Ulysses: Yea or Nay?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I read for pleasure and am not willing to work at any book, hard or otherwise. I'm lazy and hate anything even faintly smelling like a challenge. Nothing turns me off faster than the prospect of having to make an effort. No thanks.

To me it depends on the book. Sometimes a book can be some work at the beginning and get really good as it goes. I've read some like that.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

To me it depends on the book. Sometimes a book can be some work at the beginning and get really good as it goes. I've read some like that.

Me too, but that was 20 and more years ago. Now I no longer want to work at books I read.

[Uncle Robin]

Like Sirtel, my recreational reading is for just that purpose - recreation. So I read Regency romances, Golden Age mysteries, popsci linguistics, and anything else that I will find fun. I do more than enough serious reading in other contexts, feel zero need to read anything at all that is considered a "must read" or a "should read". For me, the idea of reading Ulysses is to fun as the Sun is to cold.

[drofgnal]

I"ll probably give it a go. I try to read a classic periodically, maybe every 10th book. So when it comes up again, I'll try it.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

Yesterday, the Guardian published an appreciation of James Joyce’s Ulysses to mark both its centenary this year and Bloomsday next week. The verdict is that it’s a masterpiece.

Guardian tribute

So, what say we all?

Literary Snobbery. It's rubbish. I tried. A Professor of English Literature I know tried too.

Joyce was egotistical and lazy.

[DiapDealer]

And bashing Joyce is usually little more than anti-intellectual clap-trap.

You tried, and an English professor you know tried. Case closed. Clearly nothing left to see here.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Joyce was egotistical and lazy.

Neither of which are attributes that preclude an author from writing novels people respect and praise. It just makes him someone that some might not want to hang out with.

[astrangerhere]

I voted yes as I spent an entire semester on Ulysses at university. I don't love it the way I love Tolstoy, but I did enjoy the experience quite a bit.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

For anyone wanting to read Ulysses, what's the best edition/version?

As for this - there are a few color-coded text versions that help you distinguish the voice shifts. For a simpler experience, I would recommend the audiobook, which was a full cast and you can always hear the voices changing. I believe the last time my local library did a Big Read they did the audiobook whilst reading along in the physical copy. It was meant to be an entry point into the text.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

And bashing Joyce is usually little more than anti-intellectual clap-trap.

You tried, and an English professor you know tried. Case closed. Clearly nothing left to see here.

I'm not anti-intellectual. There are loads of far better Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, South African, Australian and American authors of the Twentieth Century. Also the Professor was a top Canadian Professor of English Literature. An English professor is a professor from England.
I can give plenty more examples. It's not an outlier opinion unless you are even more of a Literary Snob than my dad was. He finished them all but admitted in his latter years that they were poor. The Guardian is famously snobby about books and sell literary books direct.

I've read lots of stuff people call Literature.
I have ALL Joyce's books on paper to save people wasting their money and time. They can borrow my copies. If you borrow a book you may feel under less obligation to finish it than if you bought it?

Neither of which are attributes that preclude an author from writing novels people respect and praise. It just makes him someone that some might not want to hang out with.[/QUOTE] It mostly does.
No, it also made him totally unproductive. He didn't write much. What he did was at a shocking slow pace. He himself boasted of it. His "exile" was entirely self imposed.

[DiapDealer]

Again... yours may not be an outlier position, but it it certainly not the predominant one either. I'm not a literary snob at all. Remember, I'm the one who said that Ulysses didn't move me all that much, personally. I'm just choosing not to be presumptuous enough to try and make the decision for those who haven't already read it.

It is my opinion that there is more than enough people (literary scholars and lay-people alike) who DO consider it a masterpiece of modern literature to make arguing against it being considered such to be quite futile.

Lots of literary masterpieces are wasted on me. So what? My tastes aren't all that discerning. But I've certainly got better things to do than to campaign to have them knocked from their pedestals.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also the Professor was a top Canadian Professor of English Literature. An English professor is a professor from England.

Ahhh... a picker of nits I see. Great. Thanks for setting me straight.

[issybird]

Happy Bloomsday, everyone!

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by issybird

Happy Bloomsday, everyone!

In Spokane, Washington they have an annual Bloomsday run on the first Sunday in May. Being a literary nerd and only a visitor to Spokane, I thought it was related to Ulysses. Turns out it's related to the blooming of the lilacs.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

In Spokane, Washington they have an annual Bloomsday run on the first Sunday in May. Being a literary nerd and only a visitor to Spokane, I thought it was related to Ulysses. Turns out it's related to the blooming of the lilacs.

And does the winner get what Joyce got after the first date?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And does the winner get what Joyce got after the first date?

No. But my uncle has run in it every year since it started in 1977. A couple of years ago, my aunt took a bunch of his old Bloomsday t-shirts and had a quilt made out of them. It's really cool. They have it hanging in their house.

Spokane has statues depicting Bloomsday runners in Riverfront Park.

[Pajamaman]

Virginia Wolfe's review:

“I have read 200 pages [of Ulysses] so far—not a third; and have been amused, stimulated, charmed, interested, by the first 2 or 3 chapters—to the end of the cemetery scene; and then puzzled, bored, irritated and disillusioned by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. And Tom, great Tom, thinks this is on par with War and Peace! An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw? But I think if you are anaemic, as Tom is, there is a glory in blood. Being fairly normal myself I am soon ready for the classics again.”

Old boot.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

Virginia Wolfe's review:

...

In Virginia's review, who is Tom?