Happy Birthday to the Master

[orpheus]

James Joyce, born this day in 1882.

"Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the "

[klr]

James Joyce. Everyone knows about him, but few have read him.

And I'm not one of those few, despite being Irish.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I've read Dubliners and Portrait of the artist. I keep meaning to try Ulysses. Life's too short for Finnegan's Wake!

[FBM]

Hated him the first time I ran across him in undergrad. More recently, I had to take a class on him and began to understand what he was about. Can't say any of his books would be the first I'd pick up, but I've come to respect his work. Someone will be along shortly to post his nasty letters to his wife. Maybe Bella.

[klr]

Hated him the first time I ran across him in undergrad. More recently, I had to take a class on him and began to understand what he was about. Can't say any of his books would be the first I'd pick up, but I've come to respect his work. Someone will be along shortly to post his nasty letters to his wife. Maybe Bella.

There's a closed footbridge named for her* here in Galway. Can't find a good picture of it, so I may have to take one myself.

*That's Nora Barnacle, not Bella.

[orpheus]

I've read Dubliners and Portrait of the artist. I keep meaning to try Ulysses. Life's too short for Finnegan's Wake!

For me, once I dipped into it, I concluded that life is too short for me not to read it.

Different strokes.

[SteveB]

I never read any of his stuff either. I want to read Hemingway first. He's the first classic author I want to read.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, I've got a couple of Hemingway books on the shelves I want to read. Can't say I want to read James Joyce, after having flicked a couple of his books.

[Lion IRC]

Birthdays
Congratulations to: Josh Timonen (38)

[pErvinalia]

[orpheus]

Something about the sublime and the ridiculous comes to mind...

[JimC]

I've read Dubliners and Portrait of the artist. I keep meaning to try Ulysses. Life's too short for Finnegan's Wake!

Portrait of the Artist was a set English text in my last year of school...

In spite of that, I quite liked it...

[orpheus]

I've read Dubliners and Portrait of the artist. I keep meaning to try Ulysses. Life's too short for Finnegan's Wake!

Portrait of the Artist was a set English text in my last year of school...

In spite of that, I quite liked it...

It's a pretty great book. Fascinating to compare it to Stephen Hero, which was its original version. (Joyce destroyed a lot of the manuscript, so it's really only a long fragment.) It's very fine writing, but it is rough by comparison. I found it exciting to see how he was shaping sentences, paragraphs, whole sections and ideas into what would ultimately become Portrait.

We didn't have to read Joyce in school. But I was an insecure teenager and tried to cover it up with pretentious intellectual arrogance. So I read a lot of Joyce, thinking it would impress people. But I really was too immature to get much out of it.

When I was around 30, I decided to re-read JJ and see if a decade and a half would make a difference. It sure did: I was blown away. For one thing, his work has so much that other literature simply lacks. Even quite good literature that I loved and admired. I still appreciated and enjoyed other writers, but Joyce was another thing altogether. I felt like an avid mountain climber that had only known the Alps — and then suddenly saw Everest.

Never have gotten over the experience. It's funny; the writer I feel closest to — by far — is Beckett. Always have; still do. Discovering Joyce hasn't changed that. But it has given me a whole new appreciation for what words can do.

[rainbow]

Something about the sublime and the ridiculous comes to mind...

Ulysses was quite seminal.

[pErvinalia]

Seminal fluid... what does it taste like? Seriously.