Why the hell James Joyce's Ulysses always tops the list of best novels?

Okay Ulysses is a fine read. Of course his rhetoric style and grand theme can rock any reader. We always adulate a person who can scale the height we always dream of mounting but to no avail and look to it from a distance fixedly and attentively.

Yes he has scaled the height of pomposity, grandiloquence and adjectivally he is very praiseworthy.

So were Alexander Pope, Milton, Dryden and if we still go farther in the history of literature a whole herd of poets and scholars and they are almost forgotten today. We do not name them except for discussion in the classroom.

But I simply cannot stand the way he is getting a series of applause and praises. There are other great writers worthy of our praise like Kafka, Sartre to name a few.

Today so many great writers emerged and maybe not the way James started. James' days and values are gone and we are awakening to new realities and new circumstances. Of course there are a few domains of life wherein the values he set and defined are still valid but not all else. New values and circumstances are advancing and any piece of literature that cannot mirror the realities of the day cannot be still graded number one though that can say volumes of the day gone by.

That is why I think and some others too agree with me James Joyce remains always overrated.

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

Okay Ulysses is a fine read. Of course his rhetoric style and grand theme can rock any reader. We always adulate a person who can scale the height we always dream of mounting but to no avail and look to it from a distance fixedly and attentively.

Yes he has scaled the height of pomposity, grandiloquence and adjectivally he is very praiseworthy.

So were Alexander Pope, Milton, Dryden and if we still go farther in the history of literature a whole herd of poets and scholars and they are almost forgotten today. We do not name them except for discussion in the classroom.

But I simply cannot stand the way he is getting a series of applause and praises. There are other great writers worthy of our praise like Kafka, Sartre to name a few.

Today so many great writers emerged and maybe not the way James started. James' days and values are gone and we are awakening to new realities and new circumstances. Of course there are a few domains of life wherein the values he set and defined are still valid but not all else. New values and circumstances are advancing and any piece of literature that cannot mirror the realities of the day cannot be still graded number one though that can say volumes of the day gone by.

That is why I think and some others too agree with me James Joyce remains always overrated.

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I would see where you're coming from when speaking of Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (his lesser works), but Ulysses is completely different. Unless, of course, you consider a husband encouraging his wife to cheat on him an accepted modern or previous value. When you think about it, all that's going on in the novel is people talking and going on about their daily lives in a city. Joyce was very social in life, having moved dozens of times back and forth over various countries throughout his lifetime. Its not hard to relate to whats going on eventually.

James Joyce can't accept anyone's praise; he died 60 years ago. There's no need to be 'jealous' of the man, or angry at some supposed over-representation.

I strongly recommend anyone reading Ulysses download an app analysis of this book for their iPod . Just as you wouldn't explore the amazon river without a guide and gps, so too, ulysses requires some guidance for the first time reader. It is so grand and complicated that it will paralyze the uninitiated. I'm happy to give cogent examples if anyone desires them.

E.g., Ulysses contains more unique words than any other piece of literature in the history of mankind. But rather than argue who is the best, let us give thanks for the plethora of brilliant literature in the world.

My personal philosphy is that everything is overrated.

Wait a sec, so Blaze loves W&P and hates Ulysses, but you hate W&P and love Ulysses....maybe just maybe, this whole art thing is subjective...maybe just maybe if I hate Dickens, the logical conclusion is not that Dickens in truth sucks and it is a huge conspiracy which has given him his reputation...maybe just maybe I=Everyone else is not true.

Hmmm... I think you might be onto something here.:smilewinkgrin:

Yes, and frankly, I don't think it is a point that Blaze was ignorant of when he opened this up for debate--this was a pretty fun discussion to read, and I saw some excellent points made on both sides.

There was sides?

Yes, some thought Joyce deserved his place atop lists of best novelists, and others didn't.

Ouch, why would anyone bother who is in the top or not when it is not some reference to sex?

Heh, well, it was maybe just an exaggerated way to explore an interesting issue, most likely. We should applaud the ambition, what with the omission of sex at the beginning.

