New Author V.S Author SHowdown: Proust VS Joyce VS Faulkner

[Alexander III]

The Dante VS Milton thread has died down, so I figured time for a new one, to get the post x-mass celebrations going. So let's have a modernist stream of consciousness threesome. Proust Vs Joyce Vs Faulkner, who is the best ?

[stlukesguild]

Dante!



:D

[mortalterror]

Since I can't abide Joyce or Proust's nonsense, I'm going with Faulkner.

[hanzklein]

Well, I would say Joyce. Ulysses is a book that will change your life if fully read and comprehended but is also the most difficult read in the whole of literature. Faulkner to me just comes off as a cheap knockoff of Joyce, though still a good writer in his own merits.

[stlukesguild]

Seriously the question is which writer is the best and as much as I admire Faulkner I don't believe he rivals either Proust or Joyce (although he most assuredly is no cheap knock-off of Joyce) who most certainly are the two towering figures of early 20th century prose. Choosing between these two figures I must go with my personal preference for Proust.

Ulysses is... the most difficult read in the whole of literature.

Personally, I found Finnegan's Wake far more difficult. I also must question whether difficulty or inaccessibility is inherently a sign of literary merit (for or against).

[hanzklein]

Seriously the question is which writer is the best and as much as I admire Faulkner I don't believe he rivals either Proust or Joyce (although he most assuredly is no cheap knock-off of Joyce) who most certainly are the two towering figures of early 20th century prose. Choosing between these two figures I must go with my personal preference for Proust.

Ulysses is... the most difficult read in the whole of literature.

Personally, I found Finnegan's Wake far more difficult. I also must question whether difficulty or inaccessibility is inherently a sign of literary merit (for or against). I've read some of Faulkners works (and enjoyed them), but that's how it just comes off to me. When I read that he actually read Ulysses and loved it, I viewed his work differently.

Finnegans Wake is much easier, in my opinion. You aren't expected to know what the novel is actually 'about', and it is written in a beautiful language which makes the activity of reading it even fun, to an extent. Inaccessibility is also not a sign of literary merit.

[laymonite]

I cannot fairly weight Joyce against the others, as I have only read his short fiction in The Dubliners (a gap which I plan to rectify this year with Finnegans Wake and Ulysses). So, between Proust and Faulkner, I am leaning toward Proust. I just re-read over notes I took down while reading the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time, and, yeah, Proust's level of delicate yet strong detail, his contribution to psychoanalysis (Proustian, or Involuntary, Memory), and his powerfully constructed digressions outweight anything I've experienced with Faulkner. Though Faulkner has taken me by storm now and then with his writing (I'm thinking of moments toward the end of Light in August and almost all of Absalom! Absalom!), Proust's insights and aphorisms, embedded throughout his seminal work overshadow my favorite Southern Gothic novelist.

[JBI]

It's said that Joyce and Proust once met, neither having read the other's work, and basically just said hi, nice weather and went their ways - we can learn from that, that not every work should be compared, much less reduced to "which is better."

The whole notion of evaluating three authors whose works are so related and yet so different is rather absurd. Simply put, Ulysses is the odyssey of a day, whereas In Search of Lost Time the odyssey of a life, and Faulkner's mature work, generally the odyssey of a dynasty, and to an extent, a cultural history.


IF this is about Stream of Consciousness, then perhaps we aught to just discuss that, before yelling out "he is better, he is better." seems rather silly as all of these authors were quite different from each other.

[Alexander III]

It's said that Joyce and Proust once met, neither having read the other's work, and basically just said hi, nice weather and went their ways - we can learn from that, that not every work should be compared, much less reduced to "which is better."

The whole notion of evaluating three authors whose works are so related and yet so different is rather absurd. Simply put, Ulysses is the odyssey of a day, whereas In Search of Lost Time the odyssey of a life, and Faulkner's mature work, generally the odyssey of a dynasty, and to an extent, a cultural history.


IF this is about Stream of Consciousness, then perhaps we aught to just discuss that, before yelling out "he is better, he is better." seems rather silly as all of these authors were quite different from each other.

I find your statement rather absurd, everything can be compared and I see no reason why various authors should not be compared. Should we not compare Keats and Pound because they are from two diverse movements ? Should we not compare Homer and Tasso because they lived in different epochs? Should we not compare Shakespeare and Dante because one wrote play's and one wrote epic's and lyrical poetry? The notion that certain authors should not be compared is ridiculous.

I wrote "which is better" because this is a light hearted discussion which looks upon the authors as a whole instead of dissecting them down, and besides everyone here knows what was and what was not implied by "better"

No one was yelling out "he is better, he is better!" everyone merely presents their case and when it is questioned they try to answer the questioner, I hardly believe the members of he forum need to be held by the hand.

Surely JBI, even you all-knowing and all-wise must have a favorite or certain partiality amongst the three ?

[JCamilo]

Comparing is not saying who is better, but it is rather hard to not think some irish wont kick a french *** in a bar fight :D

[JBI]

I find your statement rather absurd, everything can be compared and I see no reason why various authors should not be compared. Should we not compare Keats and Pound because they are from two diverse movements ? Should we not compare Homer and Tasso because they lived in different epochs? Should we not compare Shakespeare and Dante because one wrote play's and one wrote epic's and lyrical poetry? The notion that certain authors should not be compared is ridiculous.

I wrote "which is better" because this is a light hearted discussion which looks upon the authors as a whole instead of dissecting them down, and besides everyone here knows what was and what was not implied by "better"

No one was yelling out "he is better, he is better!" everyone merely presents their case and when it is questioned they try to answer the questioner, I hardly believe the members of he forum need to be held by the hand.

Surely JBI, even you all-knowing and all-wise must have a favorite or certain partiality amongst the three ?

Alright, lets take your idea now - we can compare things, almost anything, so lets take the idea of discussing which work is greatest, or discussing the works themselves/comparing in a way that doesn't seek to say which one is better the aspects of the respective texts we find interesting. In short, few people commenting have read all three of these authors, and better yet, fewer in their original language, and better yet, even for those who have, this discussion of who is better just wastes time when we could look and say, "what makes these texts so good?" Comparatively then, which thread would be better, if what we are doing is comparing? The thread just saying "I read him and only him so he is better," or the thread that actually says something.

[arrytus]

I think the real choice is between JOSEPH CONRAD v. WILLIAM FAULKNER v. CORMAC MCCARTHY.

But by the criteria of consistency and breadth of work as listed I chose Faulkner because I've read about a dozen of his books and only 'Sanctuary' left me disappointed.

Hard to go wrong with Proust though. Joyce I'm less thrilled about. I liked Ulysses but couldn't finish Finnegan's Wake. And I liked the early works but they aren't my favorites. He gets points for consideration of influence on the post-modern novel, which is either great or horrendous, and vis-a-vis Beckett, his famulus.

[Dimitra]

I really really don't like Joyce (haven't read him in english though)
but love Faulkner and Proust.From those two I voted for Proust,because when I was in a dark time in my life,it was only him and the beauty of his work that could reach me.He's my second favourite author.

[Patrick_Bateman]

Shamefully I haven't read anything by any of them.

[Babak Movahed]

Great poll man! Personally I believe Joyce is the master of point of view, which for those who don't know is the method by which stream of consciousness is conveyed, like when one thinks of Joyce that has to be the first thing that comes to mind. The evidence is in Ulysses, that book switches point of view multiple times just on the same page. You don't even have to read that monstrous work to figure it out, because by like page 10 Joyce has incorporated 3rd person limited, free indirect discourse, and interior monologue. He even uses seldom seen narration in the 7th episode with the way he embeds 4th person narration (narration by the media or press) by using headlines for paragraphs. I will admit that Faulkner's works have better plots and characterization, but in regards to stream of consciousness Joyce takes the cake.

[Babak Movahed]

Alright, lets take your idea now - we can compare things, almost anything, so lets take the idea of discussing which work is greatest, or discussing the works themselves/comparing in a way that doesn't seek to say which one is better the aspects of the respective texts we find interesting. In short, few people commenting have read all three of these authors, and better yet, fewer in their original language, and better yet, even for those who have, this discussion of who is better just wastes time when we could look and say, "what makes these texts so good?" Comparatively then, which thread would be better, if what we are doing is comparing? The thread just saying "I read him and only him so he is better," or the thread that actually says something.

I noticed your guys conversation, and to an extent I agree with you. To be honest, I personally haven't read Proust in French. However, I believe you're really attacking the semantics of thread's title. It is absurd to simply say "he is better" but comparing three modernists is far from ridiculous. Also to attacking comparisons amongst works is preposterous! Literary cross comparison develops better notions stylistic variations, thematic variations, and differences in genres. To put in perspective; how can only fully understand a dystopian work when he/she hasn't study any utopian works? If you recognize that their is merit comparing works, which you've implied in the quote above, then clearly you can understand that a comparison between these three serves some purpose. Simply because some people haven't read the works, or because the thread is worded perfectly doesn't mean its a pointless question. Besides I would assume that you would understand the subjective nature of the question. Just because some people choose to answer with "he is better" doesn't mean everyone is going to.

[Patrick_Bateman]

Great poll man! Personally I believe Joyce is the master of point of view, which for those who don't know is the method by which stream of consciousness is conveyed, like when one thinks of Joyce that has to be the first thing that comes to mind. The evidence is in Ulysses, that book switches point of view multiple times just on the same page. You don't even have to read that monstrous work to figure it out, because by like page 10 Joyce has incorporated 3rd person limited, free indirect discourse, and interior monologue. He even uses seldom seen narration in the 7th episode with the way he embeds 4th person narration (narration by the media or press) by using headlines for paragraphs. I will admit that Faulkner's works have better plots and characterization, but in regards to stream of consciousness Joyce takes the cake.


This post served only one purpose: to prove that you know different narrative modes.

"Who is the better author?" is the question.

[Jeremydav]

Joyce is without a doubt the greatest artist of the 20th century. (Said that expecting things to be flung at me from across the proverbial room). Nothing, for me, will ever compare to the feeling I had when I finished Ulysses.

[stlukesguild]

Obviously there is some doubt as to Joyce' status... otherwise there would be no debate. Nor would I extend discussions' of Joyce to the whole of ART ("Joyce is without a doubt the greatest artist of the 20th century.") where he becomes a mere "also-ran" in comparison to Picasso.

Patrick Bateman's criticism of Babak Movahed's comments is certainly valid. He argues that Joyce was the greatest innovator of formal narrative techniques (and certainly in terms of language) but questions whether these are proof of Joyce's artistic superiority. John Cage, for example, is surely far more "innovative" than Mozart or Bach... but there is little doubt as to who the greater composers are. Babak Movahed admits that Faulkner is greater in terms of characterization and plot, but that Joyce is the master of "stream of consciousness". Are we to assume that this innovative narrative technique is a greater measure of literary worth than plot or character invention and development... or any number of other literary elements?

The "stream of consciousness" technique strikes me as little more than a gimic in some ways... perhaps not unlike Cubism (which is why Picasso eventually abandoned true Cubism and returned to a style that might correctly termed Expressionism). I think part of Joyce's strength lies in his mastery with language. Proust, however, is equally masterful in terms of his language, which like Joyce, can verge on the poetic... albeit a poetry of a very different tradition. Proust seems to be building upon the French tradition of Symbolism with its rich sensuality as well as drawing from such "decadents" as Wilde and Pater (who were profoundly impacted by the French Symbolists). Proust is also a master of character invention and development to the point that he rivals Shakespeare, Dickens and other masters of character. Bloom is a brilliant character... but few of the others characters are in any way as fully developed... which of course is due to the structure of the work in following the "odyssey" of Bloom on a single day. One might also bring up the question of accessibility. Accessibility is certainly noy a measure of artistic merit... for or against. It is only a measure of merit in terms of how great a degree of aesthetic pleasure is derived from a given work contrary to its difficulty. There are many who are quite well-read and lovers of literature who still question whether Joyce is far too difficult... intentionally so... especially in Finnegan's Wake... in contrast to the aesthetic pleasure he brings. Proust is obviously far more accessible... the great difficulty of his work being simply its length... which is a poor criticism in light of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Hugo and any number of other writers. It also ignores the fact that like Scott's Waverly novels or Balzac's La Comédie Humaine, the novels can be read as individual works.

[JCamilo]

I wont talk much about Proust, having not read enough of him. But I think some differences are not really differences. Those 3 are very similar. The irish, the american, the french versions of the modern romance writer. All of them broke barrier, had masterful language, could carry a plot with a blink of their eyes, are master of languages and could develop a character more than others (after all, you can not even use stream without a proper development.) And you also add a couple of other writers in the batch.

What could make Joyce different is in my opinion his perpection of literature. Not that the others did not. But Joyce perceived that language, the novel form, was all transitory. He was giving a burrial to the form, not inovating it. While Faulkner Proust seems to be exausting with mastery a form, after Ulysses Joyce, did the step ahead. The difference is Finnegans Wake. The extra that come from it, the very fact of writing a book that since it was born was bigger beyond its page. It is Joyce who cleans the path for Pierre Menard (I always thought Borges initial repulse of FW was his traditionalist side refusing the death of the book - this format so necessary for Romance and novels - which was his own spirit).

