Am I to understand that blazeofglory doesn't like Ulysses because it is highly rated by certain unidentified literary committees - and that those of us who like it purely as a book - (not idolise it) must therefore be fools? Strange basis for a logical argument.
And for one who professes not to be willing to spend 10 minutes considering the book,
he's gone on and on and on for..... well, you get the message.Quote:
I do not want to waste even 10 minutes on such rubbishes.
H
I apologize if I have hurt anyone. This is a wonderful forum and literature is a subjective domain. Of course you may be enchanted to read, but I avoid reading it.Quote:
Originally Posted by hillwalker
As a reader and writer too I have found James full of arrogance and he won though he did not qualify for it. The world is like that. There is no standards
The only person you have 'hurt' is Joyce and he's past caring.
Perhaps you are mistaking erudition and cerebral virtuosity for arrogance... and I'm guessing it's not Joyce's fault that he is held in such high esteem by various literary organisations who chose to commemorate his skills before and after his death.
There are standards in this world - but sometimes the least skilled are most fondly remembered or given unwarranted publicity (so-called celebrity writers for instance) and sometimes those more deserving of wider respect are forgotten. It's hardly fair to lay the blame for all this at Joyce's door.
But we are all entitled to our opinions - even on here!
H
Not D.H. Lawrence???!!!! But his writing style is very different to James Joyce. D.H. Lawrence's work is very life affirming. I have to admit, if there is any author I do idolise, it would be D.H. Lawrence....Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
Who I can’t stand is Jane Austen.
He did not come across as arrogant in his earlier work and they are quite good so it is not as if he is undeserving of his reputation ... it would be quite inconsistent that he was suddenly arrogant for Ulysses... perhaps Joyce was just an eccentric? I really do not think he wrote Ulysses to make fun of or to fool anyone.Quote:
Originally Posted by blazeofglory
:)Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
Some people see UFOs.
Some people see meaning in drivel.
Some people see the Emperor's new clothes.
Some people don't.
We're all clever enough to see whatever we want or don't want to see. All that's left is convincing the other guy that we're not the nutty one.
That's pretty clever. Did you make that up?Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I think you missed one:
Some people see drivel in meaning.
I never blame Joyce and He never expected to be rated so highly and venerated. He is great I can say but cannot be the greatest unremittingly. He made an epoch, agreed. He had been very eloquent, powerful and made wonderful allusions, deductions. He had perfectly and minutely portrayed some of the intricate realms of human understanding. I will withdraw whatever reproaches I made of this great artist. But all I want say is despite this he is not that great to put in the shade the rest of writers. It is literary committees or judgmental modus operandi only. Their follies, biases, preoccupations, sidedness causes the rest of writers to suffer or lose interests in literary persuasions. There are different dimensions of beauty and aesthetic excellence. We are not endowed with the power to observe all. Our ken is limited to certain facets and we cannot see beyond that. Let us poise our outlook and enable ourselves to see the unseen or generally unnoticed part of beauty.
Let him grow in our mind and reverence. Let him shine in our spiritual and astral world. But if he remains as a literary dictator the rest go dwarfed before his overgrowth. He was not a despot, but some blind followers have been adulating him
Okay, I think that one of the biggest problems with this argument is the belief that because his language and writing style are sometimes perceived as "non-sensical," he is a bad writer, or he has no concept of how to write properly. That's far too simple of a cop-out for anyone attempting to dig into Joyce's works. In fact, one of the most impressive things about Joyce's writing is his ability to write wonderfully and perfectly. This is what allowed him to take the liberties he did with language. Only by fully understanding the language he chose to deconstruct did he make it possible to do so. Thus, I think it's only fair to admit that he earned the right to compose anything in any way that he chose: which, is what he did.
Now, to argue that he is overrated, and that other writers deserve to placed above him on some sort of scale, really might be a fair assumption. But, I think it's also important to understand just how influential some of those authors, that you propose, actually were to Joyce. If it is nothing else, Ulysses is Joyce's homage to almost every notable writer that came before him. It's a hybridization of the bunch. If you love Shakespeare, Homer, Dostievsky, Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mohammed, the apostles, Sacher Masoch, Pushkin, Flaubert, Ovid, Chaucer, etc.... even to the point of considering pulp fiction and trashy romance novels, then Joyce offers some of that in his novel. He consumed literature like a machine, and the truth of the matter is that he loved them all in different ways. Even those works that he ademantly claims to reject are found buried deep within Ulysses. Honestly, that seems to be part of his plan. If he could prove to himself that he could accomplish the same things as his predecessors, then he would know that he had written something of value. If he could accomplish all of them at once.... well then, he had created a masterpiece. Regardless of your opinion of the man or his writing, to deny that he did just that is a horrible mistake.