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Originally Posted by hanzklein

Yes, it takes months to study and read, but after being read, there will not again be a need to read another novel ever.

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If this were true, by the way, it would be a very good reason not to read it, at least not until you were within sight of death. I mean, why would you want to render every other novel redundant? What would you read for the rest of your life?

Little Hanz obviously will simply read Ulysses again and again. I think one of the quotes in my signature is quite relevant here: "Beware the man with one book."

"Ulysses is a great book. The name is because another book..."
"Which book?"
"I have no idea. I have read only this one."
"..."
"Ulysses is a great book. One of the main characters appears first in another book..."
"Which book?"

James Joyce was no doubt a man of wisdom or else why so many critics or literary judges would have so much been hooked to his literary cannons and experimental techniques. He had arduously worked hard and that was why he could write an oversize book like that. Few could undertake a project of that mammoth magnitude. My hat is off to this great legendary author.

Despite this what always flabbergasts me is why he alone and no geniuses hold that ranking. Since literature has gone through great evolutionary phases and today we do not think we write worse though our styles have been rather liberal and simpler. It is not just a bunch of jumbo words elegant alliterations, intricate sentence structures that make a piece of art elegant. It must be the voice of the day.

Can Ulysses still mirrors the moment we live in? Does that become the voice of the day.

We are indeed skeptical about its relevance today, its pedantic techniques not withstanding.

We are blind aficionados and this is not a rational judgment. This is the halo effect or something that is just taken for granted.

Judges are not judicious and their decision is foolhardy

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

James Joyce was no doubt a man of wisdom or else why so many critics or literary judges would have so much been hooked to his literary cannons and experimental techniques. He had arduously worked hard and that was why he could write an oversize book like that. Few could undertake a project of that mammoth magnitude. My hat is off to this great legendary author.

Despite this what always flabbergasts me is why he alone and no geniuses hold that ranking. Since literature has gone through great evolutionary phases and today we do not think we write worse though our styles have been rather liberal and simpler. It is not just a bunch of jumbo words elegant alliterations, intricate sentence structures that make a piece of art elegant. It must be the voice of the day.

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Perhaps to take rankings by critics too seriously. such things are matters of opinions. While I think that James Joyce was a great writer, I believe that there have been greater writers, but I am confident that there are people who would hold as the greatest writers some of whom I think. I don't hold that against them, unless they are impolite about my opinions.

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Can Ulysses still mirrors the moment we live in? Does that become the voice of the day.

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Yes, it can still reflect these times, because it is not about current events; it is about being human, and that is why Joyce harkened bcak to literature that was more than 200 years old. That also reflects what it means to be human.

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We are indeed skeptical about its relevance today, its pedantic techniques not withstanding.

We are blind aficionados and this is not a rational judgment. This is the halo effect or something that is just taken for granted.

Judges are not judicious and their decision is foolhardy

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You may be skeptical about the relevance of Ulysses, but we are not. Similarly you may be be a "blind aficionados", but we are not.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

Perhaps to take rankings by critics too seriously. such things are matters of opinions. While I think that James Joyce was a great writer, I believe that there have been greater writers, but I am confident that there are people who would hold as the greatest writers some of whom I think. I don't hold that against them, unless they are impolite about my opinions.



Yes, it can still reflect these times, because it is not about current events; it is about being human, and that is why Joyce harkened bcak to literature that was more than 200 years old. That also reflects what it means to be human.



You may be skeptical about the relevance of Ulysses, but we are not. Similarly you may be be a "blind aficionados", but we are not.

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This is nonsensical. The world is really a big place and with many voices around the globe. Westerners think they write better than the rest of other people. They do not want to go out of their border, the western frontiers. They are still colonial in their attitudes.

Great literature is written in many other global languages too but the fact is most coveted literary prizes are given to the western place world alone

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

This is nonsensical. The world is really a big place and with many voices around the globe. Westerners think they write better than the rest of other people. They do not want to go out of their border, the western frontiers. They are still colonial in their attitudes.

