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HL:
You would do well to examine the semantic differences between ignorant and stupid. Just as you would be well advised to decrement the use of pejoratives as close as you can get to zero.
There are many who hold the opinion that the vast majority of James Joyce's writings are the babbling of a drunken lunatic. Just as there are those who believe that Shakespeare is vastly over-rated (Hi, Jackie).
But NONE OF US on this board are stupid. You do not insult me by calling me ignorant; but at your own peril do you throw about the s-word.
And I don't give a fig for what the dictionaries or anyone else say about Joyce (or Hemingway for that matter.) I will soon be 60 years of age and I refuse to waste any part of my (hopefully many) remaining years by reading or trying to read utter tripe disguised as literature on the one hand or newspaper-style writing crudely fopisted offr upon the reading public as literature on the other.
Instead give me writers whose words inform, inspire, educate, exalt, entertain, and elevate. People like the Durants, Faulkner, Wolfe, Poe, Foote, Tuchman (whom I know some people here despise (too bad)), even Dickens. And I don't like Dickens but I'd rather read him than Joyce.
And don't ever imply that I am stupid again.
TEd
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Carpal Tunnel
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> only making yourselves look stupid
If that's truly your opinion I would gently suggest you fuck off and bore someone else.
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Quote:
HL:
There are many who hold the opinion that the vast majority of James Joyce's writings are the babbling of a drunken lunatic. [...] Instead give me writers whose words inform, inspire, educate, exalt, entertain, and elevate. People like the Durants, Faulkner [...]
And don't ever imply that I am stupid again.
--------------------
TEd
Have you read The Sound and the Fury? It has a number of stylistic similarities to Ulysses
And I didn't say you were stupid. I said by maintaining that James Joyce is not worth trying to understand some of you are making yourselves look ("have the appearance or give the impression of being, e.g. 'his home looked like a prison'") stupid; and not in the clinical, technical sense of the word, either, but in the pedestrian sense.
But perhaps I was thinking of Pound.
Unite and give praise to Ulysses. Those who will not must content themselves with a place in the lower intellectual orders.
--Ezra Pound.
and Coleridge,
Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Actually, after your suggestion that I look up the meaning of the word stupid, I discover (here I am unflappably bringing this back to a discussion about words) that the etymology makes the word more apt than I first thought :
Quote:
ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from French stupide or Latin stupidus, from stupere ‘be amazed or stunned.’
This was as great a surprise to me as was discovering that "read" -- etymologically speaking -- means "to interpret dreams".
Amazed or stunned. Exactly how I felt when I purchased a copy of Ulysses at the age of 16. I opened it at random, read half a page, and put it on the shelf where it remained untouched for 4 years.
Enjoying Ulysses, in my opinion, takes several years and several reads. It is kind of like the slow exposure of a photograph: with each new read, more details come into focus.
I feel strongly that Ulysses is the most important artefact of literary modernism (not simply because this is an academic consensus, but because this is also my own view after I read it). You feel strongly that this is not true. That's all.
Being challenged makes us come to the defence of and assert our opinions and beliefs; and this defines our axiological boundaries. A good thing, so long as it remains civilized.
Quote:
If that's truly your opinion I would gently suggest you f**k off and bore someone else.
No comment.
Last edited by Homo Loquens; 12/04/05 11:58 AM.
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Damn.
I had something to say about "Ulysses" but then I had to run over to Georgia and buy some Alabama bourbon and when I got back everybody here was mad so instead of joining the fray I just went on to bed.
But this is what I was gonna say about "arruginated":
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The term "rugose" had much wider circulation back during James Joyce's days than it does today. Back in the early 20th Century most everyone who could read was aware of the paleozoic solitary rugosian horn coral tetracorala because of it's resemblence to the cornucopia; the Horn 0' Plenty. But not unlike life, the solitary coral o'plenty could offer but little bounty because it was too small; about the size of a rugose, indirect, human penis.
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Why, the pugnacious might ask, did you want to say that? Well I said it because I hope the wording I chose will give example to what I have to say about the writting of James Joyce, which is...
James Joyce knew or did not know what Isimov's professor knew by instinct i.e. what the writer writes is never what the reader reads. Maybe among those posting here only Faldage is old enough to remember 'Ned" in the first reader, but a hundred years ago ten million kids struggled to understand poor Ned and as a result Ned was understood by ten million different kids exactly ten million different ways. Such is the nature of language and human advance.
No. I'm not saying that useful information about the world around us can't be commuted by language. That would be silly. What I am saying is that each individual extracts information about the world that he deems pertinent to his survival (and by extention, his Culture) and as a reward for this learning he receives endorphins in the form of an "Ah Ha!. Now back to James Joyce.
One thing is for sure: for the common reader James Joyce did not his last four books write. For the working men of this World the time spent deciphering Joyce would be better spent baling hay or picking cotton, so it follows that sane or insane James Joyce wrote his final sequence of convoluted books for Asinov's professor friend and homo loquens and art critics everywhere who after spending hours upon hours chasing down presumed James Joyce's associations can find within their clever minds associations that evoke an "Ah Ha!".
There is nothing wrong with the idle mind being entertained.
Now is there?
Last edited by themilum; 12/04/05 05:09 PM.
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My two cents about the word (I'm choosing to partially ignore what is not wordy about the thread): In Spanish we've got the word "arruga" (wrinkle), directly from Lat. "ruga". Then come "arrugado" for "wrinkled", and "rugoso", for "coarse" (texture). I'm not sure anyone here has mentioned "corrugated" yet? That's certainly "wrinkled", or better yet, "ridgey", which I can envision also as a quality of the key. Re: Joyce's Ulysses, I love the bits that I understand, and I skip those I don't. Is this perverse? I dare say, but it's the only way I've found to enjoy it. As far as I'm concerned, that's the whole function of literature. Do lighten up, everybody. Things are hard enough as it is for so many people all over the world. 
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