Originally Posted by
Desolation
And Joyce can't improve life?
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.