Great literature is written in many other global languages too but the fact is most coveted literary prizes are given to the western place world alone

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So is your objection to Joyce that he's Western? And if not, what's the use of that observation in this discussion?

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

We are indeed skeptical about its relevance today, its pedantic techniques not withstanding.

We are blind aficionados and this is not a rational judgment. This is the halo effect or something that is just taken for granted.

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And, again - when you say 'we', who do you mean? Who comprises the 'we' that's sceptical about its relevance?

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

This is nonsensical. The world is really a big place and with many voices around the globe. Westerners think they write better than the rest of other people. They do not want to go out of their border, the western frontiers. They are still colonial in their attitudes.

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Are you one of those "Westerners" that you are trying to describe? If you want to get hung up on Ulysses, then do so. Some of us are very happy to read a wide variety of literature.

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Great literature is written in many other global languages too but the fact is most coveted literary prizes are given to the western place world alone.

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Yes, great literature can, and has been, written in many different languages. If you want to give too much weight to literary prizes, then you should remember that they are popularity contests. A good look at the winners of the Nobel prize in literature shows some real losers along with some great literature.

Literature was once an art that was written to entertain or instruct a few erudite people and the general public were not included in that herd. But in the course of time literary values got reconsidered and it was co0mmonly agreed that a piece of literature must be all inclusive people from a gamut of social layers must profit from it not just the aristocratic elites. From this perspective even Joyce was within this frame of thinking. He did not write for the mass and he solely write for the few academic class. That is why he is not the one to be selected or prized

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

Literature was once an art that was written to entertain or instruct a few erudite people and the general public were not included in that herd. But in the course of time literary values got reconsidered and it was co0mmonly agreed that a piece of literature must be all inclusive people from a gamut of social layers must profit from it not just the aristocratic elites. From this perspective even Joyce was within this frame of thinking. He did not write for the mass and he solely write for the few academic class. That is why he is not the one to be selected or prized

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You mean that you just don't like Ulysses, but you would love to find a good reason for not loiking it, so you are trying some silly reasons. I am I correct?

I read the first 20 some pages of the book and then skipped around after that for about a total of 50 pages.

The final 20 some pages appear to be rambling comments without even rudimentary punctuation or grammar. Basically, a child older than 12 who does reasonably well in school would write better than this.

The author did not seem interested in trying to communicate anything to the reader. When I checked Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce ) I see that Pound promoted Joyce. I put 2 and 2 together and suspect Joyce is part of the Imagist school and that actually explains why the writing doesn't make sense.

I realize that people will say I should give the book more time, perhaps months, but the book has not kept my interest. That is, it has not offered enough to justify that investment of my life. In time any gibberish can start taking on meaning. The books that I would dedicate months to are of the order of, say, The Bhagavad Gita, not some Imagist experiments.

In conclusion, I agree with blazeofglory. In fact, I would go further. The book is not worth anyone wasting their time on.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

In conclusion, I agree with blazeofglory. In fact, I would go further. The book is not worth anyone wasting their time on.

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No, that's completely false. It's clearly not worth YOU wasting your time on. Don't tell other people it's not 'worth it' because you couldn't get through it.

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

Yet again I'm going to challenge one of your generalisations.

Tolstoy's war and piece is so beautifully written even style-wise but he was capable of engaging our minds with his grand thought.

Oh no it's not. War and Peace is very very dull - in Russian and in English - and Tolstoy doesn't engage my mind at all. Who were you including when you said 'our'?

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Ours means not necessarily yours.There are so many readers who enjoyed Tolstoy. You may read James Joyce with a lot of strain and arduousness. You cannot read naturally and spontaneously. You read it like a school boy and has to have a dictionary with you or must have a summary to understand it.

Whereas war and peace is a good read and you can read it easily.

People read Milton not because they enjoy the reading just because they must.

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

Ours means not necessarily yours..

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Whose then? Whose, besides blazeofglory's?

