James Joyce

Haven't ever read Don Quixote - in fact, my reading of novels pre 20th century is laughably bad, I am quite ashamed. For some reason, I find the dialogue in Shakespeare acceptable and exhilerating, but the dialogue in Victorian novels an impassable barrier. I blame Jane Austen being foisted on me at school. There's a lovely Borges short story about an author Pierre Menard rewriting Quixote and although it is word for word the same, it being held as far superior because of the modern context. As always with Borges, it is hard to tell whether he is serious or utterly ripping the pi$$.

I've only read The Portrait to date, and I doubt I'll ever read it again. The first seventy or so pages, all the bit when Stephen is a kid, are fantastic, if pretty damn heavy to read. Incredible prose, incredible feeling of "memory of when I was a kid". The final bit was interesting - a very efficient definition of art. All the rest, his conflict over religion, I found plain boring. Sorry guys, it just left me completely indifferent. His prose is superb, doubtlessly, but what was actually going on was completely uninteresting and unnecessarily lengthy - this might be a mere subjective issue, of course. In the end, when I closed the book, I had the impression that this whole book was just an attempt to show off Joyce's fantastic prose. The only thing I absorbed from it, artistically speaking, was what he said in the last few pages, the definition of art. However, to define art and to create it are two different things. Overall, I was not very impressed. I'll try to read Ulysses, sometime, although I'm already dreading the day in which I'll open the book and read the first page. The Master of Margherita was fantastic. That too seemed a bit overstretched, at times: I thought book one was very well written but a bit pointless. Book two was wonderful all the way - the ending seemed a bit obscure to me, though. I'm not sure I fully understood it, but I loved it anyway. Me, I don't re-read that much, but I'd have to go with any of Shakespeare's "great" tragedies. Othello, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Hamlet... they are all beautiful. I'm reading King Lear now, and I'm loving every line of it. The first two or three acts in Hamlet I remember thinking of as the best literature I had ever read in my life - although I'm not sure I'd still mantain that.

When I first read "A Portrait of an Artist," I felt that I was reading one of the dullest books I've ever read. I do remember, that later, I enjoyed rereading it immensely just because it made my dull, unheroic life so meaningful and showed how rich my life was when I began to explore it as Stephen had. The part that I liked was when Stephen decides to stand up to his teacher after getting a spanking on his hands for not doing anything particularly wrong. He goes to someone like the principle and complains and wins. All the other kids see Stephen as a hero for not letting the teacher get away. They are all relieved that the arbitrary spanker is going away or at leat, won't be able to spank kids randomly. I also enjoyed the lack of identity that Stephen had. He falls in the mud during a soccer game, he pees on the sheets and makes hilarious little observations. "The sheets turn yellow when you pee on it," etc... it's an intensely realistic portrayal of a kid and what he comes to know about the workings of his senses, and the symbolism of colors, his place in the world, etc... Ulysses continues on that realistic trend, but it is a novel about adulthood, not childhood. Saul Bellow says that we have no great novels about adulthood. Ulysses comes pretty close to being a novel about adulthood, but is pretty damned depressing. Usually, I can only get through certain passages, but I understand why it is the seminal work of the 20th century. I don't think that anyone should try to outdo Ulysses as perhaps Thomas Pynchon and others have tried to do. I personally like novels that focus on two or three themes and creates unique situations that develop those themes, like the novels of Jayne Anne Phillips or Nadine Gordimor, Saul Bellow.

Peter, I do find Finnegan's Wake to be incredibly pretentious though. I mean, the guy is admittedly trying to create a universal dream language that no one can understand. Every sentence in Finnegan's wake has echoes of other sentences. Perhaps it was because Joyce thought that the world would blow up that he wrote Finnegan's Wake so aliens could find it and understand it. I used to carry around Finnegan's Wake because I wanted people to think that I was a genius. That was mighty pretentious of me, but I did not expect to be visited by aliens. If I were, I wouldn't say that I had written Finnegan's Wake. The other thing I was thinking was that Finnegan's Wake is a constant ephiphany. You think you don't understand the sentence, but the sentence has a rhythm, a form to it that echoes experiences of water, of dreaming, of something like a multiple-entendre. Not only other statements, but real life experiences, but then, I don't really find it relevant to real life except as a book that helps a person sleep who cannot sleep.