As inovations, overall, art inovations only matter if they can be copied and used by others. Romances like Ulysses abound (and Stream, I would argue, was actually a russian invention, heck, the Underground Man is not a character, but a Walking Stream of Conciousness) and even the play-word game (which existed before too) was matched (and looked less artificial) by Guimarães Rosa. I really would think, Joyce importance is his path to Borges, his inovation was not to take to a extreme the language fluidity, something that happens naturally, but erradicate all tradition by excess and then praise it.

[hanzklein]

Obviously there is some doubt as to Joyce' status... otherwise there would be no debate. Nor would I extend discussions' of Joyce to the whole of ART ("Joyce is without a doubt the greatest artist of the 20th century.") where he becomes a mere "also-ran" in comparison to Picasso.

Patrick Bateman's criticism of Babak Movahed's comments is certainly valid. He argues that Joyce was the greatest innovator of formal narrative techniques (and certainly in terms of language) but questions whether these are proof of Joyce's artistic superiority. John Cage, for example, is surely far more "innovative" than Mozart or Bach... but there is little doubt as to who the greater composers are. Babak Movahed admits that Faulkner is greater in terms of characterization and plot, but that Joyce is the master of "stream of consciousness". Are we to assume that this innovative narrative technique is a greater measure of literary worth than plot or character invention and development... or any number of other literary elements?

The "stream of consciousness" technique strikes me as little more than a gimic in some ways... perhaps not unlike Cubism (which is why Picasso eventually abandoned true Cubism and returned to a style that might correctly termed Expressionism). I think part of Joyce's strength lies in his mastery with language. Proust, however, is equally masterful in terms of his language, which like Joyce, can verge on the poetic... albeit a poetry of a very different tradition. Proust seems to be building upon the French tradition of Symbolism with its rich sensuality as well as drawing from such "decadents" as Wilde and Pater (who were profoundly impacted by the French Symbolists). Proust is also a master of character invention and development to the point that he rivals Shakespeare, Dickens and other masters of character. Bloom is a brilliant character... but few of the others characters are in any way as fully developed... which of course is due to the structure of the work in following the "odyssey" of Bloom on a single day. One might also bring up the question of accessibility. Accessibility is certainly noy a measure of artistic merit... for or against. It is only a measure of merit in terms of how great a degree of aesthetic pleasure is derived from a given work contrary to its difficulty. There are many who are quite well-read and lovers of literature who still question whether Joyce is far too difficult... intentionally so... especially in Finnegan's Wake... in contrast to the aesthetic pleasure he brings. Proust is obviously far more accessible... the great difficulty of his work being simply its length... which is a poor criticism in light of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Hugo and any number of other writers. It also ignores the fact that like Scott's Waverly novels or Balzac's La Comédie Humaine, the novels can be read as individual works.

There is actually no real debate, the people who love Joyce are the ones who gave it all to read Ulysses, finished it, and perhaps studied it in some depth, and the ones who tried, and maybe the work just went right over there heads, even if they finished. I know of no one who who has read Joyce in depth that doesn't greatly appreciate him. There is even a mini cult around him and Leopold Bloom, its ridiculous.

And of course none of the characters are as fully developed as Bloom, youre literally in his uncensored thoughts for hundreds of pages lol. I would also say Stephen Dedalus, Gabriel COnroy, Bloom, Molly, Blazes Boylan, Buck Mulligan, Simon Dedalus (and much more) are great and strong characters in Joyce's work. There is an extra layer to all of these characters because most of them are based on real life counterparts Joyce knew, so reading about that provides even more depth. And many also appear throughout other works and are not limited to one story, so there is some kind of sense of a real world these characters live in.

As for difficulty, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake operate under a philosophy that I dont feel like going into at the moment, but you should know there is a purpose behind the difficulty: none of it is difficult for its own sake. This ties in to my theory that after Dubliners and Portrait, Joyce went on to try to make epiphanies in his readers rather than characters.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I haven't read Proust, but between Faulkner and Joyce, I enjoy Faulkner the most, but I think Joyce is the more skilled of the two. I voted for Faulkner hastily, as at the time I didn't read the criterion that we were voting on the "best" author. I should have voted for Joyce. Hell, maybe I shouldn't have voted at all having never read Proust, but, alas, what's done is done.

If I were to read Proust, what would a good starting point be?

[arrytus]

If I were to read Proust, what would a good starting point be?


He only wrote a few things if you consider ISOLT a single novel. His early short stories and essays and poems I've read and see no reason for but an adamant scholar or fan to familiarize themselves with. First part of ISOLT is the classic Swann's Way but it's probably best to purchase the entire novel in two volumes so you have a single translator, unless you can read french in which case like every book in its original language it's even better.

[arrytus]

I read an article about Joyce somewhere a few weeks ago in which it relayed a story about how Beckett, who was Joyce's famulus at the time since the latter was purblind, was dictating to the former and heard the doorbell ring and the latter, as the former hadn't heard it, shouted out 'Come in!' and the former wrote it down in the manuscript and when read back Joyce decided to keep it in as he liked it better that way. so river run....

anyway for my part i will only be satisfied if the vote is a tie cuz none of them deserve to come in last

[stlukesguild]

There is actually no real debate, the people who love Joyce are the ones who gave it all to read Ulysses, finished it, and perhaps studied it in some depth, and the ones who tried, and maybe the work just went right over there heads, even if they finished. I know of no one who who has read Joyce in depth that doesn't greatly appreciate him. There is even a mini cult around him and Leopold Bloom, its ridiculous.

What a pretentious twit. First you accuse myself and others of being poorly read because we disagree with your assertions regarding Milton, T.S. Eliot, and Joyce, and now you take this to the logical conclusion that aesthetic superiority of Joyce is of such an unquestionable and unassailable nature that only those who have not read Ulysses... or lacked the ability (unlike yourself) to fully comprehend it could possibly fail to see this. The possibility that someone might might be far better read and far more intelligent than yourself and still feel that Proust or Faulkner (or Kafka or Borges or Neruda for that matter) was the greatest writer of the 20th century, and not Joyce is beyond all of your comprehension (as profound as you would lead us to believe it is). No one here has even suggested that Joyce is not a great writer... although you might be surprised to discover that there are many quite lucid and intelligent individuals who quite readily do believe as much. It has only been suggested that writers as great as Proust and Faulkner might lay equal claim to the rather inane title of "greatest writer of the 20th century".

And of course none of the characters are as fully developed as Bloom, youre literally in his uncensored thoughts for hundreds of pages lol.

And did I not say as much? As such, the secondary characters are only developed to the extent of their interaction with Bloom.

I would also say Stephen Dedalus, Gabriel Conroy, Bloom, Molly, Blazes Boylan, Buck Mulligan, Simon Dedalus (and much more) are great and strong characters in Joyce's work.

How strong or well developed these characters are is debatable. I would not suggest that they are flat, one-dimensional characters, but neither are they as fully developed as any number of characters in Faulkner or Proust.

There is an extra layer to all of these characters because most of them are based on real life counterparts Joyce knew, so reading about that provides even more depth. And many also appear throughout other works and are not limited to one story, so there is some kind of sense of a real world these characters live in.

And yet Dante's "invention" of the characters Dante and Virgil in the Comedia are were taken to task as lacking any depth because they were based upon real-life persona? Personally, I don't think that it matters whether the character is based upon real-life or not. What matters is how real... or rather how memorable... and developed the character is as a literary invention.

As for difficulty, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake operate under a philosophy that I dont feel like going into at the moment, but you should know there is a purpose behind the difficulty: none of it is difficult for its own sake.

Well you certainly can't question that critical argument. Dante is the greatest author ever because he operates under a philosophy, the nature of which I am not at liberty to divulge... you must simply take my word for it... he reigns supreme. Sounds more Kafkaesque than Joycean.:D

[JBI]

Meh, how are you judging and on what scale? The greatest in terms of following would be neither of those, in terms of mass appreciation would be neither of those, in terms of subsequent influence on the letters and culture that followed? Still none of those. In terms of artistry? what does that mean, and how can that be proven?

In terms of modernists, the most influential and significant modernist would be the Chinese author Lu Xun, who is still the most influential figure in Chinese letters around and after his time. Is he the best artist? I wouldn't argue that, but he certainly was the most significant one I can think of (simply put, a billion more people read him over Joyce).

Then we have the argument toward aesthetics. What does that mean? when last I checked, that was completely unquantifiable. Much less arguable as to who is worth more.

As for the bit abut Joyce not being difficult for difficulty's sake, he himself would beg to differ.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Awww, damn. I love seeing Stlukesguild throw the smackdown on someone. As long as it isn't me, of course :).

[mortalterror]

Personally, I'd rather read Mrs. Dalloway than Ulysses, Lolita than In Search of Lost Time, and The Old Man and the Sea instead of The Sound and the Fury. If this were a poll to figure out who the best writer of the twentieth century were then you'd need to add a few more slots for Kafka, Marquez, Bellow, Kipling, Tagore, Mann, Hesse, Lagerkvist, Steinbeck, Camus, Pasternak, Mishima, Fitzgerald, Tanizaki, just in prose. At least O'Neill, Shaw, Beckett, Brecht, Pinter, and Pirandello for drama. Then Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Neruda, Lorca, Herbert, Stevens, Rilke, Milosz, Paz, Montale, Carducci, Walcott, Valery, Apollinaire, Perse, Heaney, Adunis, Pessoa, Gibran, and Eluard for poetry.

[arrytus]

In terms of modernists, the most influential and significant modernist would be the Chinese author Lu Xun, who is still the most influential figure in Chinese letters around and after his time. Is he the best artist?


I've got two books by him but I've yet to read them [the sweet and sour of having a backlog is the excitement of finding some new and inspirational perspective and yet the interminable discovery of finding you are still behind]. Could you tell me a bit more about him, or your favorite works of his?

[hanzklein]

What a pretentious twit. First you accuse myself and others of being poorly read because we disagree with your assertions regarding Milton, T.S. Eliot, and Joyce, and now you take this to the logical conclusion that aesthetic superiority of Joyce is of such an unquestionable and unassailable nature that only those who have not read Ulysses... or lacked the ability (unlike yourself) to fully comprehend it could possibly fail to see this. The possibility that someone might might be far better read and far more intelligent than yourself and still feel that Proust or Faulkner (or Kafka or Borges or Neruda for that matter) was the greatest writer of the 20th century, and not Joyce is beyond all of your comprehension (as profound as you would lead us to believe it is). No one here has even suggested that Joyce is not a great writer... although you might be surprised to discover that there are many quite lucid and intelligent individuals who quite readily do believe as much. It has only been suggested that writers as great as Proust and Faulkner might lay equal claim to the rather inane title of "greatest writer of the 20th century".

That's great if such an individual exists, I haven't seen them. Ulysses was eagerly recommended to me a Joyce fanatic in 2006. He said he spent 3 years studying the novel. Highly respecting this person's opinions, I went ahead reading the novel. The book just consumes your life, I've had dreams about Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, however sad that may be. Yet, every single one of those seconds I found to be totally worth it to get to the novels deeper message, its punchline. Ulysses has influenced far too many people in far too short a time to not be considered the greatest text in literature. Faulkner himself said it best when he said: "You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith." If you don't completely understand it (no one does), or don't want to read it, that's fine. However, if you come here bashing the novel claiming to have read it and analyzed it in depth enough to understand it, I'm going to call you out on it.

And did I not say as much? As such, the secondary characters are only developed to the extent of their interaction with Bloom.

Not really, there are 4 entire chapters dedicated to another character, one even dedicated mostly to minor characters, and every chapter is littered with other characters so much that I wished it would go back to Bloom. What you are saying doesn't make sense. Three characters are at the focus, Molly, Bloom and Stephen. All other secondary characters are developed as humanly as possible and make numerous appearances throughout the novel, I don't understand what you expect.


How strong or well developed these characters are is debatable. I would not suggest that they are flat, one-dimensional characters, but neither are they as fully developed as any number of characters in Faulkner or Proust.

Well, Proust had thousands of more pages to develop his characters. I just completely disagree with this statement, I know Bloom's daughter, his dead child, his middle name, what he ate for breakfast, what his favorite food is, what he does for a job, what he thinks about Irish nationalism, what religion he is, what country he's from, who his dad is and how he committed suicide, the house and street he lives on....do I need to go on? because I can. Show me one Faulkner character who has that much level of detail, and also make a list like I did. Also, a Proust one if possible (I admit to not having read the entirety of In Search, just sections long ago).


And yet Dante's "invention" of the characters Dante and Virgil in the Comedia are were taken to task as lacking any depth because they were based upon real-life persona? Personally, I don't think that it matters whether the character is based upon real-life or not. What matters is how real and developed the character is as a literary invention.

