would admit to it himself. The genius may be there, and no one can argue that he didn't have a command over the English language, but I, personally, don't care for his style.

This is my opinion, of course, but I think that Joyce is overrated to an immense degree, due to the fact that so many are perplexed by his style. People give him more attention than he deserves, and his ideas, writing, and prowess as a genius are not as grand as they are made out to be. His fame is due mostly to his obscurity, I think.

[Mr Endon]

Fair point, Dr. Hill. Admittedly, his obscurity does attract me somewhat. Curiously enough, though, it's not any obscurity that does. Gertrude Stein, for all her merits, doesn't appeal to me at all, and yet Joyce does. I wonder why...

[JCamilo]

what fair point? Since when a writer must give tips of interpretation and since when Joyce does not give enough? For god sakes, Ulysses is named Ulysses to rub in the face of everyone that Odissey is a model for this work. Being obscure is hardly "not literature" unless you consider literature Paulo Coelho and writing only the plain obvious...

It is not Joyce, but Chekhov who made his character saying that hard is not to write, but hinding what you wanted to write. I doubt any writer spawned more interpretations researches in the XX century than Joyce and he is not doing a writer job, what prententious idea - prententing a dude that is read for a century is not doing a writer job.

[kelby_lake]

you are a classical scholar lost in a modern and post-modern world of literature, it might be best for you to flee.

I wish I was a classical scholar but indeed I'm not. I just hate the idea of bootlicking certain authors as if we just have to accept their brilliance and bow down to them.

I have a phrase for the theatrical equivalent but it's too indecent.

[Dr. Hill]

He's read for a century because college professors can't figure him out.

[mayneverhave]

He's read for a century because college professors [I]can't figure him out.

I can't help but feel this statement is made from some degree of ignorance. I don't want to make any assumptions regarding whether you have actually read Ulysses or not, but obviously it would be unwise to judge the merits of a book (especially a book as myriad minded as this one) without having actually read it. Well, you can make such statements, but I wouldn't regard them as very well justified.

Ulysses is a techinically difficult and challenging book, but to regard it as merely (as I've said in at least two posts that have been entirely ignored, as this one will undoubtedly be) as the excersises of a linguistic virtuoso would be to cut the novel (and what you can take from the novel) short.

The bringing together of hundreds of diffirent sources, the mythologies of various mythologies, and the juxtaposition of differing literary styles is the fundamental aspect of Joyce's goals as an artist. Check out Eliot's essay on Ulysses - Ulysses, Order and Myth.

Also, one cannot ignore the pathological factors at work in the novel. Bloom's anxiety over his being cuckolded, Stephen's alienation from society, Joyce's constant and playful attack on windy-rhetorical journalism (which makes even more sense in today's society), and all this brought together in affirmation, the final "Yes" of Molly Bloom's soliloquy. It is the antithesis of The Waste Land.

[Mr Endon]

That's a solid argument for his defense, mayneverhave, and I wholeheartedly agree.

JCamilo, I didn't say obscure equals non-literature, nor do I support such claim; I was just pointing out that Dr. Hill brings up an interesting idea, that some people hail him as a great man because they figure that, since Ulysses reads as something so obscure, he must be a genius (the man is obscure, i.e. you have to do elaborate mental gymnastics and secondary readings to appreciate the novel, I think we can agree on that).

Of course, I would only add that, contrary to Dr. Hill's claim, most of his admirers see through the 'pan-linguistic' smokescreen and can truly appreciate his writing and defend Joyce's claim to genius with reasonable arguments, like mayneverhave did.

[JCamilo]

No worries, Mr Endon, I was just following the conversation, the aim was indeed Dr.Hill claim and his answer to my post shows it hit the target. Someone is upset because didnt understood Ulysses...

