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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
 Posted - 06/08/2006 : 5:11:27 PM
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| Is he any good/ Any recommendations/warnings? |
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RVHorror
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
532 Posts |
Posted - 06/08/2006 : 5:24:45 PM
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| He can be fairly rough going, and at times the point in his work becomes rather hard to see. "Dubliners" is probably the place to start. "Finnegans Wake" should be avoided. (I've read it, but it is really obscure.) |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/08/2006 : 5:46:56 PM
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| To keep this thread SLIGHTLY on topic, I'd recommend you track down a copy of The Dead on VHS (I can't believe it's not on DVD yet). It's well worth your time. |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 06/09/2006 : 10:41:49 PM
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jack,
I'm going to be bold here because I want to save you a whole lot of grief. The fact of the matter is that James Joyce's books are completely unreadable nonsense, and its a total waste of your time to even sit down to start one of them.
I maintain that no one has ever read through Finnegan's Wake, for example. Anyone who tells you that they have is trying to tell you they sat through 500 pages of stuff like this:
quote:
So olff for his topheetuck the ruck made raid, aslick aslegs would run; and he ankered on his hunkers with the belly belly prest. Asking: What's my muffinstuffinaches for these times? To weat: Breath and bother and whatarcurss. That breath no bother but worrawarrawurms. And Slim shallave some.
There may be a handful of people who actually slogged through Ulysses by telling themselves that something so unbelievably boring must be good for them in some way. The critics rave:
quote:
In spite of its very numerous qualities--it is, among other things, a kind of technical handbook, in
which the young novelist can study all the possible and many of the quite impossible ways of telling
a story--'Ulysses' is one of the dullest books ever written, and one of the least significant. This is
due to the total absence from the book of any sort of conflict.
-Aldous Huxley
OK, I never read Ulysses from beginning to end, but then again, neither, I believe, has anybody
else, including most of the writers and scholars who declared it the greatest English-language book
of the century in that Modern Library list last year. I have read the first one hundred pages at least
three times, and then, longing for a story, I never got further.
-Richard Bernstein, book critic, The New York Times
To be fair I have heard that some of his very early short stories like "The Dead" mentioned above do actually feature things like plots and dialogue, so maybe they can actually be read. The emperor truly has no clothes, however, so if you are compelled to learn a little about his incomprehensible hoaxes on literature go here and save yourself a whole lot time:
http://www.bway.net/~hunger/ulysses.html
Now you can fake knowing something about it confident in the knowledge that nobody else has every bothered reading it either. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 06/09/2006 : 10:59:49 PM
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hehe- fetch forth the Poetry Appreciation Chair!! *g*
Coming soon-
Eraserhead: The Musical!! |
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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
Posted - 06/10/2006 : 07:52:13 AM
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You know, I had a feeling his work was like that. I am reminded of a poet I had read about who started composing poems in Chinese because he felt he was being too easily understood in English.
Why do artist and scholar place so much value on being difficult to understand? That's not hard at all.
Baby duck fart waddling.
See? Understand that? Me either, but some pretentious boob in a black turtleneck and beret might say it's a statement on man's inhumanity to man or something lame like that. Being hard to understand is easy as pie. Being easy to understand... that's difficult. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 06/10/2006 : 12:27:43 PM
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I wrote a song once with exactly that sort of surreal and incomprehensible lyrics- a lot like Jon Anderson did with Yes. I have had a lot of people tell me they love it and they know JUST what I meant *lol* I feel like asking them to explain it to me- it doesn't mean a damn thing!
An example:
Slight angel dancer bamboo razor drawing blood
Give birth to butterflies of deepening maturity so radiant...
or did I blink?
You know it's carpe diem laissez-faire
We grow immortal through the
Light, joy, the blinding of your eyes
I didn't do it to be pretentious, just to have fun. I think the mechanism that makes people see meaning in such stuff is the same that sees patterns in clouds- humans WANT there to be meaning and order. They just don't function well in situations where there is none.
I've always felt intellectually guilty for not giving Joyce a try. This thread has done a great public service.
Coming soon-
Eraserhead: The Musical!! |
Edited by - Sardu on 06/10/2006 12:34:20 PM |
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Offramp
Altar Boy of Jabootu
8 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2006 : 04:13:29 AM
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I am a big JAJ fan but he really only wrote one book, Ulysses.
I had trouble starting Ulysses, if you have the same problem then you could do what I did:
- Read Chapter 12 (Cyclops) That is very funny
- Skip chapters 1-3; start reading at chapter 4
- At some future time, read chapters 1-3
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2006 : 06:48:12 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by jackspencerjr
You know, I had a feeling his work was like that. I am reminded of a poet I had read about who started composing poems in Chinese because he felt he was being too easily understood in English.
Why do artist and scholar place so much value on being difficult to understand? That's not hard at all.
Baby duck fart waddling.
See? Understand that? Me either, but some pretentious boob in a black turtleneck and beret might say it's a statement on man's inhumanity to man or something lame like that. Being hard to understand is easy as pie. Being easy to understand... that's difficult.