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

You may read James Joyce with a lot of strain and arduousness. You cannot read naturally and spontaneously. You read it like a school boy and has to have a dictionary with you or must have a summary to understand it.

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I can read Joyce without too much strain, and I can do it naturally and I can do it sponateneously, and I don't need a dictionary or a summary. This doesn't mean I like it - it just means that I can read it.

So when you say 'you' here, you don't mean me, do you? You mean you.

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

Whereas war and peace is a good read and you can read it easily.

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No, I can't. I've read it in both Russian and English, and I find it very heavy going.

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

People read Milton not because they enjoy the reading just because they must.

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I tend to agree with you about that (not that that makes either of us right).

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

Whose then? Whose, besides blazeofglory's?




I can read Joyce without too much strain, and I can do it naturally and I can do it sponateneously, and I don't need a dictionary or a summary. This doesn't mean I like it - it just means that I can read it.

So when you say 'you' here, you don't mean me, do you? You mean you.




No, I can't. I've read it in both Russian and English, and I find it very heavy going.




I tend to agree with you about that (not that that makes either of us right).

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Not you does not mean not the rest. That You have found the book heavy going does not mean the rest to feel the same.

I have read this great classic but I found it easing going. What is more, there were no elements of swankiness in it the way Ulysses is full of it

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

Not you does not mean not the rest. That You have found the book heavy going does not mean the rest to feel the same.

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Aha. And that you have found Ulysses incomprehensible does not mean the rest feel the same. So perhaps when you talk about it, you should not say 'we' or 'you', but 'I'.

Why not just admit that you found Ulysses too difficult and beyond your attention span? We would respect you more - rather than trying to get us all to agree with your pointless generalities about what books you like and those you do not.

We all have our personal tastes and some of us like to be challenged by what we read. The fact that you (and others who support your OP) don't share the same feelings for Joyce as some of us is neither here no there - and is hardly grounds for denigrating his memory or his literary legacy.

H

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I read the first 20 some pages of the book and then skipped around after that for about a total of 50 pages.

The final 20 some pages appear to be rambling comments without even rudimentary punctuation or grammar. Basically, a child older than 12 who does reasonably well in school would write better than this.

The author did not seem interested in trying to communicate anything to the reader. When I checked Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce ) I see that Pound promoted Joyce. I put 2 and 2 together and suspect Joyce is part of the Imagist school and that actually explains why the writing doesn't make sense.

I realize that people will say I should give the book more time, perhaps months, but the book has not kept my interest. That is, it has not offered enough to justify that investment of my life. In time any gibberish can start taking on meaning. The books that I would dedicate months to are of the order of, say, The Bhagavad Gita, not some Imagist experiments.

In conclusion, I agree with blazeofglory. In fact, I would go further. The book is not worth anyone wasting their time on.

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Joyce is not part of the imagist school, in fact, he was James Joyce, that was all. I suspect that your relation to poetry makes you a not ideal reader for Joyce. Ulysses is quite simple while compared to Finnegans Wake, but even then, the absence of proper grammar norms is an attempt to bring to memmory the oral conversation and that was very usual among modernist writers.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I read the first 20 some pages of the book and then skipped around after that for about a total of 50 pages.

The final 20 some pages appear to be rambling comments without even rudimentary punctuation or grammar. Basically, a child older than 12 who does reasonably well in school would write better than this.

The author did not seem interested in trying to communicate anything to the reader. When I checked Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce ) I see that Pound promoted Joyce. I put 2 and 2 together and suspect Joyce is part of the Imagist school and that actually explains why the writing doesn't make sense.

I realize that people will say I should give the book more time, perhaps months, but the book has not kept my interest. That is, it has not offered enough to justify that investment of my life. In time any gibberish can start taking on meaning. The books that I would dedicate months to are of the order of, say, The Bhagavad Gita, not some Imagist experiments.

In conclusion, I agree with blazeofglory. In fact, I would go further. The book is not worth anyone wasting their time on.