Not the same thing at all. Dante was writing fiction/fantasy, Joyce was trying to literally recreate Dublin through text while at the same time write an enjoyable novel. Did Dante rent out a book of all the dwellings and tenements of hell and incorporate it into his work?

Well you certainly can't question that critical argument. Dante is the greatest author ever because he operates under a philosophy, the nature of which I am not at liberty to divulge... you must simply take my word for it... he reigns supreme. Sounds more Kafkaesque than Joycean.:D

My point was that there is more to Ulysses than you see. The difficulty was intentional, to explain why, would entail more words that would overshadow the intent of my original post. But if you're dying to know, Joyce believed profound works of art should not be handed to people (as this diminishes enjoyment), but also the hardest parts of Ulysses are hilarious satire (Oxen of the Sun, Proteus). Many well respected scholars have come forth saying the novel is easy to read, as well as readers. Personally, I think that's true if someone goes in with the right mindset.

[JBI]

I've got two books by him but I've yet to read them [the sweet and sour of having a backlog is the excitement of finding some new and inspirational perspective and yet the interminable discovery of finding you are still behind]. Could you tell me a bit more about him, or your favorite works of his?

He is very, very ironic, and takes a great deal of historical and cultural knowledge on the part of the reader (his works are quite reactionary and revolutionary) but his quintessential work, which contains his most important fiction is his collection Call to Arms, or Outcry (translated under both names in English). Though to me his best work is his history of Chinese literature (I do not know if it is translated or not).

[arrytus]

[

the secondary characters are only developed to the extent of their interaction with Bloom.

Not really, there are 4 entire chapters dedicated to another character, one even dedicated mostly to minor characters, and every chapter is littered with other characters so much that I wished it would go back to Bloom. What you are saying doesn't make sense. Three characters are at the focus, Molly, Bloom and Stephen. All other secondary characters are developed as humanly as possible and make numerous appearances throughout the novel, I don't understand what you expect.




Don't care to get too in the middle of this but remember the last 50 pages or whatever [off the top of my head; it's been years since i read Ulysses] was like 3 sentences [!!!!!] from Molly's perspective. [and quite fabulous as I recall].

[quite funny epiphany here!!!! when I tried to write Molly I wrote instead 'Molloy'. And the first book of Molloy is like only two or three paragraphs for like a hundred pages if I recall. And as Beckett was Joyce's famulus I wonder if there is a connexion there which I overlooked the first time, and somehow Molly and Molloy are in some broad way intertwined, at least in a formal view.... or I'm crazy and it's just a random insight]

[stlukesguild]

That's great if such an individual exists, I haven't seen them.

The fact that you haven't personally met such an individual doesn't quite amount to proof that such a person does not exist. You have yet to show a far greater grasp of literature and critical discussion and debate than that regularly displayed by any number of regular members here including JBI, Mortal Terror, Petrarch's Love, and a good many others. As Alex suggested, it is best to assume that everyone here is well-read, knowledgeable, and intelligent (at least until they prove otherwise:D). It becomes difficult to maintain such a stance, however, in the light of statements that suggest that anyone who disagrees with you is an illiterate idiot.

Ulysses was eagerly recommended to me a Joyce fanatic in 2006. He said he spent 3 years studying the novel. Highly respecting this person's opinions, I went ahead reading the novel.

And we might all cite similar experiences with other writers.

The book just consumes your life...

No... the book consumes your life. My life is consumed with many other things... including any number of books, works of art, pieces of music, friends and family, etc... I was honestly far more seduced by J.L. Borges, Kafka, Baudelaire, Rilke, Eugenio Montale, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, Dante, etc...

I've had dreams about Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, however sad that may be.

Indeed.:sosp:

Yet, every single one of those seconds I found to be totally worth it to get to the novels deeper message, its punchline.

And again that is simply your experience. Not everyone is going to find as much in Joyce as you do... not because they don't grasp it fully... nor because they are less intelligent than yourself or less well-read than yourself... but because Joyce doesn't resonate as deeply with them... and/or they find someone else speaks to them far more.

Ulysses has influenced far too many people in far too short a time to not be considered the greatest text in literature.

This, unfortunately, is an extreme exaggeration that ignores a number of facts. As JBI pointed out, Joyce's influence is rather limited relative to any number of alternatives. If we recognize that the English-speaking world is not the sole measure of literature then we also must recognize that there may be others with a greater impact than Joyce. Just considering the Western writers of the 20th century, there are any number of rivals to Joyce in terms of impact including T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Pasternak, Kafka, Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, etc... Joyce certainly has had a major impact upon subsequent writers and in no way would I underestimate him or downplay his impact... but I recognize that his lack of accessibility has meant that many subsequent writers have intentionally rejected him as a role model (which in some ways his great pupil, Samuel Beckett did in stripping down his writing to bare bones) or turned to other sources. Joyce certainly challenges our concept of the novel and of the traditional narrative... but poets, short story writers, dramatists, non-fiction authors quite likely will have been far more impacted by other sources. In many ways, including the fragmentation, the expression of the angst of the individual in the face of the modern bureaucratic culture, and the Surrealism, Kafka may ultimately be seen as the far greater influence. I might note that the term "Kafkaesque" is far more likely to be understood than that of "Joycean".

But let's address the larger assertion... that Ulysses must certainly be the single greatest literary text ever when one considers the scale of its impact in such a brief time. So... by the same token, no artist can be greater than Picasso considering his impact (which dwarfs that of Joyce) upon the visual arts? Or is it possible that Picasso and Joyce were both the beneficiaries of modern communications, travel, trade, and mass production/promotion which allowed for the rapid dissemination of their achievements? Picasso and Joyce are unquestionably giants... but the notion that they surpass Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Homer, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Titian, Rubens is not something that can be proven by pointing to their rapid influence upon subsequent artists and writers. One may point out that the influence of Picasso and Joyce already has begun to wane. Whether they continue to speak to subsequent readers/viewers and writers/artists as profoundly as Shakespeare, Dante, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt do after the passage of 500 years is debatable.

Faulkner himself said it best when he said: "You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.

Didn't you suggest earlier, when one of us noted that T.S. Eliot had proclaimed Dante and Shakespeare as dividing the literary world between them, that we take all such author's quotes with a large grain of salt? You probably don't want to read what J.L. Borges said of Joyce.

If you don't completely understand it (no one does)...

Again... this might be said of any great work of art: it is never fully "understood"... never depleted of possible "meaning". The question for the individual is what works of art bring the greatest degree of aesthetic pleasure to you after repeated experience. You assume that Ulysses is unique in its ability to achieve such, because of your personal experience. I found a certain aesthetic pleasure in Joyce, but I honestly found far more to be had in Proust, Eliot, Kafka, Borges, Dante, Shakespeare... in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, in Bach's cello suites, in Mozart's Magic Flute, in the Sistine Ceiling, in the paintings of Pierre Bonnard, and in many other places.

...or don't want to read it, that's fine. However, if you come here bashing the novel claiming to have read it and analyzed it in depth enough to understand it, I'm going to call you out on it.

Again... I don't believe anyone has claimed to have read it and understood it and felt it was but crap (although MortalTerror might make such a claim:D). On the other hand... I would again suggest that someone may fully understand a work of art and still dislike it... indeed, dislike it even more than upon their first cursory experience.

[arrytus]

He is very, very ironic, and takes a great deal of historical and cultural knowledge on the part of the reader (his works are quite reactionary and revolutionary) but his quintessential work, which contains his most important fiction is his collection Call to Arms, or Outcry (translated under both names in English). Though to me his best work is his history of Chinese literature (I do not know if it is translated or not).

Great. I've got the collection "Diary of a Madman" Which contains I guess 95 percent of those stories from Outcry as well as from the 'Wandering' collection. I just moved it to the top portion of my list [so sometime in the next month or two.].

but as you say it probably takes a familiarity or scholarship and thus I likely won't get a lot of it the 1st time around.

[mortalterror]

Again... I don't believe anyone has claimed to have read it and understood it and felt it was but crap (although MortalTerror might make such a claim:D).

Thank you for the invitation, but I've fought that particular battle enough times already, and I don't intend to get sucked into it again. Defending my opinion in any substantive way would mean re-reading, at least in part, books I have no interest in reading right now. Let's just say that I find all three of the above writers highly pretentious and full of themselves, and leave it at that. I've been wrong before, and I may be wrong about this. However, that's a subject I'm happy to remain ignorant about, for the time being.

You know who really knows his stuff when it comes to Joyce and Proust? Kafka's Crow. I think he has a masters in one or both of them. His opinion might be worth seeking out.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Ulysses has influenced far too many people in far too short a time to not be considered the greatest text in literature.

I don't really see how anyone can say any certain piece of literature is the greatest. Plus, like Stlukesguild and JBI pointed out, you're just looking at English language novels, which is extremely narrow.

Anyways, if we do have to quantify what is the "greatest" text in literature, I doubt Ulysses would even break the top fifty, not with the likes of Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer. Or Melville, for that matter (just to throw in a more contemporary American author). I guess it could be the best of the 20th century (in English), but beyond that? Doubtful.



Well, Proust had thousands of more pages to develop his characters. I just completely disagree with this statement, I know Bloom's daughter, his dead child, his middle name, what he ate for breakfast, what his favorite food is, what he does for a job, what he thinks about Irish nationalism, what religion he is, what country he's from, who his dad is and how he committed suicide, the house and street he lives on....do I need to go on? because I can.

What do trivial facts have to do with character development? In the scheme of things, knowing these little character traits really doesn't count for much when it comes to character analysis. You're just listing things you've memorized about a character because you've studied the novel so much. I'm not saying you don't have a deep understanding of the character. I'm sure you do. But this doesn't prove it.


Show me one Faulkner character who has that much level of detail, and also make a list like I did.

I can't do it for Faulkner, but I could for several Star Wars characters. But, I won't for a Star Wars character or any, for that matter, because what does it prove?

[PeterL]

I think that this should have been a head to head, rather than three way. I don't think that Proust fits with Faulkner and Joyce.

[Alexander III]

I think that this should have been a head to head, rather than three way. I don't think that Proust fits with Faulkner and Joyce.

Why not ?

[PeterL]

Why not ?

A) Having three muddies the water. Comparisons among three are, byt necessity, less direct.
B) Proust wrote in a slightly earlier period that had different standards.
C) Joyce and Faulkner were rather similar in their writings, so the contrasts are sharper.
4) I have never read Proust, and I promised myself that I would not read anything by him for moral reasons.
5) Joyce and Faulkner probably would understand why I switched from letters for sequence to number, but I don't think that Proust would. This suggest that the contest would be fairer.

[stlukesguild]

A) Having three muddies the water. Comparisons among three are, by necessity, less direct.

Perhaps... but it is also closer to reality in that Joyce and Faulkner were not the only writers vying for attention and immortality.

B) Proust wrote in a slightly earlier period that had different standards.

Did he? Proust dies the same year as Ulysses is published (1922). Joyce' Finnegan's Wake was published in 1939 while In Search of Lost Time was published over the years 1913-1927. That places it a little over 10 years behind Joyce' final novel. Faulkner, on the other hand, published The Sound and the Fury in 1929, As I Lay Dying in 1930, and his final major works The Mansion and The Rievers date from 1959 and 1962. By this measure, Faulkner is further removed in time from Joyce than Joyce is from Proust.

C) Joyce and Faulkner were rather similar in their writings, so the contrasts are sharper.

Perhaps, but does that matter. We can compare Shakespeare with Joyce with Chaucer regardless of their differences.

4) I have never read Proust, and I promised myself that I would not read anything by him for moral reasons.

Moral Reasons? Homophobic?

5) Joyce and Faulkner probably would understand why I switched from letters for sequence to number, but I don't think that Proust would. This suggest that the contest would be fairer.

???:sosp:

[Jeremydav]

Well, Proust was definitely a modernist like Joyce and Faulkner. I think he's pretty comparable, actually, and each writer sort of represents a different use of stream of consciousness and innovation in narrative form (among other things).

Something sublime about Joyce's work has always struck me. He seems able to fully develop a character in the span of a page, and was a brilliant man as far as keeping the tradition of literature, going back to the classics, alive. I don't really see room here for claiming one of them is the best and being definitive about it, though.

[JCamilo]

Well, they are too similar, and comparassion can follow any rule. But it does not say who is better, superior, etc.

From a point of view, Faulkner is the most influential of them. It was him who Latin America was reading. Cortazar, Vargas-Llosa, Borges, Guimaraes Rosa, Mario de Andrade, Graciliano Ramos, Marquez... simple the best batch of writers of South America admired him. And he is obviously major in North America. Proust had a minor reading, but even so, his translators included the best modernists brazilian writers. Now Joyce was something else. Borges was reading him, Guimaraes Rosa too.

Now, the list is clearly strange. Because Kafka really stands out (and his impact was almost imediate too, considering even, his lack of publishing). And Virginia has an imense impact, doing the same techniques, because her influence in the feminist writing is imense.

