I finished "Ulysses"
 

Damn, it feels good. I can scratch that off my list of things to read before I die. I waa extremely condescending to all my friends today. One of my teachers too. He wasn't mad though; he thought it was amazing as he never finished it.

They say it only ever really makes sense the second time you read it.;)

The Joyce novel?

congratualtions on reading a book.

Haha wish I could rep you terminal. That's one of the funniest things I've read on here in a while.

I finished it in August of last year and the only Joyce I've managed to read since is "The Sisters" from Dubliners. I get the strong urge to have meltdown when I see his books on my shelf/desk


I'm inclined to agree with this and add that you'd need to read it a third time, but that time read an annotated copy.

If anyone's getting points for being an obdurate prick, I'd like it be known that I've finished Ulysses, Finnegans Wake and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.

My favorite writer is Richard Brautigan. You could read his entire output in a weekend.

Congratulations though. I found Joyce to be uttery impenetrable.
And unenjoyable.

It's not auto-reflexive, but I do think there's a sense in which Ulysses is about writing Ulysses as much as it a flimsy narrative (it's a good narrative, but it's flimsy). It is, of course, a monstrously 'difficult' book, but I think it's very consciously difficult. Unlike, say, Negative Dialectics which is the most ball-achingly impossible book I've ever read and is clearly written from the vista of perspicaciousness. I wouldn't condescend to recommend or defend Ulysses to Drone or anyone, but I would say it's a book for people who are interested in writing as much as they are reading. Interested not necessarily to write, but in writing. It's a bit Tristan chord, y'know?

I think the above also applies to the likes of Faulkner.
I guess Joyce and Faulkner are still easier to take than their counterparts in the electric guitar world, where you get Steve Vai to keep you company.

Maybe you should hand me that copy of "Ulysses" after all.

I am seconding the savage one's assesment.

after a hundred pages of nearly imprenetable gibberish I just could not give less of a fuck, so I stopped, twice.

I enjoyed portrait of the artist as a young man though. more of a piece of art than an excercise etude.

The difference between Vai and Joyce is that Joyce owns his art; Vai fetishises a narrow part of it. I think R. Strauss or Wagner are fairer comparisons (although music is much more permeable than literature, so the analogy is iffy at best).

Well, I guess I could have drawn attention to more tasteful "musicians' musicians," but where is the fun in that?

Where indeed.

Faulkner just doesn't work. Out of the one book I've read of his, "As I Lay Dying", about the only thing I can remember is the father saying "I wouldn't be beholden to no man" about eight dozen times. And I just read it about 3 months ago. I remember tons more about Ulysses because it's infinitely more interesting than the southern gothic nonsense Faulkner churned out.

Can you be more specific regarding what you remember?

Are you saying that you can't spit back Faulkner lines on a dime? Also what does 'tons more' mean?

Actual plot lines and descriptions. ie, going to the cabman's hut/shack/hovel, things like that. Faulkner's plot and whatnot didn't stick with me. I remember that line and building the coffin, that's pretty much it.

thanks, and haha sounds like Faulkner is a nervous ghost. I shall absorb him.

I enjoyed Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

That's good, that's the point - to enjoy. I know I don't need to tell you that, but I admit I was close to preaching at 37 and the op. I'm a douche.

I didn't say I didn't enjoy Ulysses, I did, immensely, even if it was long winded and utterly pointless. I didn't enjoy As I Lay Dying. I don't think Faulkner conveys his intended message well, at least in this book.

Ya, I understand. I was going to challenge your tendency to hawk in on 'a message' or a thesis etc. I can't defend Faulkner though because I haven't read him yet.

I will say the passage that turned me against him was the paragraph about 1/4 of the way into the book where the youngest child rationalizes that since his mother is dead and the fish he caught is also dead, his mother is a fish. After that it launches into about 3/4 of a page of "what is being? are we being during sleep?" etc etc in a very poor attempt to make a point.

im about 3/4 of the way through as i lay dying right now...im enjoying it...its not revelatory like most of the people who recommended it made it out to be...but it is a pretty good story with believable characters and...it has something to say about the demise of southern tradition in the wake of a rapidly changing national identity etc etc modernism.

oh yeah, add me to the list of people who got 100-somethign pages thorugh ulysses and then threw in the towel...a couple years ago.

I have Ulysses in my bookshelf but I don't know if I'll read it right now.

I got 50 pages through Ulysses and was absolutely loving reading it, and then somehow i managed to lose the thing. The Biggest Book Ever, and i lose it.

I received Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake a few days ago for my birthday from a friend whose never read a book before. He must have looked them up on a list or something and obviously he won’t be able to distinguish between something challenging (in a cosy 'intellectual' way like a cryptic crossword) and something infuriatingly difficult. I doubt I'll ever read Finnegan's Wake. However I have read the entirety of In Search Of Lost Time (and started doing so a second time) which isn't difficult at all despite its length, with the books being split into separate stories, and the books not having to be read all in one sequence (i.e., being self-contained in a way).

Congrats. I got it a few weeks ago for 4 euros (new).
Haven't even made an attempt in starting in it though. Plus it's in English, so I have no idea if I'll be able to understand much of it, but for that price it seemed worth a try.

When I bought Finnegan's Wake the lady at the counter told me "Good Luck".. I think I'll tackle it and the rest of Joyce in the fall, because right now I'm all about crime/thriller/Florida stuff.

About As I Lay Dying, I hated it at first, but I reread it twice and then it sunk in. I prefer The Sound and the Fury but AILD is still great. The Cora-Whitfield-Addie chapter triple punch is one of the most wonderful things I've ever read. Strangely enough, Ulysses didn't anger me like AILD did

my balls are busted with people telling me not to read it; and guess what, usually those people are the ones who havent.

i started it yesterday and i m doing smth that i hope is not a very bad idea, that it wont bore me. i read from the translation and then from the english book. i dont want to miss many things from his writing.