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Huh? Joyce didn't belong to any school, he was his own person in every possible way. You said gibberish can start to take on meaning: gibberish is an idea we've never saw before. The Bhagavad Gita which you seem so tolerable of reading was at one point a mass of meaningless symbols to you.
You have no clue about Ulysses' intricate text and writing methods. The final chapter is poetical, complex, and one of the most highly praised ones of the book. A child could not have wrote one sentence; is it because Joyce decided to decline the use of proper grammar? Or because he didn't follow accepted beliefs that the chapter is horribly written?
We think a good novel is usually preset in its narrative form. I.e., there should be a narrative voice describing what's going on, there should be some kind of easy to understand moral to the story at the end, there should be a main theme, the book should yield to story telling cliches, etc, etc. What happens when this system isn't there? Some people just lock up and call into question anything that so vehemently undermines the basic novel premise (and by basic, I mean things such as the idea that words have to be easily understood, even after consulting a dictionary).

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

Ours means not necessarily yours.There are so many readers who enjoyed Tolstoy. You may read James Joyce with a lot of strain and arduousness. You cannot read naturally and spontaneously. You read it like a school boy and has to have a dictionary with you or must have a summary to understand it.

Whereas war and peace is a good read and you can read it easily.

People read Milton not because they enjoy the reading just because they must.

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Wouldn't the same be true for Shakespeare? The amount of vocabulary he used throughout his works is roughly equatable to Ulysses'. So what you're saying doesn't make any sense. Because a writer is using the English language, to its maximum, as it should be used artistically, this is somehow deeply against him?

Also, why do you think complexity is a bad thing, and easiness a good one? If you didn't notice, complexity is needed to arrive at simple yet beautiful and profound truths. E = MC^2 anyone?

Literature was once an art that was written to entertain or instruct a few erudite people and the general public were not included in that herd. But in the course of time literary values got reconsidered and it was co0mmonly agreed that a piece of literature must be all inclusive people from a gamut of social layers must profit from it not just the aristocratic elites.

Ummm... when exactly did this happen and where was this great communal vote taken concerning what literature SHOULD be? Somehow I missed it.:skep:

Personally, I'm not a big fan of Joyce. I found Ulysses brilliant with passages that I absolutely loved... but as a whole he didn't engage me. Considering his impact upon later writers and how respected and admired he is by a great many experienced readers I am fully willing to admit that the failing may indeed be mine.

I am somewhat bemused by the repeated threads which have popped up recently in which individuals clearly assume that if the find they don't like (or couldn't even understand and finish reading) a given "classic" novel or a "classic" poem it must be because the poem/novel isn't really a "classic" and anyone who thinks differently must be some sort of idiot.

In other words, that which you personally like is not necessarily one and the same with what is "good" or "great", and that which you personally don't like is not automatically one and the same with that which is "bad".

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

You may read James Joyce with a lot of strain and arduousness. You cannot read naturally and spontaneously. You read it like a school boy and has to have a dictionary with you or must have a summary to understand it.

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Also, just want to point out that there are possibly hundreds of recordings out there of people reading Ulysses, including James Joyce himself. In fact, his musicality is really brought to light in reading aloud certain passages.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

[COLOR="DarkRed"]
In other words, that which you personally like is not necessarily one and the same with what is "good" or "great", and that which you personally don't like is not automatically one and the same with that which is "bad".

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Quite. Most people seem incapable of seeing - or admitting - that some of the stuff they don't like is really very good, and some of the stuff they do like is crap.

However, they seem to have no trouble suggesting that what's really good and what they like are absolutely and inseparably coincident.

So, given that no one else likes exactly the same selection of stuff, each of these people implicitly believes that he, by some happy quirk of fate and culture, is the de facto sole arbiter of What's Really Good.

