Okay, so famous Irish author James Joyce is on every Great Books list ever published. Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake, Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man...they're all praised and renowned, and on college reading lists for the educated student, and all this other shit.
Here's the thing though: James Joyce SUCKS.
Okay, okay, I'm being a little harsh. The man was definitely intelligent, and definitely talented. I will not deny that his books are well-written...but does anyone actually know what he's writing about? Can anyone actually focus on his stream-of-consciousness style for more than a hot second? Does anybody else get constantly lost in his wordy metaphors? I know I do.
I read Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man my senior year, when I was going through my "read-every-book-on-the-AP-reading-list" stage. Many of those books were excellent, but I was sincerely disappointed with Mr. Joyce. I was intrigued for the first couple of chapters, but by the middle of the book, I was lost and confused. I have to be honest, I don't think I was completely focused on the content after that point, because I was just trying to find a point where we'd actually get back to an understandable plot...but that never happened. Oh, except for the part where he got addicted to having sex with prostitutes. THAT part was made nice and clear.
I do like his letters to his wife, though. They're so scatological. I personally am not into that shit (haha), but I think it's funny that such a renowned author WAS.
So anyways, next time I'll write on an author who is actually really incredible. There's quite a few of those, so it may take me a while to focus on one, but I'll do my best. In the meantime, what does everyone else think of James Joyce? I feel so silly asking questions when no one answers, but I KNOW people are reading this, so please leave a comment!
Cheers,
GIM<3
I can understand the points you make, but I must disagree. I loved _Dubliners_, and the vast majority of those stories had a comprehensible and even entertaining plot, not to mention they contained some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read; Joyce knew how to write good narrative fiction. However, as the title suggests, _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ is (I believe) more about art and the artist than about plot or characters; I really enjoyed it. As for _Ulysses_, that beast (again, I believe) is about language and character, not about plot. Joyce employs literally every literary and lingual device known to humankind in that epic novel whilst simultaneously introducing the world to Leopold Bloom, the most well-developed and balanced character in literature since Odysseus himself. I haven't read _Finnegan's Wake_, so no comment on that.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I can understand your frustration. Literature and language fascinate me, yet I hate TS Eliot with a passion. He, although writing with similar complexity as Joyce, numbed and paralysed my literary senses and really bored me (try reading the first sentence of "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"), though that may be exactly what he intended.
My point is this: we all have our own fascinations and interests, and different literature appeals to us. Cheers
" I loved _Dubliners_, and the vast majority of those stories had a comprehensible and even entertaining plot"
DeleteThat's because Dubliners was his first book. It was near the beginning of his descent into madness. I dare you to say the same thing about his last book though. To this day no one has been able to figure out what Finnegan's wake is about.
I agree on James Joyce, and particularly Ulysses: it is virtually unreadable. Tried twice, and no one in college was even requiring me to do so. The characters and situations not worth the effort of the slog. I'm somewhat of an expert in the 1920's, and the response to the book from other authors, the ones that say they liked it anyway, smacks of so much "emperors new clothes", no one willing to call it what it was, fearful that it would open their next attempt to criticism.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird to me that many who did have a problem with it at the time, had a problem based on what they construed to be the pornographic elements: how could they tell? I'm surprised that most didn't come out and say, "I can't read it." It's gibberish...in fact, it's hard not to believe that Joyce didn't just write it as gibberish, to see how many people would fail to identify it as such, because they wanted to seem educated. Four times more difficult than Kerouac, with a quarter of the literay pay-off!
kurt vonnegut said: dont punish the reader. james joyce is the king of reader punishment.
ReplyDeletekurt vonnegut said: dont punish the reader. james joyce is the king of reader punishment.
ReplyDeleteSo true. The best art is art that accessible to everyone.
ReplyDeleteT.S. Eliot started out that way, but once he gained some acceptance in literary circles he loaded up his works with all sort of classical allusions that were only accessible to academics.
Joseph Conrad, now there's a writer.
You're right, Joyce sucked. If you read in this order(the order his books were written)- dubliners, portrait of an artist, ulysses, finnegan's, wake then you'll see an author clearly declining into schizophrenia.
ReplyDeleteThe reason for the forced esteem Western society has for Joyce it political. He happened to come around babbling gibberish at the beginning of the age of post modernism when John D Rockefeller Jr. was overthrowing previous Western education and the concept of truth itself for the political views of Neitzsche as the backbone of the group of propaganda institutions which he chose to call "social sciences". Joyce was a poster boy for their political bent- he was just a nutter, so the elite start praising his nonsensical gibberish as the pinnacle of brilliance. We see this same tactic occurring now with mental illness- men that think they are women are insane, but we are trained to think that we're the crazy ones for pointing that simple fact out.
Joyce sucked. If you can't understand what an author is saying without a commentary explaining it to you then that author has failed the first test of authorship. It doesn't matter how pretty his sentences are at that point, he's just writing gibberish. However, if you're a victim of neoliberal higher education, it's mandatory that you praise Joyce as a genius rather than the demented degenerate pervert that he was.
The same has been done to Jimi Hendrix, to some extent. Hendrix was a good guitar player but he's vastly overrated for political reasons just like Joyce. And, just like Joyce, everyone is supposed to rave about Hendrix's genius bu almost no one listens to his music.
I thought your comments about Joyce were interesting and had some merit but you are totally off-base comparing him with Hendrix. If almost nobody listens to his music how is it that the majority of readers know who he is and what his music sounds like. He had millions of fans during the sixties who enjoyed his music and bought his albums and not just because he was part of some trendy fad.
ReplyDelete