
Breaking Up with James Joyce - lermontov
https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/breaking-james-joyce/
======
agonz253
[https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/09/21/who-the-
hell-...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/09/21/who-the-hell-is-this-
joyce/)

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jyriand
If you like podcasts, I would suggest listening Frank Delaney's Re-Joyce [0],
where he goes through Ulysses sentence by sentence and tries to explain what's
going on. Sadly this great podcast was interrupted by Frank's sudden death.

[0] -- [http://blog.frankdelaney.com/re-
joyce/](http://blog.frankdelaney.com/re-joyce/)

~~~
lisper
> interrupted by Frank's sudden death

That would seem to me to be the inevitable result of such an endeavor given
the relative scales of Ulysses and a typical human life span. Even just trying
to _read_ Ulysses carries a certain non-negligible risk in this regard. I
myself narrowly escaped a brush with catastrophe when assigned to read
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I was myself a young man (in high
school). I thank God daily that I lived to warn others.

;-)

~~~
twoodfin
The podcast had slowly and then significantly ramped up its length, and
certain sections of the novel are amenable to more rapid treatment than
others. There was no reason to think he couldn’t have finished in another
10-15 years.

He was halfway through “Wandering Rocks” a “mere” 6.75 years in, and I had
been estimating he’d be at my favorite “Cyclops” by around now. :(

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biswaroop
I highly recommend Dubliners by Joyce. It's the most beautiful collection of
short stories ever written. Ulysses has its roots in Dubliners, and if Ulysses
is a daydream, then Finnegans Wake is a nightmare. Leave the nightmares to the
hobgoblins.

~~~
psychometry
I found Dubliners frustrating. They are not so much short stories as vignettes
and I was often left scratching my head after each one, confused as to what
the point of it all was.

~~~
artpepper2
I think "vignettes" is a good way to look at them. They aren't really plot-
driven, rather each one builds to a psychological or spiritual moment, what
Joyce called "epiphanies"

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justonepost
Gabrielle co-wrote puberty blues, a book about 13 year old girls becoming
groupies for a "surfie" gang in 1970s australia. A rather autobiographical
account. How much of it she lived, and how much of it was Katy, I'm not sure.
No doubt the beginning of some of her choices she talks about in this piece.

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beevai142
Joyce scholarship in some sense seems like mathematics --- the construct is an
invention, axioms can be whatever they are decided to be, and the only
question is in how productive and beautiful the construction is.

That being said, from this point of view the whole enterprise seems empty and
vain. Even if you finally find what the book "means", the whole project seems
like a dead end and does not lead to anything else --- you have gained nothing
that generalizes beyond a narrow scope, and Joyce is long dead. This means
that the work is not beautiful.

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midhir
_Solar Bones_ by Mike McCormack just won the International Dublin Literary
Prize and might appeal to Joyce fans. It's based on the West coast of Ireland
and is a one-sentence novel. Looking forward to reading it next month. Not
without trepidation though...

~~~
te_chris
It's excellent. One of the best books I've read.

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thanatropism
When you listen to jazz, you don't complain that you don't know all the
chords.

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DanSmooth
Further reading: The NYT had just last week a longform piece on Jason Kidd,
who was once celebrated as the greates JJ scholar alive:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/magazine/the-strange-
case...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/magazine/the-strange-case-of-the-
missing-joyce-scholar.html)

~~~
barleymash
John* Kidd :)

~~~
tracyshaun
Thank you. I was about to be amazed about the other life of a hall of fame
point guard and mediocre coach.

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mbubb
I like this essay - took 2 Joyce seminars back in college days and got a lot
out of it. Never made it all the way through FW. I am not familiar with this
writer but she nicely shifts from a serious to a joking tone. I feel like her
breaking up with Joyce may take a long time and the results will be
interesting to read.

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daxfohl
After several years of on again off again trying to read Ulysses, I'm 20 pages
from done, and now this.

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kbutler
Steven Brust, Will Shetterly and others formed the (at least) half-joking
"Pre-Joycean Fellowship", emphasizing storytelling over extravagant literary
flourishes.

Sounds good to me.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-
Joycean_Fellowship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Joycean_Fellowship)

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rumcajz
What people often forget about classical books: They were written to be
enjoyed. That's true even for Finnegan's Wake although it requires a special
kind of person to enjoy it.

~~~
pupser
I wonder how you enjoy 200 pages of no punctuation or coherence (Ulysses)? It
takes a special kind of person to enjoy this sort of thing... or some hipsters
who want to show off.

~~~
bmelton
I haven't spent much time with Joyce past Dubliners, but I've spent a great
deal of time with Kerouac, and particularly "On the Road".

I don't think it takes a special person to enjoy, but it does require a
particular mindset that any given person may or may not have at the time. It's
sort of how "Catcher in the Rye" is brilliant when you're a teenager, and how
very, very different it is when you're an adult.

On the Road is not the sort of book that I'd spend much time with now, but
I've grown towards, and to appreciate the brevity of Hemingway or Elmore
Leonard more now, but if you're not inclined towards Joyce, wait a while. If
it never happens, so be it.

~~~
BrendanD
Kerouac's "On the Road" and "Big Sur" nicely book-end the ebullience of youth
and the disillusion/dissolution of middle-age.

