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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.

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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 :

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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.

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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.