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Originally Posted by hanzklein

Huh? Joyce didn't belong to any school, he was his own person in every possible way. You said gibberish can start to take on meaning: gibberish is an idea we've never saw before. The Bhagavad Gita which you seem so tolerable of reading was at one point a mass of meaningless symbols to you.
You have no clue about Ulysses' intricate text and writing methods. The final chapter is poetical, complex, and one of the most highly praised ones of the book. A child could not have wrote one sentence; is it because Joyce decided to decline the use of proper grammar? Or because he didn't follow accepted beliefs that the chapter is horribly written?
We think a good novel is usually preset in its narrative form. I.e., there should be a narrative voice describing what's going on, there should be some kind of easy to understand moral to the story at the end, there should be a main theme, the book should yield to story telling cliches, etc, etc. What happens when this system isn't there? Some people just lock up and call into question anything that so vehemently undermines the basic novel premise (and by basic, I mean things such as the idea that words have to be easily understood, even after consulting a dictionary).

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Gibberish is pretty common. Good writers avoid it. Bad writers keep wallowing in it. And mediocre academics pump drivel that has become canonical to boost their reputations.

What happens when some literary system or other isn't there? I don't know or care, but the question assumes that Joyce has done something special by avoiding something common. I don't think he has done either. When writers do not communicate they generate a situation of sentimentality, that is, they leave it to the reader to fantasize what is going on.

I've tried to read Ulysses several times and failed everytime but I try to keep a humble perspective. I really liked his short stories in Dubliners and I didn't mind Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (at least I found it accessible!) so I am more inclined to think that perhaps I am not mentally ready for Ulysses just yet.

I have a feeling he didn't write it for the purpose of his readership; more likely I suspect he wrote it to fulfil a duty to his individual, artistic god.

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Originally Posted by Emmy Castrol

I have a feeling he didn't write it for the purpose of his readership; more likely I suspect he wrote it to fulfil a duty to his individual, artistic god.

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No, that was why he wrote Finnegans Wake.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Gibberish is pretty common. Good writers avoid it. Bad writers keep wallowing in it. And mediocre academics pump drivel that has become canonical to boost their reputations.

What happens when some literary system or other isn't there? I don't know or care, but the question assumes that Joyce has done something special by avoiding something common. I don't think he has done either. When writers do not communicate they generate a situation of sentimentality, that is, they leave it to the reader to fantasize what is going on.

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It is a bit silly to argue Joyce does not communicate considering the huge ammount of followers or admirers which include guys like Borges, Cortazar, Faulkner, Eliot, Guimarães Rosa, Beckett, Umberto Eco, Bataile, Barthez, Nabokov... It is obviously false. Those guys understand a thing or two about literature enough to pass by Ulysses gibberishes, Joyce self-glorification or lack of communication... Apparently it was all absent, right?

Anyways, it is beyond silly claiming to people who reads Ulysses 90 years after it was published that Joyce didn't communicate. He obviously do. (And with Finnegans too, of course).

Of the fun to be had with Ulysses, it is well to be read aloud.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

No, that was why he wrote Finnegans Wake.

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I haven't read Finnegan's Wake, haven't even tried. I take it's not too accessible then....

OK, some of you are fans of this lifeless writer for his boring erudition. A kind of myopic attitude. And running after a style. I loathe this classical stigmatic icon. I choose not to be a wastrel. I do not want to waste even 10 minutes on such rubbishes. What do I look for there? Style? There are other greats style-wise. Content or philosophy? And there is none and some others said better what they wanted to say. A stupid literary committee formed everywhere to list the best books come from a dimwitted academics. They are updated themselves with the goings-on today in literatures, reading culture, people's interests, beliefs and most importantly the stream of modernity.

I am a voracious reader and I read all sorts of books but when it comes to making an analogy of such writers and their overrated statuses I find the very basis of judge repelling
I disliked the way he incessantly overrated shadowing some of the greater writers by some literary judges and that is why I raised this issue to read the views of the rest of readers. There are some blind supporters and they are simply an devoutly idolizing him. It is also interesting to read their fanatical ideas too.

I have some professors who teach literature and when it comes to teach Ulysses they start sweating. Same with the students who have to compulsorily read this book. I really cannot understand why they prescribe this book in their academic curriculums