I like Ulysses a lot (do not think it surpass Moby Dick, Dom Quixote, Crime and Punishment, but this is all relative. Hell, Sesame Street was quite liked a lot) and I prefer Finnegans but even if we discuss the irish representation only, Yeats is a monster of similar size and Bernard Shaw is not that behid. This if we just not acknowledge Beckett who was superior to Joyce in a new terrain. In the end, when we talk about those guys the mathematical difference is not clear.

But really... Derailling another thread for a guy which incapacity of comprehension is such that he just answered to Stlukes that an individual who did not consider Ulysses the greatest book, etc does not exists when Stlukes just did it (and we should send Mortal in a package to him house)? And Stlukes he cannt even use the cracked english excuse...

[hanzklein]

The fact that you haven't personally met such an individual doesn't quite amount to proof that such a person does not exist. You have yet to show a far greater grasp of literature and critical discussion and debate than that regularly displayed by any number of regular members here including JBI, Mortal Terror, Petrarch's Love, and a good many others. As Alex suggested, it is best to assume that everyone here is well-read, knowledgeable, and intelligent (at least until they prove otherwise:D). It becomes difficult to maintain such a stance, however, in the light of statements that suggest that anyone who disagrees with you is an illiterate idiot.

I am not saying anyone who does not understand Ulysses is illiterate. The problem may in fact be that they are too literate and expect to get straight narrative from the novel, and give up in disgust. You could have read the entire western canon: it won't significantly help you read the novel.

And we might all cite similar experiences with other writers.

We can, but Joyce seems to have inspired in his numerous fans the most respect and admiration.


No... the book consumes your life. My life is consumed with many other things... including any number of books, works of art, pieces of music, friends and family, etc... I was honestly far more seduced by J.L. Borges, Kafka, Baudelaire, Rilke, Eugenio Montale, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, Dante, etc...

I wasn't referring to your life, exactly, as it is obvious the novel did not affect you. Anyone who read Ulysses and loved it had the same experience as me. The novel is like that on purpose.

And again that is simply your experience. Not everyone is going to find as much in Joyce as you do... not because they don't grasp it fully... nor because they are less intelligent than yourself or less well-read than yourself... but because Joyce doesn't resonate as deeply with them... and/or they find someone else speaks to them far more.

Firstly, how can you not resonate with life itself? It may be Dublin life, but I can't imagine anyone except maybe some strange exceptions like vehemently anti-Irish, or anti-Jewish people might find the novel completely alienating in terms of its deeper messages. What I'm saying is that the novel will resonate with anyone, the problem is seeking out that resonance and having faith (as Faulkner said) that that it is there.

This, unfortunately, is an extreme exaggeration that ignores a number of facts. As JBI pointed out, Joyce's influence is rather limited relative to any number of alternatives. If we recognize that the English-speaking world is not the sole measure of literature then we also must recognize that there may be others with a greater impact than Joyce. Just considering the Western writers of the 20th century, there are any number of rivals to Joyce in terms of impact including T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Pasternak, Kafka, Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, etc... Joyce certainly has had a major impact upon subsequent writers and in no way would I underestimate him or downplay his impact... but I recognize that his lack of accessibility has meant that many subsequent writers have intentionally rejected him as a role model (which in some ways his great pupil, Samuel Beckett did in stripping down his writing to bare bones) or turned to other sources. Joyce certainly challenges our concept of the novel and of the traditional narrative... but poets, short story writers, dramatists, non-fiction authors quite likely will have been far more impacted by other sources. In many ways, including the fragmentation, the expression of the angst of the individual in the face of the modern bureaucratic culture, and the Surrealism, Kafka may ultimately be seen as the far greater influence. I might note that the term "Kafkaesque" is far more likely to be understood than that of "Joycean".

Influence is just one aspect of Ulysses that proclaims it the greatest novel: the proof it is, is in the writing itself. When you consider the obstacles against Ulysses (Joyce was practically the only one who knew the novels significance when it was published, it was banned in two English speaking countries, he wrote it as a nobody for seven years, it was a radical literary experiment) then its a miracle Ulysses was even recognized. Despite these obstacles, it managed to have an extreme effect on the literary world after only a few years: Beckett was only stripping everything down in response to Joyce. His early work actually tried to imitate him. After Ulysses, a writer could never hope to eclipse it. Random house took a poll of hundreds of professors, and they too said Ulysses was the best novel in the 20th century, and Portrait was the third.

But let's address the larger assertion... that Ulysses must certainly be the single greatest literary text ever when one considers the scale of its impact in such a brief time. So... by the same token, no artist can be greater than Picasso considering his impact (which dwarfs that of Joyce) upon the visual arts? Or is it possible that Picasso and Joyce were both the beneficiaries of modern communications, travel, trade, and mass production/promotion which allowed for the rapid dissemination of their achievements? Picasso and Joyce are unquestionably giants... but the notion that they surpass Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Homer, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Titian, Rubens is not something that can be proven by pointing to their rapid influence upon subsequent artists and writers. One may point out that the influence of Picasso and Joyce already has begun to wane. Whether they continue to speak to subsequent readers/viewers and writers/artists as profoundly as Shakespeare, Dante, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt do after the passage of 500 years is debatable.

Well, I'm not getting into Picasso as I know nothing about the subject and hes a painter and not a writer.

Joyce's influences are obscured in a large way, many of the people he's actually influenced is not obviously apparent because not all of them are coming out and proclaiming they have been influenced. Thomas Pynchon is one good example of this. I also read an article that Ulysses influenced the film industry with its shifts between characters and narrative technique.

Didn't you suggest earlier, when one of us noted that T.S. Eliot had proclaimed Dante and Shakespeare as dividing the literary world between them, that we take all such author's quotes with a large grain of salt? You probably don't want to read what J.L. Borges said of Joyce.

Actually, I would. From what I know, Borges liked Ulysses and hated Finnegans Wake, which is not a strange opinion to have considering Vladimir Nabokov. By the way, the T.S Eliot quote was about his own works, where he said his paled in comparison to Yeats and others. We should not use isolated quotes from even the most well respected authors to prove heavy claims. However, the authors citing Ulysses are all saying the same thing, Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Anthony Burgess, Samuel Beckett, T.S Eliot, Ernest Hemingway. These are all authors we take for granted as major writers of the 20th century, but they have all been extremely influenced by Ulysses. Many more are also up there who read Ulysses, secretly liked it, and had it in mind when they did their own writing, they just wouldn't admit it because of their own pride.


Again... I don't believe anyone has claimed to have read it and understood it and felt it was but crap (although MortalTerror might make such a claim:D). On the other hand... I would again suggest that someone may fully understand a work of art and still dislike it... indeed, dislike it even more than upon their first cursory experience.

I thought you've been insinuating this entire time that you've actually read Ulysses and did not like it too much?[/QUOTE]

[Alexander III]

"I have never read Proust, and I promised myself that I would not read anything by him for moral reasons."

I think this pretty much discredits your opinion in the matter. Also simply because you are homophobic does not discredit the works of one of the major 20th century writers.


Personally I am not commenting as I have yet to read a full length novel by either of the three so it is nice to hear others opinions on the matter, I must say I am terribly ignorant of 20th century lit; my preferences lying in the 19th century. That being said I am developing a certain infatuation with Hemingway.

[mortalterror]

We can, but Joyce seems to have inspired in his numerous fans the most respect and admiration.

People were pretty rabid about Pope, Dryden, Sterne, Fielding, Johnson, Arbuthnot, and Addison once too.


That being said I am developing a certain infatuation with Hemingway.

Good man!

[Night_Lamp]

Considering reading Proust? I'll save you several thousand pages: places evoke memory.

[Alexander III]

Considering reading Proust? I'll save you several thousand pages: places evoke memory.

Considering living life? I'll save you many a decade: you die.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Considering living life? I'll save you many a decade: you die.

:lol:

[Babak Movahed]

This post served only one purpose: to prove that you know different narrative modes.

"Who is the better author?" is the question.

It appears to me that the question is quite ambiguous, which means there are different ways to answer it. I also think when judging the quality of novelists it is difficult to avoid questions on narrative point of view.

But to follow your example, this post served only one purpose: to give you an opportunity to provide us with a condescending, yet idiotic comment.

[stlukesguild]

I am not saying anyone who does not understand Ulysses is illiterate. The problem may in fact be that they are too literate and expect to get straight narrative from the novel, and give up in disgust. You could have read the entire western canon: it won't significantly help you read the novel.

That may be so in some instances... on the other hand some readers may fully understand what Joyce is doing and simply find that other books speak to them more. Considering the fact that a good many of us are familiar and comfortable with Lawrence Sterne, Kafka, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, T.S. Eliot, Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill... indeed with poetry in general... I doubt that many of us who are not Joyce fanatics struggle with him because we have expectations of traditional linear narratives.

We can, but Joyce seems to have inspired in his numerous fans the most respect and admiration.

Ummm... how do we measure that? How do we measure whether I like Kafka or Borges more than you like Joyce? Yes, Joyce has a group of rabid admirers... but so does Borges, Neruda, Rilke, Hesse, and any number of other modern writers... to say nothing of Dante or Shakespeare. Is there a single writer who has more critical volumes dedicated to him than Shakespeare... even 400 years after his time?

I wasn't referring to your life, exactly, as it is obvious the novel did not affect you. Anyone who read Ulysses and loved it had the same experience as me. The novel is like that on purpose.

How old are you? I'm thinking 17 when I read these continual comments in which you use yourself as the standard by which everything is measured. It is quite possible that someone who reads Ulysses and loves it will not have anything like your experience. Honestly, I quite liked the book... to the point that I've read it more than once. Earlier, you suggest that someone might indeed have been well-read and still not see Ulysses as the end-all/be-all of literature because they approach the book with the wrong expectations. While that is certainly a possibility, it may also be that someone who has read a lot of other literature will have a context of other brilliant books against which to measure Ulysses... and they might not be so quick to declare it the greatest text ever when they are also familiar with Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Goethe, Firdowsi, Cervantes, Borges, etc...

Not everyone is going to find as much in Joyce as you do... not because they don't grasp it fully... nor because they are less intelligent than yourself or less well-read than yourself... but because Joyce doesn't resonate as deeply with them... and/or they find someone else speaks to them far more.

Firstly, how can you not resonate with life itself?

Art is not life... not even Ulysses or Shakespeare or Dante. They are art.

It may be Dublin life, but I can't imagine anyone except maybe some strange exceptions like vehemently anti-Irish, or anti-Jewish people might find the novel completely alienating in terms of its deeper messages. What I'm saying is that the novel will resonate with anyone, the problem is seeking out that resonance and having faith (as Faulkner said) that that it is there.

No, one may not find the messages alienating, but one may find the forms excessively mannered, artificial... and inaccessible and dislike it for this reason. Again, I am not saying I dislike Ulysses, but I can fully understand someone else disliking it.

Influence is just one aspect of Ulysses that proclaims it the greatest novel:

Again, you are blinded by an almost religious zeal for this book to the possibility that there may be alternative novels with equal claim to the title "the greatest novel".

the proof it is, is in the writing itself.

As it is in Don Quixote, Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Tristam Shandy, The Tale of Genji, etc...

When you consider the obstacles against Ulysses (Joyce was practically the only one who knew the novels significance when it was published, it was banned in two English speaking countries, he wrote it as a nobody for seven years, it was a radical literary experiment) then its a miracle Ulysses was even recognized.

The obstacles Joyce faced are irrelevant... and not uncommon. Milton wrote Paradise Lost while blind; Dante wrote the whole of the Comedia while banned from his home under penalty of death and his novel conveyed ideas that made him dangerous enemies in the Papacy and in the Empire; Conrad and Nabokov wrote their great novels in a novel foreign to them; Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was seen as subversive by those loyal to Henry IV and Thomas Arundel who had usurped Richard II and may even have led to his death; Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, poems of Verlaine and Rimbaud all faced legal battles and censorship. One would assume that a great many works of art were created by artists who continued to believe in their own work when no one else did: William Blake, Schubert, Kafka, Rimbaud, van Gogh, etc...

Despite these obstacles, it managed to have an extreme effect on the literary world after only a few years:

Again... Joyce' rapid influence owes much to the speed of modern communications, publication, travel, trade, etc... One doubts the impact would have bee as rapid had Joyce' work been published 300 years ago when mass communications, ease of travel and trade, etc... were not the same as they were in the 20th century. In spite of the limitations in trade and communications, etc... you might do well to read up on the rapid spread of influence by books such as Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, Cervantes' Don Quixote, etc...

Beckett was only stripping everything down in response to Joyce. His early work actually tried to imitate him. After Ulysses, a writer could never hope to eclipse it.

In part this is true. No artist wishes to come off a a mere extension of his or her artist heroes. Beckett turns to French and strips down his language in part as a means of escaping the influence of "Daddy"... but he also builds upon other sources including Dante, Shakespeare, William Blake, and the Bible.

