1. Dubliners
2. A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man
3. Ulysses
4. Finnegans Wake
That's it, in terms of prose. What have you read? How much of it did you read? Do you get it? Do you like it? It seems a lot of people on this site aspire to write either genre fiction or pop fiction. That's great and I get using this site to help make one's writing more "sellable," but that's not exactly what I'm interested in. I'm starting this discussion to call out the introverts and bookworms and margin-scribblers who certainly also want to get there writing published, but are not necessarily trying to alter and edit it into more digestable forms. Hence why I brought up someone who is perhaps considered the most indigestable author in the English language. I suppose Faulkner would be up there too, but Joyce is more celebrated on a critical level. Also, I think Joyce is an easy target for naysayers who consider his talent and craft overhyped. I myself was one of these Negative Nancies, but have now come to appreciate his style. I am currently reading Ulysses so I'm interested in your thoughts on it, even if it is on just one particular scene or sentence. I have not read Finnegans Wake and must admit I am somewhat intimidated, so it'd be neat to hear other readers' insight on that one. Maybe it would make the book less scary for me.
None at the moment, except bits of his biography.
He has the interesting quirk of using emdashes instead of quotes. Not cutting down experimentation, though thats a bit of work to get used to.
The only other one I read like that was this Dystopian Spy Thriller.
I read Dubliners years ago and loved it. I remember it made a big impact on me and I immediately thought that it was going to be one of my favorite short story collections. But it's been years since I read it, so I don't remember much about it now. I've been meaning to reread it for a while now.
I've wanted to tackle Ulysses since way before I read Dubliners, but I've always ended up starting something shorter, not wanting to take on that behemoth of a book.
I read Portait of the Artist as a Young Man for A-level English Lit when I was 16. It struck me as a beautiful image of a boy pursuing the idyllic, archetypal love I dreamed of falling into; not a new theme, but the same fable of paradise that graced art and literature for the whole history of human civilization until Katherine McKinnon and her mates moved the goal posts of what counts as underage and politically incorrect, and the world listened to them.
I don't get why Joyce should be an easy target for haters of obscure styles and flowery prose: as poetic prose, it isn't meant to be direct. Aren't they missing the point completely? Yes! Yes! Yes!
If someone wrote a similar story today and posted it on a site like smashwords or writing.com, he would probably be an easy target for censorious bigots to form a lynch mob and deluge the admins with complaints to get him booted for posting underage erotica.
I read Dubliners in my Literature class when I was about 17, and I didn't like it. I just found it too depressing. I know that's the point, but I couldn't find any merit in the story to compensate for its misery. Having said that, we were also reading Dracula, which I loved, so it was an unfair battle.
A few years later and I'm now trying to read Ulysses, having heard so many recommendations. We'll see how it goes.
I tried. I got about three pages in and thought it was pretentious gibberish. I was still in the library parking lot and returned it immediately.
Dubliners was hugely influential on me. I have all of the other books, but haven't started on them yet. I know a lot of people who really liked Finnegan's Wake. I have not read it myself, but I've read Dubliners several times.
I want to find a new copy of either book. My thing is I'm not sure if I'll ever be prepared for it, as I'm used to reading novellas and chapter books.
(Like Gibson's novels, despite the word count feel like novellas.)
I took a James Joyce class in college and I've admired his work ever since. I expect a lot of it had to do with having a great professor, but the rest is all Joyce.
His facility with language--the playful joy in it is what always gets me. I'm interested in experimenting with narrative time, and structure. I'm interested in his exploration of the meaning of art, the burden of history, and...well, I could geek out for days over it.
Ulysses is one of those books that contains so many surprises. I find something new to play with every time I read it.
Dubliners is an excellent collection. I haven't read it in ages. "Araby", "Eveline", "A Painful Case" and "The Dead" are some favorites.
I liked Portrait when I was 19---but I've not returned to it.
I've never read FW, though. I've just tackled snippets.
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This makes me want to revisit Joyce again. Maybe next Bloomsday...