And, finally, it would be more accurate to ask why Ulysses always tops the list of "20th Century Novels" because that is the real case we are facing here. That being said, it pretty much did lay the groundwork for Modernist and Post-Modernist fiction novels, though it was definitely not alone. However, if you consider the progress of the novel from the Romantic period, where it technically gained its weight, to the beginning of the 20th century, it really is just a logical progression into the mind of the character. The difference that Joyce made is that that mind is much more natural and human than it had been before. It is disjointed and complex. Sometimes it is logical, and sometimes it is fantastic and frightening. Yet, it is common, and it is honest. As a result, his novel is exactly what he said it was meant to be, a book for the common man. Now, if that common man must rabidly consume the annals of the world to read it, what harm is really done in accomplishing that? Has knowledge really become that unappetizing???
It's on the top of all of those lists because it influenced many authors, and since it's old, it's influenced many more authors than newer books. Anyone's opinion is always going to be biased, so go and find some books you like. If you want to find some classics that are interesting and fast-paced, read Catch-22, Gravity's Rainbow, Slaughterhouse 5, The Great Gatsby, Under the Volcano, Farenheit 451, Animal Farm, or Stephen King. Also, if you want to read more linear Joyce works, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man isn't bad.
Many writers mention Joyce as a strong influence. There are a lot of writers that I like who are influenced by writers I can't stand. I like Dos Passos. He wrote at the same time and in a similar style as Joyce. I've never read Joyce. There are many writers to go dragging through the mud before getting to Joyce though. Let us start with F Scott. He was a hack and a society kid and he proved it with his last novel. Tender is the Night. A novel about a bunch of whiny rich people. Blah blah blah. He's overrated like Hemingway is overrated, but the people need a fresh source of blood to latch onto.
Joyce once said that he had "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant," which would earn the novel "immortality". It is clear with a comment like that that Joyce was stroking his ego when he wrote this, and his stupid mustache.
Let me say this, art should be made to improve life, not as a rare thing only the select few are worthy of.
Well, Joice's must have been made to improve so much of life that the other farting life found it necessary to burn the shipment of his writings.
I am very impressed by this metaphoric expression, and indeed life is like that! We all are confused lots and there are funny things in life and no common values and sides that are common standards. Sometime I happen to believe in mysticism and at other times scientism.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Man has down the eternity of time been unable to dig up truth. No books of science, philosophical or religious treatise have helped man to arrive at truth. The truth or meaning of life, the truth about why we are here, the truth about the afterlife of human beings or of any creatures.
What we expect of a good writer is something that appeals to us intellectually and stirs us emotionally. Of course the use of enigmas and puzzles and metaphors startle us and yet it fails to entertain us and we get lost in the halfway while reading his novels.Quote:
Originally Posted by E.A Rumfield
We can understand bits and pieces of him, not in its wholes. He drives us erratically, confusedly and finally I decide to discontinue reading
And Joyce can't improve life?Quote:
Originally Posted by E.A Rumfield
I would never say that anyone who didn't like it didn't get it, but I might say that I think some people made up their minds not to get it before they really tried. While a lot of it might be genuinely impenetrable (especially on the first go through, and without any guides or help), most of it isn't so out there. But it really does hurt your understanding of a book when all you hear about it beforehand is that it's hard...Suddenly perfectly coherent sentences start to look like gibberish because you go in expecting not to understand anything. This is one of the many reasons that I think the "Ulysses is for the scholarly elite" argument is trite bull****. It poisons the well. Anyone could read it if they really tried. Joyce wrote for the common man, and was highjacked somewhere along the way.
If some people thought it was boring, that's a different story altogether. Different strokes for different folks, and all that. I find Victorian literature boring, a lot of people here go crazy for it. Nothing wrong with any of that. I personally enjoyed Ulysses from start to finish, even during those sections that had me scratching my head and asking what the hell was going on. It was an amazing, challenging experience.