Random house took a poll of hundreds of professors, and they too said Ulysses was the best novel in the 20th century, and Portrait was the third.

Random House and The Modern Library actually polled their editorial staff asking for nominations for the Greatest Novel written in English in the 20th Century. By these limitations Kafka, Proust, Mann, Hesse, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Garcia-Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Jose Saramago, Jean Genet, Camus, Gunter Grass, etc... are not even considered.

Joyce's influences are obscured in a large way, many of the people he's actually influenced is not obviously apparent because not all of them are coming out and proclaiming they have been influenced. Thomas Pynchon is one good example of this. I also read an article that Ulysses influenced the film industry with its shifts between characters and narrative technique.

Thomas Pynchon and John Barth are both clearly influenced by Joyce... but there are other writers of far greater abilities and achievements who build upon other writers. Cormac McCarthy is clearly rooted in Faulkner and Melville. J.L. Borges owed more to Kafka, the Arabian Nights, Cervantes, Dante, Shakespeare, Poe, etc... Again, Joyce is a huge influence... but that does not earn him the title of "the greatest writer of the 20th century"... let alone "the greatest writer of all time."

Didn't you suggest earlier, when one of us noted that T.S. Eliot had proclaimed Dante and Shakespeare as dividing the literary world between them, that we take all such author's quotes with a large grain of salt? You probably don't want to read what J.L. Borges said of Joyce.

We should not use isolated quotes from even the most well respected authors to prove heavy claims. However, the authors citing Ulysses are all saying the same thing, Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Anthony Burgess, Samuel Beckett, T.S Eliot, Ernest Hemingway. These are all authors we take for granted as major writers of the 20th century, but they have all been extremely influenced by Ulysses. Many more are also up there who read Ulysses, secretly liked it, and had it in mind when they did their own writing, they just wouldn't admit it because of their own pride.

Yes, all these writers recognize that Joyce was a major contemporary writers and innovator... but do they all proclaim him as the greatest writer of the 20th century... let alone the greatest writer of all time? Nabokov, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Eliot would most certainly have scoffed at the very idea. And what about the other major writers: Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Federico Garcia-Lorca, Pablo Neruda, J.L. Borges, Julio Cortazar, Italo Calvino, Frans Kafka, Jean Genet, Cormac McCarthy, etc...?

[arrytus]

I used to claim Pound as the greatest artist of the 20th century mainly because of his influence on men and women of letters of the Lost and Beat generation [Olson, Ginsberg, Eliot, Joyce, Hemingway, Yeats, Williams, et al]. Though I still love Pound- even if he was a detriment to my own attempts at poetry for a year simply because I tried to imitate him without the requisite skills and talent- I no longer make this claim. However who am I to deny you your inspiration? Not that it is irrefragable but simply because it does for you, that something astounds you, that something is enlightening or beautiful. Mazel Tov.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

We can, but Joyce seems to have inspired in his numerous fans the most respect and admiration.

Ummm... how do we measure that? How do we measure whether I like Kafka or Borges more than you like Joyce? Yes, Joyce has a group of rabid admirers... but so does Borges, Neruda, Rilke, Hesse, and any number of other modern writers... to say nothing of Dante or Shakespeare. Is there a single writer who has more critical volumes dedicated to him than Shakespeare... even 400 years after his time?



Let's not forget Rowling and Meyer. If we're going to factor in how many people are devoted followers of a certain author into the measurement of an author's worth, than Harry Potter and Twilight shall also rank up there. Those high school girls are obsessed.

I just mention this to point out the absurdity of using an author's "devoted fans" as a measurement of his "greatness."

[Alexander III]

"How old are you? I'm thinking 17 when I read these continual comments in which you use yourself as the standard by which everything is measured."

Hey hey hey hey, don't generalize

[JBI]

Meh, in terms of wide spread influence and readership, as well as becoming the most significant writer the fastest, the crown goes to Chairman Mao hands down. That argument is absurd - Mao is by your definition the greatest author - he takes the tradition before him - in his case, a rather impressive knowledge of Chinese classics, both artistic, and literary, historical, fictitious, and poetic, and creates a new ground burning over the old - he has style too, as he is still regarded as an excellent poet and calligrapher, and I would throw in, from a non-political perspective, a fantastic essayist as well (and a rather good literary critic).

That being said, I would not support Mao as the be all and end all of literature, I would just point out the contradiction.

It makes no difference anyway though, the thread is so ethnocentric it is ridiculous - Joyce's audience seems rather tied to France and the English speaking world, Faulkner, is perhaps the most widely read, in that he seems to have had profound influence on Latin American authors, namely Marquez, as well as other ranges, such as dominating the stylistic ideas of excellent novelists like Tony Morrison.

Now, beyond that, these are all novelists. Other forms have had profound influence as well - for instance, essays, poetry, drama, etc. and too, other countries have had their titans of modernist writing, for instance, Japan's Soseki, China's Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Lao She, or Ba Jin (all of whom have had a giant impact on the traditions of the world's biggest population mass, most of whom are as literate and well read as any European).

Who is to say Italo Svevo, or Thomas Mann, or any other number of figures aren't as dominant.

[hanzklein]

[QUOTE=stlukesguild;992907]

That may be so in some instances... on the other hand some readers may fully understand what Joyce is doing and simply find that other books speak to them more. Considering the fact that a good many of us are familiar and comfortable with Lawrence Sterne, Kafka, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, T.S. Eliot, Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill... indeed with poetry in general... I doubt that many of us who are not Joyce fanatics struggle with him because we have expectations of traditional linear narratives.

I'm pretty sure if you understand what Joyce is doing on the first reading (unassisted with references texts, or other resources), well, let's just say that isn't even possible. Virginia Woolf herself gave up on the novel and only got to the fifth chapter.

How old are you? I'm thinking 17 when I read these continual comments in which you use yourself as the standard by which everything is measured. It is quite possible that someone who reads Ulysses and loves it will not have anything like your experience. Honestly, I quite liked the book... to the point that I've read it more than once. Earlier, you suggest that someone might indeed have been well-read and still not see Ulysses as the end-all/be-all of literature because they approach the book with the wrong expectations. While that is certainly a possibility, it may also be that someone who has read a lot of other literature will have a context of other brilliant books against which to measure Ulysses... and they might not be so quick to declare it the greatest text ever when they are also familiar with Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Goethe, Firdowsi, Cervantes, Borges, etc...

I can't really explain myself here, but I am not using myself as a measure or whatever. What you need to understand is that Ulysses is an extremely unique case: there are meanings buried beneath multiple layers: finding that central message is an indicator one has truly unlocked the novel. When one finds this, they will behave in a certain way when speaking about the novel and acknowledge the main message.

Art is not life... not even Ulysses or Shakespeare or Dante. They are art.

Ulysses was made with the intention of portraying life, and giving it meaning to the reader.

No, one may not find the messages alienating, but one may find the forms excessively mannered, artificial... and inaccessible and dislike it for this reason. Again, I am not saying I dislike Ulysses, but I can fully understand someone else disliking it.

But it isn't that, which is why I'm exactly saying if someone is calling Ulysses that they haven't examined it in the proper depth necessary.

As it is in Don Quixote, Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Tristam Shandy, The Tale of Genji, etc...

None of those novels pay as much attention to language as Ulysses, with its groundbreaking uses of it, except maybe Moby Dick, but it still doesn't come even close. I guess you could make a case for Shakespeare. Those novels you listed, rather simply use language to convey a story.

The obstacles Joyce faced are irrelevant... and not uncommon. Milton wrote Paradise Lost while blind; Dante wrote the whole of the Comedia while banned from his home under penalty of death and his novel conveyed ideas that made him dangerous enemies in the Papacy and in the Empire; Conrad and Nabokov wrote their great novels in a novel foreign to them; Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was seen as subversive by those loyal to Henry IV and Thomas Arundel who had usurped Richard II and may even have led to his death; Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, poems of Verlaine and Rimbaud all faced legal battles and censorship. One would assume that a great many works of art were created by artists who continued to believe in their own work when no one else did: William Blake, Schubert, Kafka, Rimbaud, van Gogh, etc...

It may be relevant, as influence was involved which was the main subject of debate.

Again... Joyce' rapid influence owes much to the speed of modern communications, publication, travel, trade, etc... One doubts the impact would have bee as rapid had Joyce' work been published 300 years ago when mass communications, ease of travel and trade, etc... were not the same as they were in the 20th century. In spite of the limitations in trade and communications, etc... you might do well to read up on the rapid spread of influence by books such as Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, Cervantes' Don Quixote, etc...

No, it really doesn't. Joyce also wrote a Portait, Dubliners, and Finnegans Wake and had mass communications...why didn't they have as much influence? When you consider that Joyce was a nobody and Ulysses was published by an obscure little company, its amazing what happened. "Mass communications" does not really matter as much as you think: word of mouth is actually what got Ulysses circulated in the first place. This is a unique case, people right now can barely understand the novel, and in 1922 probably would have found it about as comprehensible as nuclear physics on the first reading. Joyce himself therefore went around telling his friends what the novel was about, these people happened to be the literary "elite" and they passed the word amongst themselves. Eventually, everyday people found out the novel had merit. I do not see what modern communication systems have to do with that.

Thomas Pynchon and John Barth are both clearly influenced by Joyce... but there are other writers of far greater abilities and achievements who build upon other writers. Cormac McCarthy is clearly rooted in Faulkner and Melville. J.L. Borges owed more to Kafka, the Arabian Nights, Cervantes, Dante, Shakespeare, Poe, etc... Again, Joyce is a huge influence... but that does not earn him the title of "the greatest writer of the 20th century"... let alone "the greatest writer of all time."

Cormac McCarthy actually shows some Joycean influences, such as not including quotations in his dialogue. As well, he admitted he followed Joyce's example and used little commas. As I have said, again, that Ulysse's massive influence in a century is just one reason its the greatest literary work, not the only one.

Yes, all these writers recognize that Joyce was a major contemporary writers and innovator... but do they all proclaim him as the greatest writer of the 20th century... let alone the greatest writer of all time? Nabokov, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Eliot would most certainly have scoffed at the very idea. And what about the other major writers: Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Federico Garcia-Lorca, Pablo Neruda, J.L. Borges, Julio Cortazar, Italo Calvino, Frans Kafka, Jean Genet, Cormac McCarthy, etc...?

No, they wouldn't have scoffed at the notion of Joyce being the greatest writer of all time. If that was the case, why did Nabokov for one come out and outright make a list of the greatest novels ever written and Ulysses was number 1? And secondly, authors don't really say who their favorite writers are, they only praise things and show appreciation if they are not conceited. Nabokov spent years lecturing on Ulysses, and Ernest Hemingway personally knew Joyce and once remarked he wished he had written Ulysses. In my opinion, Hemingway's minimalism was just like Samuel Beckett's reaction: to escape the influence of Joyce as much as possible. Those writers you listed are "good" but not near perfect like Joyce. I wouldn't be surprised if more than one of them was significantly influenced by Joyce, either.

[hanzklein]

Let's not forget Rowling and Meyer. If we're going to factor in how many people are devoted followers of a certain author into the measurement of an author's worth, than Harry Potter and Twilight shall also rank up there. Those high school girls are obsessed.

I just mention this to point out the absurdity of using an author's "devoted fans" as a measurement of his "greatness."

The difference is its mostly professors and students showing an appreciation for the book and not teen girls. The unique circumstances surrounding this book should atleast be given some thought: it isn't exactly something going to seep into popular culture where it can easily be referenced like Shakespeare, although it has made some progress in this regard.


Meh, in terms of wide spread influence and readership, as well as becoming the most significant writer the fastest, the crown goes to Chairman Mao hands down. That argument is absurd - Mao is by your definition the greatest author - he takes the tradition before him - in his case, a rather impressive knowledge of Chinese classics, both artistic, and literary, historical, fictitious, and poetic, and creates a new ground burning over the old - he has style too, as he is still regarded as an excellent poet and calligrapher, and I would throw in, from a non-political perspective, a fantastic essayist as well (and a rather good literary critic).

That being said, I would not support Mao as the be all and end all of literature, I would just point out the contradiction.

It makes no difference anyway though, the thread is so ethnocentric it is ridiculous - Joyce's audience seems rather tied to France and the English speaking world, Faulkner, is perhaps the most widely read, in that he seems to have had profound influence on Latin American authors, namely Marquez, as well as other ranges, such as dominating the stylistic ideas of excellent novelists like Tony Morrison.

Now, beyond that, these are all novelists. Other forms have had profound influence as well - for instance, essays, poetry, drama, etc. and too, other countries have had their titans of modernist writing, for instance, Japan's Soseki, China's Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Lao She, or Ba Jin (all of whom have had a giant impact on the traditions of the world's biggest population mass, most of whom are as literate and well read as any European).

