Anyone read Ulysses by James Joyce

[Thatrogueassdiaz]

I am a big fan of Portrait of the artist as a young man. But I've always been scared to try a hand at Ulysses or *gulp Finnegans Wake ()

Anyone read it? How difficult of a read is it? Way harder than Portrait?

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[Patrick Kane]

That book was torture to read. I read about 60% of it and couldn't get through any more pages and left it alone for two years but I hate not finishing books so I picked it up again and forced myself to finish just incoherent, mumbo jumbo crap.

And it's not that I dislike like James Joyce as a writer, I thoroughly enjoyed the Dubliners series but Ulysses was just awful to me.

 

[The Real]

Yeah, I read it for a class in undergrad. We read it with a supplementary text that explained a ton of the references and symbols, and worked kind of like a key/legend for the book, which is initially like a map that doesn't have one. I enjoyed it.

 

[Fillerguy]

Reads like its nothing but filler. Literally descriptions of shyt like some dude walking into a room, for pages. Ulysses had me thinking I had ADD....Then again I'm extremely impatient. First time I was ever humbled by a book. Never read "Portrait". However, James Joyce is known a troll.

 

[Patrick Kane]

Reads like its nothing but filler. Literally descriptions of shyt like some dude walking into a room, for pages. Ulysses had me thinking I had ADD....Then again I'm extremely impatient. First time I was ever humbled by a book. Never read "Portrait". However, James Joyce is known a troll.

Yeah, he would describe a room and its content for four pages!! I do enjoy stream of consciousness writing but I'd rather have my eye gouged out than read this again.

 

[Thatrogueassdiaz]

Reads like its nothing but filler. Literally descriptions of shyt like some dude walking into a room, for pages. Ulysses had me thinking I had ADD....Then again I'm extremely impatient. First time I was ever humbled by a book. Never read "Portrait". However, James Joyce is known a troll.

Portrait is that shyt!

Yeah, he would describe a room and its content for four pages!! I do enjoy stream of consciousness writing but I'd rather have my eye gouged out than read this again.

 

[TrueEpic08]

I am a big fan of Portrait of the artist as a young man. But I've always been scared to try a hand at Ulysses or *gulp Finnegans Wake ()

Anyone read it? How difficult of a read is it? Way harder than Portrait?

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Ulysses is fantastic, great portrait of a city and excellent in the way that it constructs thought, interaction, and relations, among other things.

You WILL need to read it with criticism to really get it, and to really understand the way in which Joyce's use of language constructs everything, but I believe that it's worth it.

Your experience with Finnegan's Wake, however, will depend on how you take to Ulysses. READ EVERYTHING ELSE FROM JOYCE FIRST, THEN DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO READ FINNEGAN'S WAKE. Trust me on that one.

 

[Thatrogueassdiaz]

Ulysses is fantastic, great portrait of a city and excellent in the way that it constructs thought, interaction, and relations, among other things.

You WILL need to read it with criticism to really get it, and to really understand the way in which Joyce's use of language constructs everything, but I believe that it's worth it.

Your experience with Finnegan's Wake, however, will depend on how you take to Ulysses. READ EVERYTHING ELSE FROM JOYCE FIRST, THEN DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO READ FINNEGAN'S WAKE. Trust me on that one.

How would you compare Ulysses to Portrait? And have you read Finnegan's Wake? :e40:

 

[TrueEpic08]

How would you compare Ulysses to Portrait? And have you read Finnegan's Wake? :e40:

Portrait, in a lot of ways, is the stylistic experiment that lead into Ulysses. There are similarities in style and composition (really, it's basically the prequel to Ulysses), but it reads much, much easier in my opinion.

Finnegan's Wake is difficult even for me.

 

[Thatrogueassdiaz]

Portrait, in a lot of ways, is the stylistic experiment that lead into Ulysses. There are similarities in style and composition (really, it's basically the prequel to Ulysses), but it reads much, much easier in my opinion.

Finnegan's Wake is difficult even for me.

And what makes Ulysses a harder read? More stream-of-consciousness, more historical/cultural/literary references, wordplay...?

 

[TrueEpic08]

And what makes Ulysses a harder read? More stream-of-consciousness, more historical/cultural/literary references, wordplay...?

All of that. Along with the fact that, unlike Ulysses, it's a form of Bildungsroman, which gives it a driving force that the "non-plot" of Ulysses lacks in some people's eyes (I don't mind, but I'm also teaching college-level English Lit. I'm most certainly not the casual reader). You certainly won't be as frustrated reading Portrait as you might be reading Ulysses, though it is certainly still difficult reading.

 

[Thatrogueassdiaz]

All of that. Along with the fact that, unlike Ulysses, it's a form of Bildungsroman, which gives it a driving force that the "non-plot" of Ulysses lacks in some people's eyes (I don't mind, but I'm also teaching college-level English Lit. I'm most certainly not the casual reader). You certainly won't be as frustrated reading Portrait as you might be reading Ulysses, though it is certainly still difficult reading.

I've read Portrait:cacmjpls: I loved it. Of course I read the Barnes and Noble Classics version of Portrait, which has a key that goes along with it. But I did not think it was all that difficult of a read.

I'm going to save Ulysses for after I've read everything I recently bought--50 books, breh!

 

[Patrick Kane]

I've read Portrait:cacmjpls: I loved it. Of course I read the Barnes and Noble Classics version of Portrait, which has a key that goes along with it. But I did not think it was all that difficult of a read.

I'm going to save Ulysses for after I've read everything I recently bought--50 books, breh!

What are some of the books you've recently bought?

 

[Thatrogueassdiaz]

What are some of the books you've recently bought?

Fiction:

Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex,
Carson Mccullers - The heart is a lonely hunter,
DH Lawrence - Sons and Lovers,
Thomas Wolfe - Look Homeward, Angel,
Irene Nemirovsky - Suite Francaise,
Lermontov - A hero of our time,
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov,
John Steinbeck - grapes of wrath,
John Steinbeck- East of Eden,
Celine - Journey to the night,
Ann Petry - The Narrows,
Louise Erdrich - The last report on the miracles,
Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies,
Albert Camus - The Plague,
Albert Camus - The Stranger,
Jean-Paul Sartre - Nausea,
Yi Yun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,
Yukio Mushima - Spring Snow,
Salman Rushdie - The Midnight Children,
Kate Chopin - The Awakening,
Isabel Allende - The House of the Spirits

Don't feel like listing the nonfiction, but I've mostly bought books on Dream Interpretation, Art history/Artist biographies, Zen, and fiction writing

 

[Slaimon Khan Shah]

PEOPLE SHOULD READ SOME ISLAMIC BOOKS.