I believe the answer to your question is found in the generally deteriorating quality of culture. Joyce lived during the Modernist era which really is a beginning rejection of a lot of traditional culture. Culture provides some framework of what is considered "good." Without that framework, you end up with artists doing all manner of stupid, ignorant, and offensive works. Why, because there is no culture that is putting restrictions on them. Talented people really do better when they have limits. It forces them to rely on their greatest asset, their creativity, to find ways to express themselves. Right now, since Hollywood doesn't have much in the way of restrictions, Hollywood basically goes "How do we show them to be in love?" and answers with "They have sex." Now, in the past when Hollywood was restricted in such things, they were forced to actually put a little more thought in how to convey their message. Or look at how horror movies have really devolved into gore and gross out fests. Simply stated, art will devolve into the base, the sensless, and the offensive without restrictions or culture. Since without those restrictions, it becomes a race to see who can outdo the other in "pushing the envelope."
The ROPe gives you three options, convert, submit, or die. There is a fourth, resist. |
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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2006 : 5:34:06 PM
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| Mind if i copy this to my blog, Terrahawk? |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2006 : 05:55:25 AM
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You're welcome to use it. Although I'm sure using it will cause people to flee your blog like the citizens of Tokyo fleeing Godzilla. :-)
What is the URL for your blog?
The ROPe gives you three options, convert, submit, or die. There is a fourth, resist. |
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RVHorror
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
532 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2006 : 4:19:07 PM
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| I actually *did* read Finnegans Wake, from start to finish. Did I get anything out of it, other than the ability to say "I've read it"? Why...that would be telling! |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2006 : 5:40:08 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by RVHorror
I actually *did* read Finnegans Wake, from start to finish. Did I get anything out of it, other than the ability to say "I've read it"? Why...that would be telling!
But I can guess. Here's a SINGLE sentence from "Finnegans Wake".
Shem's bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an
eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a
sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip,
a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman's son), the
wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial
tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of
thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of
two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot
of all evil, a salmonkelt's thinskin, eelsblood in his cold toes, a
bladder tristended, so much so that young Master Shemmy on
his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory seeing
himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their
garden nursery, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat III Shuvlin, Old
Hoeland, (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and
sense?
Reading this is like that scene in "Doc Hollywood" where everybody politely tolerates the drunken old town doctor as he slurs out a bunch of Walt Whitman poems. At least Whitman was intelligible and insisted on using actual ENGLISH language.
I mean really. Joyce played a tremendous joke on a lot of stuffed shirts, of which he was obviously one, and people are still trying to figure it out.
You could get the same effect from that single sentence I posted if it was just a vertical list of words.
Shem's
bodily
getup
it
seems
included
an
adze
of
a
skull
an
eight
of
a
larkseye
the
whoel
of
a
nose
one
numb
arm
up
a
sleeve
fortytwo
hairs
off
his
uncrown
eighteen
to
his
mock
lip..
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2006 : 7:52:51 PM
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Can anybody explain to me at what point prose becomes poetry anyway? Is it a certain objective level of pretentiousness or is it all in the formatting??
OK:
Can anybody explain
To me
At what point prose
Becomes
Poetry anyway? Is it
A
Certain objective level of
Pretentiousness or
Is
It / all
In the formatting??
Hey, that works!
Coming soon-
Eraserhead: The Musical!! |
Edited by - Sardu on 07/20/2006 7:53:35 PM |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2006 : 10:20:13 PM
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http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/myers/bad_writing.html
The article is about bad academic writing, but there are a few things that are relevent to this. One being that if some ideas were voiced in plain-spoken English, more people would be able to easily distinguish them as being preposterous and usually Marxist-themed claptrap. Cloak them in two-dollar words and you get academic brilliance.
Terrahawk's commentary on the state of culture and art is best summed up by viewing anything that has competed for the Turner Prize for modern conceptual art in England each year.
For example, the 2001 winner was a "piece" titled "Lights Turning on and Off".
It was an empty, EMPTY gallery with track lighting that would periodically turn on and off.
That was the art.
Another piece was titled "Pickled Sheep", which was a dead, pickled sheep.
And I'm just scratching the surface. Art is dead. It was killed by a lack of creativity that people try to hide by being "shocking". For example, the Virgin Mary made out of elephant dung. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 07/20/2006 : 11:09:08 PM
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Art in the realm of intellectuals is dead. But art itself is still out there. The internet actually makes it possible for artists and musicians of real merit to go straight to the public and bypass the gatekeepers- the record labels, art galleries or what-have-you that would restrict them for not being "relevant" (i.e., dada-ist, post-modern and intellectually bankrupt)enough.
But it's really intellectualism that is dead, and has been for quite a while, and the high art circles reflect that by being decedent. This is one area where I really think Ayn Rand was totally on the money.
Coming soon-
Eraserhead: The Musical!! |
Edited by - Sardu on 07/20/2006 11:09:46 PM |
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