As Mayneverhave said, reducing either Ulysses or FW to just language games and tricks is ignorning several other elements - which included philosophical and aesthetical elements that Joyce - in the best tradition of Wittengstein - didnt explained, but pointed to it. Joyce wrote during the first half of XX, it is ridiculous to expect him the clear and logical language of Flaubert (even if Flaubert is one of his influences). The XX century discovered that, no matter how clear the words are, communication is always flawed. Then you have a guy who obviously could write with the most clear english in the universe and he just sacrifices this all - because when a great writer is creating style is substance (hence, complaning about his ego, ambition, etc is ridiculous. Great Writers are daring and want people to bow to his texts).
But of course, you could say this is obscure. I agree that Joyce demands much from his writer. Talking about Ulysses - that still presents the possibility of literal reading (altough it is poorer reading, but even Dante Comedy allows this possibility, and I must say, when I read it for the first time, I enjoyed it and I had not understanding of that work, so I must say, we may enjoy a text without understanding it) - he demands because his ambition is making reference to the entire literature before him. He is crafty and can create sentences that are ambigous. Ok, the fully capacity to graps Ulysses may be more enjoyable to some and may turn the average reader away from this work, but it is not a best-seller. It is not Dan Brown, and there is a public (not just professors) who enjoy it. One reader is enough to point that Joyce was clear. Obscurity lies in the view of the reader.
Of course, FW is another story. It does not allow any literaral reading - at least not easily. Hence the previous references with poetry. But I read it, I do not understand other languages but english, spanish and portuguese. I knew the basic plotline, because as great books, FW lives outside his own boundaries, but I hardly claim I fully understood it. (Neither it is my aim. Joyce is not among the writers which I want to dedicated a deep study because my lingustic knowledge are not big enough. So I will always miss something about him). But I enjoyed it. Of course, you will say that does not make it less obscure, just more, but such is life. But the point is that Joyce obscurity is not born from wallet-words in 3 different languages. I think about Kafka and Borges, two of other obscure writers that are read for a century and I am sure, because scholars read it. Their language is not obscure, it is the concept behind the texts, the amount of significance they carry. I have made people read Borges and Kafka, without explaning a single thing about the texts, and I have seen people enjoying them. It is like complaning with Picasso for not doing typical and structured paintings. Gimmicks. FW have a strong structure, which is not just non-sense (only if apply the idea of non-sense as something surreal, which can also be applied to Carroll, Chesterton, Breton, Bataile, Cortazar, Kafka. )
All and all, since not even Dante or Shakespeare are universally accepted (some people will complain about gimmicks as well) it is only natural that Joyce is not. But the simple fact we can have this thread shows there is more things between Ulysses and Finnegans than our vain understanding.

[Tsuyoiko]

Joyce to me is more of a celebration of literature instead of some dour realist with a hard on.


Joyce's sensory skills and ability to conjure up the cityscape of Dublin, and his abilities as a narrative psychologist are ignored, and only the difficulty is focused on.



The bringing together of hundreds of diffirent sources, the mythologies of various mythologies, and the juxtaposition of differing literary styles is the fundamental aspect of Joyce's goals as an artist.

These three comments pretty much sum up why I think Joyce is a true great.

I read A Portrait years ago and thought it was OK. Reading that doesn't give you much of a clue as to why Joyce is considered 'difficult' though.

I'm a fair way through Ulysses now, and I'm finding it a fulfilling experience. I'd say with some reservation that I'm enjoying it. It's a positive experience, but a very challenging one.

The thing that bewilders me most is the sheer quantity of allusions. I just can't imagine how someone could retain such a vast knowledge of literature, mythology, folklore and popular culture, and then apply it so appropriately.

I'm reading with the help of a study guide, and also a guide to the allusions, and I'm learning so much it definitely enhances the experience. I've been able to recognise a few of the allusions on my own, and that's a nice sense of achievement :D

Underneath all the allusions and stream of consciousness stuff, there is a nice, simple storyline. Also, I think the characters are drawn very well. We can see into Bloom's and Stephen's souls of course, but I think some of the incidental characters are nicely done too. The way Lenehan always says 'thank you' in a silly way reminds me of someone I can't quite place, and the way the guys in the pub discuss Bloom behind his back is so real; each has his own distinct voice. You can tell as a chapter starts whether it's a Bloom chapter or a Stephen chapter by the way it sounds in your head.

Bloom has to be one of the best characters I have ever come across. He's just a nice guy. The way he thinks so fondly of his wife, even though she's cheating on him, always thinking of little gifts to bring her. It's so sad how he keeps remembering his dead son. His kind thoughts about the pregnant woman. Helping that blind guy across the road. And the way he gets this sudden sense of panic when he sees someone he doesn't want to speak to, I can totally relate to that :D

I'm only up to Scylla and Charybdis at the moment, and I know it gets a lot harder. But I'm getting so much out of this book that I'm determined to finish it.

One vote here for Yes, Joyce is a true great :D