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Dickens
I read two of Dickens's novels and that was enough for me!
Okay I will order this next time I get paid. You've convinced me!Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
You're taking a far too conventional approach to this. What Joyce did was convey his message through his use of language. Not only that, but it serves as an expressive tone for whatever he is describing. The use of newspaper headlines in the Aeolus episode are meant to be a satirical take on the sensationalistic journalism of the day. The extremely long unpunctuated sentences in Penelope are meant to perfectly decipt a stream-of-consciousness, flowing and unpaced by periods. The Oxen of the Sun episode takes on a beautiful medium by going through the history of English dialect as he describes the birth of a child. One must truly have a love of language when reading these passages, or any part of Ulysses.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
Leaving what I already said about long sentences aside; what about e.e. cummings? That's another example of a writer's idiosyncrratic use of language as a means to depicting what he wants to say. The unusual line breaks and spaces in his poems perfectly leads the eye down the page. Besides, writers have in fact since Joyce found ways to convey things through their use of language and puncuation. To take a simple and common example, when some writers use an uncapitalized 'i' in a first-person narrative. The letter on the page physically appears more irrelevant and inferior when compared to the all-powerful stand-out 'I'.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
From mal4mac's quotes I conclude that she's both a snob and reflective of her time :) No she's not a snob for criticizing Joyce, but for going about it in the way she did. It doesn't make her a bad writer though. Eliot and Pound obviously had unpleasant ideas concerning Jews and support for Mussolini by the latter, but that doesn't diminish the fact that they're both masterful writers.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
Hell, no. It's because Joyce does nothing for me. If I want to read about temporal disjunction, then there are plenty of other places to find it than Ulysses. If I want to explore stream of consciousness, I find there are better writers using that particular device.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
My problem with Joyce, which has been so aptly demonstrated by the discussion following my comment, is that people praise him based purely on reputation.
As for "difficulty," I absolutely despise that people immediately single that out as the reason for disliking Joyce. I, for example, find that cultural translation of Kawabata's texts is more difficult to decipher than Joyce's dull prose, but I still think that Kawabata is an excellent writer. If difficulty dictated the measure of a text's worth, then the greatest work of literature is a string theory dissertation.
Joyce has become the hero of the intellectual elitist, especially in my field of study. Anyone who has not read Joyce may as well be illiterate because without having read and understood everything he says, you have no place in the world of literary academia. It's stupid. No study should hinge on such a piece of tripe as Ulysses.
He did not. His father was an upper-middle-class failure. He had a Jesuit school education & went on to study Modern Languages at University in Ireland's main city. He was as fully occupied in art and intellectual knowledge as any one in Ireland could be, and even approached Yeats and other leading lights to get comments on his work in embryo when he was barely into his twenties. In fact his education was probably more thorough than that of Woolf, who had the usual disadvantages of women in those days. Heck, it was probably more thorough than any English men of letters, given the reputation of the Jesuits & his own driven nature...Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
Well, it is not as straightforward as you put it. Born in 1882, he went into Clongowe's Wood College in 1888 (at the age of 6) and left, because his father could no longer pay the fees, in 1892, at the grand age of 10. A lot of art or intellectual education he cannot have had at that age. If he already knew arithmetic properly, could read and write, and had some basic knowledge of abstract mathematics (goniometry and Euclid f.e.) and could read some Latin and Greek it would have been a lot.
At any rate, his father ad grandfather married into a rich family but were bad managers. Although that might mean they had money, they certainly did not belong to the intellectual elite, like f.i. Oscar Wilde who was also an Irishman although in a little earlier period. Woolf already moved in intellectual circles when she was a child. Joyce started to move in them when he was going to university. That certainly shaped both their worlds and ideas. Woolf was definitely of a class that was not even concerned with money, Joyce was definitely so.
David Eggers
Why is it that everybody thinks my favorite writers are overrated :bawling:Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankMarcopolos
Just kidding. Eggers is not one of my favorite, but he's certainly one of the better contemporary writers. Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was a hilariously depressing work of ironic bipolarism.
Eggers is all style and no substance. He has nothing to SAY. (Except maybe, Worship me, Hipsters!) Which is why I can't stand him.
Okay. . .. .obviously you've never read What is What. Besides, it's a bit unjust to use the style/substance dichotomy with postmodern writers, since style is used to express substance (an inheritance from Joyce).Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankMarcopolos
Just because his work is done in a stylistic way doesn't mean he has nothing to say except "look at me I'm so cool because I write in a self-refferential postmodern way". Besides, what's wrong with excersizes in style? Sections of Heatbreaking Work may be excersizes in style, but they're still meaningful. Any unique percpective is meaningful, even if there is no message or meta-narrative.
I have not read What is What. After AHWOSG, why would I be fooled again? I disagree with your statement above in that story is story, for postmodern, modern, postpostmodern, or any other kind of writers, regardless of what they are inheriting from anyone. Style is fine so long as it is used in conjunction with substance, for my taste.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
There's nothing wrong with style exercises, per se. They just don't appeal to me. Some people love eating cotton candy, for example. I do not. David Eggers, to me, is literary cotton candy.
I don't think you understand. The merits of modernist literature brought about a technique in which content is expressed through style. The simplest example being Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man in which the youth of the narrator is expressed through the style of the writing. Story is story, but if all stories were told the same way then the history of literature would be kind of boring now would it?Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankMarcopolos
Anyway, we can agree to disagree. I'm enjoying my cotton candy thank you very much :)
Yeah, I know. That's not my point. To me, style for style's sake alone wastes my time. Your mileage may vary.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
I'll not argue the merits of Eggers, not having read him... but I will question the dichotomy of style vs substance. What exactly do you imagine makes a worthy substance or subject vs one that is unworthy? A vast portion of the arts are dedicated to the expression of something as seemingly frivolous as sexual infatuation, attraction, lust, and love. Is a work of art automatically relegated to the "frivolous" pile because the theme the artist has chosen isn't something truly "heavy" like the Holocaust, race, gender issues, etc... ?
For me, there has to be SOME point to a story, some reason why the writer is demanding my time to listen to his tale. What that is is less important than that it be there. AHWOSG, for example, is pointless sophistry, written in a whimsical and amusing style. (Again, in my opinion. Another reader could say the point of it IS the whimsical amusement of it, which makes them feel happy...to each their own.)
The style should help to get the reader emotionally invested in a story, thereby allowing for some kind of impact at the end of it.