Who is to say Italo Svevo, or Thomas Mann, or any other number of figures aren't as dominant.
I realize what you're saying about Mao, but he hasn't really influenced the people who matter by his book...you know...the main figures in literature after 1922. Also, influence is not the only argument I'm making for the novel being the best ever written (nor even the main one), stlukesguild just keeps focusing on it for some reason.

[arrytus]

the number of factual errors is growing extravagant in this thread

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I still don't see how any one piece of literature can be seen as the best ever written. So far, almost all of your arguments involve personal opinion. When it comes down to it, you have offered nothing more than, "I really, really like Ulysses because it's really deep, innovative, and original. If you don't like it, you don't get it, and therefore your opinion is invalid. And if you did get it, and didn't like it, you're wrong, because you didn't get it. It is also influential to many authors. Therefore, it is the greatest piece of literature ever written."

Further, there does not need to be a "greatest" piece of literature, does there? There is no possible way to identify one. It all comes down to personal opinion, and your opinion is not fact, no matter how vehemently you present it as such.

[hanzklein]

I still don't see how any one piece of literature can be seen as the best ever written. So far, almost all of your arguments involve personal opinion. When it comes down to it, you have offered nothing more than, "I really, really like Ulysses because it's really deep, innovative, and original. If you don't like it, you don't get it, and therefore your opinion is invalid. And if you did get it, and didn't like it, you're wrong, because you didn't get it. It is also influential to many authors. Therefore, it is the greatest piece of literature ever written."

Further, there does not need to be a "greatest" piece of literature, does there? There is no possible way to identify one. It all comes down to personal opinion, and your opinion is not fact, no matter how vehemently you present it as such.

I've backed up my claims numerous times and cited well respected authors. Nearly every argument I've put forth has invoked some kind of respectable figure in literature who coincided with my viewpoint. As for how it could be viewed as the greatest piece of literature? I think Jacques Derrida said it best when he said:- "an American tourist of the most typical variety leaned over my shoulder and sighed: "So many books! What is the definitive one? Is there any?" It was an extremely small book shop, a news agency. I almost replied, "Yes, there are two of them, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake."

Meanwhile, I've seen little to no outside sources except your opinions backing up your own opinions from you and stlukesguild.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I've backed up my claims numerous times and cited well respected authors. Nearly every argument I've put forth has invoked some kind of respectable figure in literature who coincided with my viewpoint. As for how it could be viewed as the greatest piece of literature? I think Jacques Derrida said it best when he said:- "an American tourist of the most typical variety leaned over my shoulder and sighed: "So many books! What is the definitive one? Is there any?" It was an extremely small book shop, a news agency. I almost replied, "Yes, there are two of them, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake."

Meanwhile, I've seen little to no outside sources except your opinions backing up your own opinions from you and stlukesguild.

Alright, so your argument could be more accurately paraphrased by saying: "I really, really like Ulysses because it's really deep, innovative, and original. If you don't like it, you don't get it, and therefore your opinion is invalid. And if you did get it, and didn't like it, you're wrong, because you didn't get it. It is also influential to many authors. And here's some quotes and citations of authors who share my opinion. Therefore, it is the greatest piece of literature ever written."

You've cited authors and quoted them, but I have to ask, so? That doesn't prove anything. You can't prove a novel is the greatest ever written. I may have backed up my own opinions with only my own opinion, but you have backed up your opinions with other opinions, which seems to me only marginally better. I could do some Google searches and find some well respected authors who don't find Ulysses to be the end-all be-all novel, but again, I don't see the point. It's all opinion. Arguing whether one piece of literature is the greatest of all time is pointless.

When it comes to a rational argumental exchange, which is all this really comes down to since a novel can not be proven to be the greatest ever written, between you and Stlukesguild, Stlukesguild has made better points by far.

[JCamilo]

the number of factual errors is growing extravagant in this thread

Please go on, the man in your avatar is losing the chance to be remembered as one of the main factors of the so called "surprising popularity" of a certain work...

[stlukesguild]

JCamillo was right. It was stupid of me to continue this debate for the simple reason that there is no debate. Debate involves weighing opposing positions presented by others and being open to the possibility that one's initial position is wrong. This, on the other hand, is like a discussion with a religious fundamentalist... or a Lord of the Rings/Twilight/Harry Potter fanatic... except for the fact that the book we are debating is by most standards a great book... a "classic"... but that is not enough. Hanzkline wants us all to acknowledge that Ulysses is the greatest book of all time... a text against which Moby Dick, Don Quixote, the Bible, the Mahabharata, the Divine Comedy, War and Peace, and the collected works of Shakespeare pale. Anything less than that is simply a failure in judgment or intellect upon our part... or a form of heresy.

Ulysses was made with the intention of portraying life, and giving it meaning to the reader.

Does it not seem pretentious on your part to take it upon yourself to assume to know the intention of your God?:hand::smilielol5:

SLG (quote)...one may not find the messages alienating, but one may find the forms excessively mannered, artificial... and inaccessible and dislike it for this reason. Again, I am not saying I dislike Ulysses, but I can fully understand someone else disliking it.

But it isn't that, which is why I'm exactly saying if someone is calling Ulysses that they haven't examined it in the proper depth necessary.

Again you assume that if someone fully understands a work of art they must embrace it and love it. There are paintings and sculpture and literary works that I fully understand... and still dislike... or find they leave me indifferent. As improbable as it may seem to you, there are certainly those who fully understand Ulysses and its ramifications for literature, and still are left indifferent... or even dislike it. Incredibly there are intelligent, well-read individuals who aren't blown away by Shakespeare's Hamlet or Tolstoy's War and Peace... or even (gasp!!) Dante's Comedia:yikes:.

...Don Quixote, Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Tristam Shandy, The Tale of Genji, etc...

None of those novels pay as much attention to language as Ulysses, with its groundbreaking uses of it, except maybe Moby Dick, but it still doesn't come even close. I guess you could make a case for Shakespeare. Those novels you listed, rather simply use language to convey a story.

The assumption that Moby Dick or Don Quixote merely use language to "simply tell a story" misses out on a world of possibilities including the possibility that telling a memorable story (something that Finnegan's Wake fails to achieve at all, and something that many might find rather convoluted inUlysses) is not necessarily "simple" or something to be undermined. It also ignores the possibility that there is more than "simple story telling" going on in Cervantes, Melville, Dostoevsky, etc... Joyce is phenomenally inventive in his use of language... in Finnegan's Wake even more than in Ulysses... but the difficulty... even the inaccessibility that results from this is a valid criticism... as it is with any other writer.

Cormac McCarthy actually shows some Joycean influences, such as not including quotations in his dialogue.

Yes, but one might surely claim this as more of a second-hand Joycean influence... coming through Faulkner. But the style of punctuation seems a rather minor influence in contrast to the elements in McCarthy that owe much more to Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor and Melville... and even Shakespeare.

...(many) writers recognize that Joyce was a major contemporary writers and innovator... but do they all proclaim him as the greatest writer of the 20th century... let alone the greatest writer of all time? Nabokov, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Eliot would most certainly have scoffed at the very idea. And what about the other major writers: Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Federico Garcia-Lorca, Pablo Neruda, J.L. Borges, Julio Cortazar, Italo Calvino, Frans Kafka, Jean Genet, Cormac McCarthy, etc...?

No, they wouldn't have scoffed at the notion of Joyce being the greatest writer of all time.

And this is based on what? Your own personal insight into all these writers thoughts? Where is Joyce' influence on Kafka? Neruda? Montale? Hesse? Borges, Rilke? We've already cited T.S. Eliot's assertion that Dante and Shakespeare divided the literary world between them... Dante and Shakespeare... not Joyce. Beyond these two writers, Eliot was profoundly influenced by Whitman, Ezra Pound, Yeats, and Tennyson... all more than Joyce... and Eliot wrote extensively on Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Donne, Dante, Marvell, Swinburne, Baudelaire, Pater, Dickens, and Tennyson... but not Joyce. In my collected essays by Eliot there is one citation of Ulysses listed in the index... Tennyson's Ulysses. Kafka's greatest precursors include the Bible, Jewish/Yiddish narratives and folk tales, Cervantes, Goethe (the writers and works he cites in his notebooks, aphorisms, etc... as well as employing in his major writings). Borges writes a great body of criticism on Dante and Cervantes, and repeatedly references these writers as well as the 1001 Arabian Nights, the Bible, Thomas de Quincey, Edgar Allan Poe, and any number of other writers and books... but not Joyce. Pablo Neruda cites Cesar Vallejo, Ruben Dario, Federico Garcia-Lorca, and Walt Whitman... not Joyce. And one could go on and on... but to what avail. I agree Joyce was a great writer... one of the towering figures of the 20th century. I simply do not believe that you can objectively prove that he was the "greatest"... let alone the "greatest of all time".

If that was the case, why did Nabokov for one come out and outright make a list of the greatest novels ever written and Ulysses was number 1?

I can see Nabokov at any given moment making such a claim. His work certainly shares elements with Joyce... although it is as deeply rooted in other sources including especially Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Kafka. Of course Nabokov's opinions changed with the wind, and anything he said needed to be taken with a large grain of salt.

Those writers you listed are "good" but not near perfect like Joyce. I wouldn't be surprised if more than one of them was significantly influenced by Joyce, either.

Of course... the acolyte can never admit that his God might be lesser than another's.:Angel_anim:

I've backed up my claims numerous times and cited well respected authors. Nearly every argument I've put forth has invoked some kind of respectable figure in literature who coincided with my viewpoint.

You have simply Cited, from your own memory... and perhaps your own imagination... statements or opinions of a few writers among the leading figures of later 20th century writers. You completely rejected JBI's comments because Mao (and any other Chinese writer) hasn't influenced "the people who matter". And who are "the people who matter"? The whole of Asia is irrelevant? South America need not apply? Ultimately it would seem that only those writers who share your profound admiration of Joyce "matter." A good many writers from mid-century on certainly display elements in their writing that may be called "Joycean"... but ultimately this is an over-simplification. Just as Picasso cannot be credited with inventing the whole of Modernism in the visual arts, Joyce is not the sole Modernist writer. Virginia Woolf, Andrei Bely, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Franz Kafka, Knut Hamsun, Italo Svevo, Marcel Proust, John Dos Passos, Cesar Vallejo, Mikhail Bulgakov, Hermann Hesse, and many others were simultaneously exploring such Modernist literary techniques as "stream of consciousness", fragmentation, shifting narratives, quotes and misquotes, neologism, etc... and any number of the strongest writers from mid-century on may be far more indebted to one or more of these writers moreso than to Joyce... if not to another tradition altogether, such as the German Expressionist tradition or the French Symbolist tradition that eventually morphs into Surrealism and carries over into Spain where it continues on into Latin America and impacts Magic Realism.

Ultimately, Joyce...like Picasso in the visual arts or Stravinsky and Schoenberg in music... is one of those towering figures that cannot be ignored... at least not by those working within the tradition of Western-European/American (and especially English-Language) literature. This does not make him indisputably the greatest writer of the 20th century unless we negate all other literary traditions... and in no way can he even begin to approach the impact of Shakespeare, the Bible, and Dante (among others) upon the whole of literature. He remains your favorite writer... but obviously that is not enough. Like all good fundamentalists, you will only be satisfied once you have converted all the heretics and heathens. You have your work cut out for you.:hand:

[JBI]

I realize what you're saying about Mao, but he hasn't really influenced the people who matter by his book...you know...the main figures in literature after 1922. Also, influence is not the only argument I'm making for the novel being the best ever written (nor even the main one), stlukesguild just keeps focusing on it for some reason.


I am not so sure about that; it depends who you consider "matters" and who doesn't. The simple point is that he was an excellent poet, and a great essayist, as for who matters - he is still widely read in China, and all major authors have been affected in one way or another by his writing, thought, and its consequence. He is still widely sold in bookstores in China and around the world (and had quite a prolific output too) and is still regarded as a very good reader of Chinese classic books. As for subsequent writers, perhaps not western ones, but on the whole, Chinese people seem to read a lot more than Americans, for the sheer fact that their numbers are far greater.

[mortalterror]

We've already cited T.S. Eliot's assertion that Dante and Shakespeare divided the literary world between them... Dante and Shakespeare... not Joyce. Beyond these two writers, Eliot was profoundly influenced by Whitman, Ezra Pound, Yeats, and Tennyson... all more than Joyce... and Eliot wrote extensively on Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Donne, Dante, Marvell, Swinburne, Baudelaire, Pater, Dickens, and Tennyson... but not Joyce. In my collected essays by Eliot there is one citation of Ulysses listed in the index... Tennyson's Ulysses.

The essay Hanzklein is referring to is T.S. Eliot's 1923 "Ulysses, Order and Myth" where he pretty much calls Joyce's book the most important work of modernism.


Nabokov spent years lecturing on Ulysses, and Ernest Hemingway personally knew Joyce and once remarked he wished he had written Ulysses. In my opinion, Hemingway's minimalism was just like Samuel Beckett's reaction: to escape the influence of Joyce as much as possible.