I'm wild about Joyce. Did my MA on Dubliners - which (to retread ground covered on another thread) I still think is one of (if not ) THE best short story collections ever written (and I'm convinced The Dead is the greatest short story ever written). The mdern novel would not exist without James Joyce. Ulysses was a benchmark and remains a benchmark for what you can do with words. Plus the old goat was a raging boozer and womaniser and you have to respect that . . . So I can read and reread Ulysses quite happily (the more experimental passages - Circe, for example - don't feel like such a drain after a while - because there's no doubt it's demanding, in places), and I've read Portrait maybe a half dozen times and always see something new in it . . . But the books I find the MOST pleasure in rereading? Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 and John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces. There isn't a year that goes by I don't reread those two and every year I get more pleasure from each . . . If you haven't read Confederacy of Dunces . . . Man, you SHOULD! John Kennedy Toole is the patron saint of unpublished struggling writers . . .

I love Ulysses, though I do find the Oxen of the Sun chapter very, very wearing. I like Joyce's hope that if Dublin was ever destroyed, it could be rebuilt in replica from the book.

Im going try and attempt read Ulysses again. i think it will be my fourth go. Its quite a book. Will look out for a copy of Confederecy of dunces.

I think the trick is just to take your time. Take it a chapter at a time and read guides to the book alongside. Find yourself a good guide, one that breaks down each of the chapters. That way, you can read what the guide has to say, then read the chapter of the book. Go through the whole thing like that. Will help you, I think. I had to "read" Finnegans Wake too (and I say "read" in the loosest possible definition of the word) and the advice I received as regards that was - just get through it from one side to the other, imagine you're traversing a very dodgy ravine. Once you're across and you know what to expect, go back and arm yourself with a half dozen guides and take it a word at a time . . . Needless to say, having got from one side to the other, I've never been near again . . .

I recall reading Dubliners as a teenager and being scared half out of my mind. Dubliners is my idea of a horror story....the absolute horror of everyday life. Portrait I recall well, but never had a desire to read it a second time. I recall my father asking me what I was reading. I said Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I was about 16 at that time. He scoffed....Why doesn't someone write a book like Portrait of a Machinist as a Young Man? ..something about a normal person? Thanks, Dad. He was always so encouraging: we just want you to be happy, do what you want with your life.......just don't waste it on stuff like art or writing....hardly anyone makes a living at that....you won't be able to support a loudmouthed screaming wife and a bunch of ungrateful brats without a decent job. Get your priorities straight, son.

Funny you just mentioned James Joyce, Stephen. I just finished reading Exiles.. it's great. His only play. Thought it was a little too melodramatic at times (Joyce was mad on Ibsen so it does have that kind of tension to it) but in no way should it be written off as a curiosity. Would love to see it acted. Read Dubliners at school but only really started to appreciate it fairly recently. Ulysses is my favourite though.. by a long stretch. Got 100 pages into Finnegans Wake, Peter.. but will attempt it again when I'm feeling more patient. Stephen Hero is good as well.. if you like 'A Portrait..' Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is still my favourite re-read. I don't re-read that much, have to say. But this one just gets better and better. Read it three times now.

The Master and Margarita! Yes! What a stormer! I only read that very recently and - started it expecting . . . well, I don't know what. Something heavy, I guess. And - it's such fun. (I realise I sound all jolly hockey sticks but - this is what the Master and Margarita is like.) Andrew - have you ever read Don Quixote? That's exactly the same. You go in expecting one thing and you find something utterly modern, hilarious, exhilerating etc etc etc.

I can never read Joyce in my head without a lyrical Irish accent. The man flows. It is the sort of writing that makes me stop and think over his phrases. An incredible writer and every time I reread Portrait I find another level of meaning or descriptive genius. I would like to be Joyce when I grow up.....

thats what i like about 'a potrait' its just so rythmic and poetical. I feel like breaking in to song when i am reading it. I swear he is the best writer that ever lived. Oh a strange thing, when i was reading a potrait i always got the feeling that i know this place he talks about, maybe its because the irish blood inside, but any way on researching i found that he was originally going to call the character stephen daly, which is my name, weird eh! but then of course he changed the name to stephen dedalus. I suppose in a way the novel i am trying to write as well kind of take sits roots in the potrait. although of course it would never be half as good as Joyces.