Did James Joyce let arrogance corrupt his work? Ulysses is probably his Opus, and although beloved by many, is also regarded as one of the most difficult books to read. Why is this? What is the purpose for crafting a novel so challenging?
Did James Joyce let arrogance corrupt his work?
The realist novel had been done. Like Picasso, he had too much respect for his own genius to rehash what others had already perfected
>and although beloved by many, is also regarded as one of the most difficult books to read.
Outside of a few chapters it really isn't hard to read. Far from "most difficult" and no one who actually reads thinks this. Ulysses is great because it has depth but is mostly understandable from just a surface level reading.
Oxen in the Sun is the one chapter that would actually put it in the category of "most difficult" but the rest of the book isn't like that. The Citizen is a bit challenging as is Proteus. But everything else is pretty simple.
>the citizen
pseud detected
It's equal to Proteus where it's incredibly dense with references and has an odd prose style but what "actually happens" is easy to understand.
How can you be fluent in English and be able to read other masterpieces and have trouble reading Aeolus or Ithaca or Hades? This goes for most of the chapters. There are really only 2-3 chapters within Ulysses that actually require much effort to grasp the general picture. It's no harder than The Recognitions.
>Did James Joyce let arrogance corrupt his work?
Yes in a way. He was basically just pushing himself to his limits and seeing how far he could take the novel form.
>Ulysses is probably his Opus
True
>although beloved by many, is also regarded as one of the most difficult books to read.
No one actually says this. Much more applicable to Finnegans Wake.
>implying Finnegans Wake is not his masterwork
I read dubliners, portrait, and ulysses all in somewhat of a string earlier this year, taking my time between each one (breaking it up by reading the odyssey pre-ulysses).
what should i do to prepare for finnegans wake (which i'll probably save for early next year)? i understand that reading it is a means to forgo pretty much all standard preconceived notions on how a novel is supposed to read. should i read it with a guide or is that a means to lessen the experience? if so are there any specific ones i should consider?
Unironically listen to the Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson lectures about it, they were passionate about the book and understood what Joyce was doing with it. Joseph Campbell as well, of course. Then just read it, and make sure to read at least some of the more musical paragraphs out loud as it can be very satisfying to do so. If you're anything like me you will end up memorising multiple entire paragraphs and reciting them to yourself during the day like poetry because it's just that good.
>What is the purpose for crafting a novel so challenging?
iirc he liked to frick with academics
The scholar done rogue. The impotent cynical scholar spewing up
>What is the purpose for crafting a novel so challenging?
Because he could
>Ulysses is probably is Opus
Whose else would it be?
All "great" writers let their neurotic homosexualry corrupt their work. You can't be a good writer without being some of kind of moron or otherwise pathetic failure of a human being.
Here is an older post of mine which applies well enough. I started to edit it and fix some issues with it, address the anthological nature of Ulysses and its classical roots more directly, but did not even make it through the first paragraph since I don't really see the point since the most I will get from it is some (You)s. Perhaps some anon will surprise me.
>When Portrait of the Artist came out the academics of the time who were largely classicists wrote it off as meaningless, they saw the references and allusions as a classicists would, hints at a greater meaning instead of how a modernist would, hints at who the character is and how they relate to their world. So with Ulysses he made certain all those allusions and references worked towards something more than just the character, they suggest greater meaning and that suggestion is thematically relevant.
>We desire there to be meaning in the world, that our existence is more than just biology and Ulysses plays on that desire. You read it once and perhaps read it as strictly modernist, all those references only tell you about character but there is that one references that sticks with you and seems to hint at more. Then one day a few years later you reading something completely unrelated you stumble on a few more of the references and suddenly there is a seed in your mind, that you missed something, that there is something more in Ulysses. So you read it again and laugh at yourself when the reread brings back context and you see those references can not add up to something more in context of the others you had forgotten. But a new reference or a new understanding stays with you until one day it happens again, another piece just seems to magically fall into place and this time you know better but it nags at you and you give in for another read because how could you not?
>He is exploring culture and history and human nature, those references and allusions are so tied into western culture that we are never far from Ulysses, we constantly get little hints and reminders and the more we learn about those references and allusions the more hints and reminders we get, we see it everywhere because we want meaning in our lives and constantly being pulled back to Ulysses is very suggestive of something more than biology. Through those references we learn about the characters and ourselves.
I will add one thing and address my biggest issue in this post, my use of 'classicist" when I am really talking about Romantics, Realists and the like, but academia in those times was essentially classicist corrupted by Romantics and Realists (not meaning to shit on Romantics and Realists or make Classicists to be some holy grail). A true classicist would get Ulysses, get that the references are a return to the old forms, literature as anthology, those references do not hide meaning they provide context for meaning in a way greater than the individual.
>one of the most difficult books to read
Yeah, by people who don't read. Outside of a couple sections, it's not a difficult book. There's a lot of subtlety in the novel, as well as references that a lot of people won't get without annotations, but I don't think that makes a novel difficult. A normal reader should be able to understand the themes of the novel, as well as what's going on with the plot and narrative without much difficulty if they don't let themselves get filtered early by Proteus.
You just know this board absolutely doesn't read when they say Ulysses "is not hard"
It's challenging sure, calling it hard comes across as someone who isn't willing to put in any effort. It is going to take multitudes of re-reads plus a number of outside sources to get a real grasp on it, but calling it just "hard" sounds like someone trying to read it the same way they do for all others books, regardless if it's something at or around the same difficulty of Ulysses. It also sounds like someone that doesn't know about the plethora of books much more challenging than Ulysses (including another from Joyce).
If you read Dubliners and then Portrait, you will be more than ready to read Ulysses. It's not "hard" because the type of person who reads literary fiction and is acquainted with Joyce's previous works SHOULD be able to read and understand it without needed to look up summaries. Does this mean you're going to understand EVERYTHING going on in the book or EVERY reference Joyce makes? No, but it the general outline of the work should be clear enough. People who think it's the most challenging thing ever probably have a bad habit of missing the forest for the trees and looking up every single little thing referenced as it comes up. You shouldn't do that; instead you should read the work through as well as you can once, and only in subsequent readings actually dig into all these other things Joyce is doing. In reality, this is probably how you should approach every great work of fiction, but most people never end up rereading things which is why they obsess grasping everything all at once.
But I'll repeat myself
here, Ulysses isn't harder to read than works like The Recognitions or Gravitys Rainbow (I'd argue GR is both more difficult and worse tbh). Furthermore, there's much more challenging modernist works like Pound's Cantos and even Eliot's Wasteland.
Ulysses is difficult for a prose work, by which I mean it's far easier than most works of 20th century poetry. The issue is novelgays who never read verse don't actually know how to read in the first place.
Ulysses is am hieroglyphic and expansive dictionary/encyclopedia of writing styles accounting for as far back as pretty much anyone has ever gone into the history of the ways humans have used language to express meaning, knowledge, or recall experiences....Joyce also revolutionised the stream of consciousness method into art in a lot of ways....he has represented a great deal of reality re the Q and A part towards the end of the book..and really puts into perspective how insanely inadequate ordinary communication and understanding of things is