I don't remember Hemingway ever claiming he wished he'd written Ulysses. He was proud to have Joyce as a friend, but I don't believe he even liked his writing. It's true that he helped Joyce get published and even smuggled some of his books into countries were they were banned but that seems more the act of a friend than an admirer. When his books were being crated up after his death, it was found that his copy of Ulysses was only half read. However, this isn't definitive as he may have read a different copy somewhere else.

Still, I doubt that Joyce had any real impact on Hemingway's style which was far more influenced by Sherwood Anderson, his stint working as a cub reporter for the Toronto Star, Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Ambrose Bierce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, De Maupassant, and Carl Sandburg, at least in his formative years.

By the time he meets with James Joyce, he's 25 and a professional writer four years in the offing. A regular at Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company his favorite works are those of Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. He mentions in his memoirs that a quote from Shakespeare helped him overcome his fear of death after his battle wound. He's spent some time in Italy learning the language and appreciates the work of Gabriele d'Annunzio. He does not like T.S. Eliot.

He would later go on to make remarks in his own books or newspaper articles that he admired Dante, appreciated The Great Gatsby but thought that Fitzgerald's later work had fallen off quite a bit, and considered Huckleberry Finn the great American novel. He read Dashiell Hammett to his children and considered Thomas Mann a great author.

[JCamilo]

He wrote to Anderson saying Joyce had a fine book to come, that I know.
But it is off course an absurd to link Hemingway style to a reaction against Joyce excess. America had already a strong tradition of short stories writers, objective, dry, efficienct. They had Twain and Poe, after all. And france already had Flaubert. And at 10's nobody was making more fuss than english world discovering the russians writers.. Not placing Hemingway inside a tradition and rather seeing the world a single route is an absurd. What is next? Tolkien wrote like that because he was trying to avoid Joyce's ghost?

[JBI]

He wrote to Anderson saying Joyce had a fine book to come, that I know.
But it is off course an absurd to link Hemingway style to a reaction against Joyce excess. America had already a strong tradition of short stories writers, objective, dry, efficienct. They had Twain and Poe, after all. And france already had Flaubert. And at 10's nobody was making more fuss than english world discovering the russians writers.. Not placing Hemingway inside a tradition and rather seeing the world a single route is an absurd. What is next? Tolkien wrote like that because he was trying to avoid Joyce's ghost?
Tolkien wrote like that because he was a weird, boring, and eccentric depressing professor who was living in a fictional past.

[country doctor]

lots of good responses on this thread, but the doc is gonna post his from his gut...(with a caveat that he was reading joyce 10 plus years ago, and the other two much more recently...)

after reading proust, the doc reached for more of that...

same w/ faulkner...

he couldn't get through joyce's 'portrait of an artist...' through two different attempts...started out very good, and then hit a wall less than one hundred pages to the end...and doc very seldom does that...

he recently read dubliners and found it to be fine, but there's something about proust and faulkner that makes him want to reach for the well again...

and not being able to get through 'portrait', he's never felt the urge to try the others...

and proust's involuntary memory views strike a chord as well...but his ability to write is why he'd get the doc's vote...w/ faulkner as 1.a.

[hanzklein]

I am not so sure about that; it depends who you consider "matters" and who doesn't. The simple point is that he was an excellent poet, and a great essayist, as for who matters - he is still widely read in China, and all major authors have been affected in one way or another by his writing, thought, and its consequence. He is still widely sold in bookstores in China and around the world (and had quite a prolific output too) and is still regarded as a very good reader of Chinese classic books. As for subsequent writers, perhaps not western ones, but on the whole, Chinese people seem to read a lot more than Americans, for the sheer fact that their numbers are far greater.

Well, Joyce inspired people via his ingenuity with literary technique. Mao's has influenced people because its attached to a famous personnage and inescapably going to be encountered in culture there due to him having ruled the country, therefore influencing people whether they like it or not.

I also read that Ulysses was translated into Chinese and became a best-seller.

[JBI]

Well, Joyce inspired people via his ingenuity with literary technique. Mao's has influenced people because its attached to a famous personnage and inescapably going to be encountered in culture there due to him having ruled the country, therefore influencing people whether they like it or not.

I also read that Ulysses was translated into Chinese and became a best-seller.
Here is the thing, Mao actually was a talented artist. That's what people do not understand - he was an artist, a philosopher, a poet, and a politician all in one. Even if he didn't lead China, he still would have been regarded a great artist, as both calligrapher and poet.

I trust you have read him in Chinese to have such an authority to dismiss him as relevant because of who he was as a politician/revolutionary, rather than as an artist. If not, well then, you do not know Chinese, therefore do not have direct exposure to Chinese art of the 20th century, therefore will have a hard time convincing anybody that they "don't matter."

[hanzklein]

Here is the thing, Mao actually was a talented artist. That's what people do not understand - he was an artist, a philosopher, a poet, and a politician all in one. Even if he didn't lead China, he still would have been regarded a great artist, as both calligrapher and poet.

I trust you have read him in Chinese to have such an authority to dismiss him as relevant because of who he was as a politician/revolutionary, rather than as an artist. If not, well then, you do not know Chinese, therefore do not have direct exposure to Chinese art of the 20th century, therefore will have a hard time convincing anybody that they "don't matter."
First of all, the red book is not fictional literature whereas Ulysses is. Secondly, the book was adopted and passed around for political reasons during Mao's reign. This is similar to Mein Kampf - Hitler was also an artist and Mein Kampf has sold millions. Does that mean the book was more influential than Ulysses? No, it simply means it was adopted by an already existing, major political movement that had the authority to give value to the book. It does not mean the book singlehandedly gave rise to Mao's Communist movement, but rather the opposite. I'm sure if Ulysses was mandatory reading in schools in China for years, then it would be more influential there. Lastly, this argument is completely outside of the scope of the debate: the Red Book is not comparable to a novel and has unique circumstances surrounding it due to its obvious political nature.

[JCamilo]

Actually, the only book of Mao in the biggest public library of my state (the second biggest of Brazil) is a selection of poems of Mao. None of his political writings.

[mortalterror]

I was just reading Mao's poems and I think JBI would do better to pitch Lu Xun as an alternative. Tu Fu Mao Zedong is not.

[JCamilo]

I suppose the question may be that he was a better writer than just a propagandist, but one could easily list a considerable number of texts and authors which influence and aesthetic merit is imense without being labeled as those irrelevant thigns, fiction or novels. From Plato to Agostyne, Gibbon, Cicero, Seneca, Machiavelli, Pascal, Montaigne, Carlyle, the Bible, Quran, Confucio, De Quincey, Encyclopedia, etc.

[JBI]

I was just reading Mao's poems and I think JBI would do better to pitch Lu Xun as an alternative. Tu Fu Mao Zedong is not.

Truth be told, he doesn't work to well in English, as Ci form doesn't translate as well as Shi form in my opinion, and there are various translations from what I can gather, of various worth (I hear the new one put out by Berkley isn't bad, but I read him in Chinese), but even so, my argument is not to put Mao forward, but to question the ridiculousness of the assertion that Joyce is the world's best artist of the 20th century, it is an absurd argument, so I use another absurd argument to display its absurdity.

As a personal favorite author of the past 100 years, it would be neither of these three, and that is really the best way to measure - in terms of acceptance or "influence", neither of those things matter when dealing with personal feelings, which reading definitely is, so I won't even bother.

Now, as for Mao, he isn't Du Fu, but then again, Du Fu is one of the best lyric poets of all time, Joyce isn't Shakespeare, or Spenser (who he is perhaps the most closely similar too I would argue), nor is Proust a German philosopher, or Faulkner the Bible - such a comparison only works to an extent.

As for his literature being comparable to Hitler's, have you read it? The most famous prose piece he wrote was his great Elegy for the Canadian Doctor Norman Bethune, which is something anybody, regardless of political opinion can take to heart - his political works are more theoretical, and he is not Hitler. Such an argument to dismiss him is just fallacious and betrays an ignorance.

Cicero wasn't an ideal person either, nor was the Chinese poet/warlord Cao Cao, yet both were excellent writers in their own right. Art isn't measured by how good or bad the artist personally was, but rather, how good the art created is. As such, the dismissal of Mao on political grounds is akin to the dismissal of "reactionary" literature on political grounds. In short, it is hypocritical.


Wouldn't matter anyway though, Western historiography and political practice has a lot to answer for in their projection of Mao, as his greatest Chinese predecessors, Han Wu Di, Qin Shihuang, Genghis Kahn, and others have been traditionally looked favorably upon by western historians, as have been Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, and even Xerxes after the classical era (from a reading of the book of Esther).

That being said, he still is a great artist, so our ideas are just warped by our political obsessions.

[billl]

I am not an expert of what is being taught in China, and I have to admit that I have never me a native of Inner Mongolia. However, of the dozens of Mongolians I have met, and the dozen or so I have counted as friends, the holding up of Genghis Khan as a Chinese forbear of Mao would most likely not sit well at all. We shouldn't digress, and we shouldn't discuss politics, but it should be noted that such an assertion is actually a political statement.

[mortalterror]

Truth be told, he doesn't work to well in English, as Ci form doesn't translate as well as Shi form in my opinion, and there are various translations from what I can gather, of various worth (I hear the new one put out by Berkley isn't bad, but I read him in Chinese), but even so, my argument is not to put Mao forward, but to question the ridiculousness of the assertion that Joyce is the world's best artist of the 20th century, it is an absurd argument, so I use another absurd argument to display its absurdity.

Here are the poems I was basing my opinion on. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/poems/index.htm To be fair, it rankles my sense of justice that Winston Churchill won the Nobel prize in literature too. Political leaders have all the money, all the power, and all the fame in the world but they still feel the need to poach an artist's laurels?



Now, as for Mao, he isn't Du Fu, but then again, Du Fu is one of the best lyric poets of all time, Joyce isn't Shakespeare, or Spenser (who he is perhaps the most closely similar too I would argue), nor is Proust a German philosopher, or Faulkner the Bible - such a comparison only works to an extent.

How do you see Joyce comparing to Spenser?



Wouldn't matter anyway though, Western historiography and political practice has a lot to answer for in their projection of Mao, as his greatest Chinese predecessors, Han Wu Di, Qin Shihuang, Genghis Kahn, and others have been traditionally looked favorably upon by western historians, as have been Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, and even Xerxes after the classical era (from a reading of the book of Esther).

From what I understand of history, both Mao and Genghis Kahn were actually worse than Hitler. You can probably lay 60-80 Million bodies at Mao's door. Half that from The Great Leap Forward and the rest from The Cultural Revolution, wars, famines, and purges. As for Kahn, his invasion of China cut the population in half and his invasion of Iran cut it's population to a quarter of what it was. Considering his tactics, I would be surprised if he didn't have a bodycount comparable with Hitler's.

[Jeremydav]

Whether Mao was really responsible for those deaths is arguable anyway, though I don't want to get into politics in a thread like this. Either way, he was probably speaking of Hitler's terrible prose rather than his terrible deeds.

[JBI]

I do not know, the Faerie Queene to me feels a lot like Ulysses, the way it absorbs the culture before and around it and dishes it out in episodes seems to me quite similar. Likewise, structurally they seem to have some congruency, with their various books or episodes swinging around structural themes. They aren't directly related, but I see them as sort of holding a similar place in their respective time periods.

[JBI]

Here are the poems I was basing my opinion on. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/poems/index.htm To be fair, it rankles my sense of justice that Winston Churchill won the Nobel prize in literature too. Political leaders have all the money, all the power, and all the fame in the world but they still feel the need to poach an artist's laurels?




How do you see Joyce comparing to Spenser?




From what I understand of history, both Mao and Genghis Kahn were actually worse than Hitler. You can probably lay 60-80 Million bodies at Mao's door. Half that from The Great Leap Forward and the rest from The Cultural Revolution, wars, famines, and purges. As for Kahn, his invasion of China cut the population in half and his invasion of Iran cut it's population to a quarter of what it was. Considering his tactics, I would be surprised if he didn't have a bodycount comparable with Hitler's.

That is an oversimplification of Mao - truth is, he himself didn't intend for people to die - his regime tried to cause a shift, as for the numbers, conservative estimates seem a little bit lower, but even so, it was akin to a rapid transition gone wrong, not because of a brutalizing regime, but because of perhaps incompetence. Of course, most of these people died during the time of a natural disaster anyway, so we must also factor that into the picture, as we do not blame western leaders for the Spanish flu, for instance. The actual deaths in relation to pogroms or political targeting are rather insignificant in the scheme of the fact that under his reign the population of China more than doubled, and the life expectancy doubled - we aren't, for instance, blaming Indian heads of state for the millions and millions have people who have died from lack of proper nutrition or health care, despite the fact that we blame Mao. Compare that to someone like the Western Backed Chang Kai Shek who starved to death more than two million child soldiers, and drowned a couple million more, and we see it is highly a fair treatment - simply put, the population of China is big, the numbers are big.

Even so though, the bulk of his poetic output was done before he even became a head of State, and is completely divorced from his politics. His major philosophical works were also written before he assumed power. (I see no reason why we cannot look favorably upon them, even if we take your opinion as Mao as devil.


As for Genghis Kahn, there is no doubt he slaughtered millions. In China itself there is a mixed historical opinion, with his dynasty regarded as solidifying a faltering Song dynasty, but contrasted with his massacres (something which the Han Chinese Ming dynasty, and the Jurchen Qing dynasty also would do).

Even so though, his role in creating basically the spread of culture from Europe to the Korea has historically been viewed favorably by Western historiographers. It has been a common practice to dismiss his death toll as "a part of the clash of civilizations" and a common practice of the times, rather than as an act of barbarism. Simply put, Ghenghis Kahn is the the past 750 or so years - he is the catalyst of what we call culture distinctions today, for better or for worse. Nationhood, culture, progress, technology, communications, all fall from his influence. That is how he has traditionally been viewed in Western thought, as a great spreader and connector of civilizations, whereas in contrast, he is quite easily seen, and is generally seen by middle-Eastern and Persian people as a great murderous Barbarian.


That isn't relevant though, the question is about the hypocrisy of historiography, and either way, my argument was just to illustrate the stupidity of claims of "Joyce is the best artist of the 20th century." or "he had the most lasting impact."

[Lord Macbeth]

First--happy to see someone took my original Author Showdown idea and kept it going! :D

Although this poll I must admit I'm not as well equipped as I usually am, as I not only am not too familiarn with Proust or Joyce, I'm also no great fan of Faulkner's.

I voted for him because he DOES have some beautiful imagery in his works and...I'm not too familiar with the other two. ;)



By the way, did we abandon the idea of having a West/Midwest/Northeast/South showdown for US authors? I thought that'd be a fun idea, take three or four from each region and stack them up against each other as a "team" and see which "team" comes out on top?

[B. Laumness]

Those who have not a good knowledge of these three authors shouldn’t vote… I have read only two Faulkner’s novels, so I won’t vote. But my vote wouldn’t go to Joyce and his mastery of shallow techniques.

[Alexander III]

"By the way, did we abandon the idea of having a West/Midwest/Northeast/South showdown for US authors? I thought that'd be a fun idea, take three or four from each region and stack them up against each other as a "team" and see which "team" comes out on top?"

Honestly I dont see this working for everyone outside the U.S.A, It would be akin to me creating a pole of North Vs Center VS south of italy literature. AMongst Italians we would have a great debate. AMongst europeans some sort of debate could be roused. Amongst americans there would be little to no debate.

[mortalterror]

That is an oversimplification of Mao - truth is, he himself didn't intend for people to die - his regime tried to cause a shift, as for the numbers, conservative estimates seem a little bit lower, but even so, it was akin to a rapid transition gone wrong, not because of a brutalizing regime, but because of perhaps incompetence.
You're arguing the difference between manslaughter and homicide there. At the end of the day, 43 million people died during the Great Famine. It was a manufactured, ie man-made preventable event directly caused by Mao's policies. And there was a lot of brutalization going on. At least 2.5 million people were violently killed under government orders during just the three years of the famine.


Of course, most of these people died during the time of a natural disaster anyway, so we must also factor that into the picture, as we do not blame western leaders for the Spanish flu, for instance.
There was a drought, and a flood, which contributed to the devastation but the famine was man made. I don't think anyone disputes that anymore.



The actual deaths in relation to pogroms or political targeting are rather insignificant in the scheme of the fact that under his reign the population of China more than doubled, and the life expectancy doubled - we aren't, for instance, blaming Indian heads of state for the millions and millions have people who have died from lack of proper nutrition or health care, despite the fact that we blame Mao.
Are you seriously making the argument that more people survived his brutal reign of terror than didn't so how bad could he have been? What exactly are you saying here "There's so many Chinese that a couple dozen million either way... I mean it's not like he killed all of them!"? More people died than in World War I or the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Mao kept exporting grain. And that's just three years of his rule.


When the farmers could not meet their production quotas in 1959, the local government declared that the farmers were hiding their harvests and denounced the citizenry as enemies of the people. Military patrols were sent to locate these hidden caches of grain. The soldiers beat families who failed to cough up the food they were assumed to have hidden.

When winter arrived, the peasants had nothing to eat but tree bark and grass. The officials saw to it that the families' cooking pots were smashed, to prevent them from cooking grass soup. As an incentive to finally release their hidden stores of food, thousands of peasants were tortured and murdered by the local government. Military forces patrolled train stations and roads to block escape.

The people had nothing to eat. They filled their stomachs with whatever they could find: leaves, weeds, leather, straw, feathers, dirt. When they had run out of everything, absolutely everything, they finally resorted to cannibalism.
For more information on Mao check out the rest of this article here: http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/dictators/mao/



As for Genghis Kahn, there is no doubt he slaughtered millions.

It has been a common practice to dismiss his death toll as "a part of the clash of civilizations" and a common practice of the times, rather than as an act of barbarism. Simply put, Ghenghis Kahn is the the past 750 or so years - he is the catalyst of what we call culture distinctions today, for better or for worse. Nationhood, culture, progress, technology, communications, all fall from his influence. That is how he has traditionally been viewed in Western thought, as a great spreader and connector of civilizations, whereas in contrast, he is quite easily seen, and is generally seen by middle-Eastern and Persian people as a great murderous Barbarian.
We must not be reading the same histories. What I've heard about him involves wholesale massacring of entire cities, rape, slavery, pillaging, skull pyramids, sacks full of ears, unslakable bloodlust. He'd take the people he captured in one city, march them to the next, kill them and throw their bodies into the moats to create a bridge of the dead for his warriors to storm the city walls.

Ninety cities were stormed, or starved, by the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge of the filial piety of the Chinese, covered his vanguard with their captive parents; an unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse of the virtue of his enemies.- Edward Gibbon


That isn't relevant though, the question is about the hypocrisy of historiography, and either way, my argument was just to illustrate the stupidity of claims of "Joyce is the best artist of the 20th century." or "he had the most lasting impact."
Fair enough. You carry that point.

[Drkshadow03]

I find your statement rather absurd, everything can be compared and I see no reason why various authors should not be compared. Should we not compare Keats and Pound because they are from two diverse movements ? Should we not compare Homer and Tasso because they lived in different epochs? Should we not compare Shakespeare and Dante because one wrote play's and one wrote epic's and lyrical poetry? The notion that certain authors should not be compared is ridiculous.

I wrote "which is better" because this is a light hearted discussion which looks upon the authors as a whole instead of dissecting them down, and besides everyone here knows what was and what was not implied by "better"

No one was yelling out "he is better, he is better!" everyone merely presents their case and when it is questioned they try to answer the questioner, I hardly believe the members of he forum need to be held by the hand.

Surely JBI, even you all-knowing and all-wise must have a favorite or certain partiality amongst the three ?

Yes, I have to agree with JBI. The better than game is a waste of time. Who cares if Shakespeare is better than Faulkner? Joyce better than Proust? Whatever. They all have value.

[JCamilo]

Well, lets give some help to the thread originator and use this just as an excuse to talk about those 3 or however come up. Nobody needs to assert absolutes as Ulysses undoubted center of the western cannon in the XX century (which is easy to refute, so absolute as it is).

[Alexander III]

Yes, I have to agree with JBI. The better than game is a waste of time. Who cares if Shakespeare is better than Faulkner? Joyce better than Proust? Whatever. They all have value.

I probably should have worded the OP better, I was naive to assume that the people on this forum would realize that this thread was merely a thread to compare and discuss the three aforementioned authors. I didn't expect anyone would actually come on and go XXX is the absolute best, end of discussion. Ohh optimism how cruel you are !

[Jeremydav]

@MortalTerror Yes the famine was manmade, but it was because of poor management by officials below Mao. The extent to which Mao knew of the famine is disputed, and sources for both sides of the coin are unreliable at best. Either way, Mao's cultural revolution after the Great Leap Forward (which was a failure) made China the economic giant that surpassed the US and still surpasses it.

[JCamilo]

Well, most people in all internet forums have no idea that comparing may include saying what is alike and also what is different. They go to lengths telling even that someone is better, but end saying they cannt compare such two different things. And it is not here, but a mere reflex of this "democratic" philosophy that there cannot be status or something that is inherent better. This is false. The problem about those 3 is that they are too similar in their intents, techniques and even arrogance (to satisfy Mortal). Faulkner gothic may have nothing to do with the giblenglish of Joyce, but that is like saying a black dog is not similar to a white dog. And their quality and influence (considering all had a strong impact, which still strong, since time wasnt enough o erase them and really see which one has power to return) is much similar. So, saying which one is better ends even more futile. There is no how to assert this.
Would be quite different if it was something like Joyce or Anatole France.

[JBI]

@MortalTerror Yes the famine was manmade, but it was because of poor management by officials below Mao. The extent to which Mao knew of the famine is disputed, and sources for both sides of the coin are unreliable at best. Either way, Mao's cultural revolution after the Great Leap Forward (which was a failure) made China the economic giant that surpassed the US and still surpasses it.

Not quite surpassed the US, and I take a rather different cut at history - the failure of the revolution was that the need for it was there - the communist party was corrupt to the core, and Mao knew that. In the end, he didn't do a good enough job, because the internal frustration of the country solidified and destroyed his idea of a revolution of culture and politics - Deng Xiaoping et al put forward their reform, and now I see university graduates here with an average income of 2000renminbi a month walking the streets, and party member's kids driving sports cars and paying half a dozen women a few thousand renminbi each to come to night clubs with them as their entourage (then to I guess go home and sleep with them).

The whole idea of some must get rich first makes sense, except when you realize the poor seem poor and the rich are so rich it is stupid. The corruption is so apparent here that people do not even point it out anymore.

[Jeremydav]

Considering that China basically owns the US in debt we owe, I'd say China has surpassed us.

[stlukesguild]

I'm sorry, but I'll have to side with Mortal here. As usual JBI falls for whatever candy-coated views of history he is getting from his current college courses... as long as they are anti-American. Mao is responsible, directly and indirectly, for more deaths than Hitler and Stalin. I am of German heritage myself, but in no way would I make the least attempt to justify the actions of Hitler and the Third Reich ("Well just look at how the French and English mistreated the Germans with all those reparations after WWI. They were just acting as expected.") Seriously, the mere attempt to defend Mao by citing other atrocities, whether that of the Mongols, American Slavery and the treatment of the American Indians, the Inquisition, etc... is simply pathetic and doesn't change the fact that Mao was a dictator behind some of the worst atrocities and genocides in the history of humanity. Whether he was a good or bad writer is another question altogether.

the population of China is big, the numbers are big

The fact that China's population is big allows for us to simply accept the deaths of millions as no big deal? Instead of getting all your information on Mao from college professors that would never dare to challenge the official view of history, perhaps you might want to talk with some who lived through the atrocities of those years, such as my studio mate and his parents.

[stlukesguild]

Mao's cultural revolution after the Great Leap Forward (which was a failure) made China the economic giant that surpassed the US and still surpasses it.

Jeremy, China isn't even close to having surpassed the US as an economic giant. It hasn't even surpassed Japan yet and was not predicted to do so even at the pre-recession growth rate for another 25 years. Exaggerated claims of the US being surpassed by this or that nation have been going on since the US first took its position following WWII. The Soviets were going to "bury us". Then the Japanese who also bought huge percentage of the US debt. Now the Chinese are next in line... followed no doubt by India. The reality is that the world economy has changed greatly since the days immediately after WWII in which the US was virtually the only Western nation with its industrial base left largely intact. As a result, the American economy boomed like no tomorrow. Western Europe has since rebuilt as well as China and Japan and Korea and India and Russia are gaining. This means certainly that an absolute hegemony is a thing of the past... the US is not likely to roll over any more than Britain did following their fall from World domination. In many ways, the British citizens are better off today than they were during the height of the British Empire when huge percentages of their budget needed to be spent simply on military forces to maintain control. The Soviet Union imploded as a result of these costs.

[stlukesguild]

The whole idea of some must get rich first makes sense, except when you realize the poor seem poor and the rich are so rich it is stupid. The corruption is so apparent here that people do not even point it out anymore.

And in Russia... and in the US. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any government or economic system free of corruption.

[stlukesguild]

Back to the OP... this discussion seems to have run its course, devolving into a political discussion of Mao. Perhaps a compare/contrast that discusses the actual strengths and weaknesses of the authors?

[country doctor]

well no other writer has written longer, more beautiful sentences than proust...

[Jeremydav]

What weaknesses can we say these writers have? Anyone who's read any of them knows how important stream of consciousness is to their styles. In my opinion, Joyce comes closest to formal perfection. Faulkner stumbles sometimes, mixing up dates and having characters be simultaneously 33 years old and 40 or something. I know this happened in Light in August. But is such a fault really something that should upset his position in the lineup?