Redpill me on this book, Veeky Forums

it's a massive bump in the road, somewhere near (Joyce in fact predicts it) the end of the modernist era and the postmodern "wehaven'tnorcanweeverofferanysolutionstoourownproblems" philosophy that rose from the ashes of blitzkrieg europe, aka Pynchon, deLillo and the gang. it is a photographic negative of the Odyssey, a funhouse mirror, a cracked servant's glass (though i'm loosely paraphrasing). in that way (reflecting the odyssey) Joyce lays out the end of the west, and with Bloom as nietzsche's last man, Joyce foresaw it all, and spelled it out in the language of the end: references to the bygone and internal, inherently selfish nonsense.
in every way, Ulysses is the final chapter of western lit. (wake is the nightmare thereafter, imo)

What does this book have to do with the Odyssey? I think I grasp what you're trying to say but, does that make the novel good? Or rather, "important"?

How far into the book are you? You sound like you haven't gotten into the really crazy stuff in the latter half of the novel.

>does that make the novel good? Or rather, "important"?
This is an important question in the discourse around Ulysses, and also in postmodern discourse. People tend to prefer to consider texts in terms of value, not quality. In which case, importance is more relevant than trying to find an intrinsic aesthetic "goodness"

Suck a fucking dick

>First and foremost, it invents new ways of repesenting consciousness and subjectivity

Such as? I'm not trying to be belligerent, but what are you specifically thinking of?

>This post

Laugh if you want, but I read the first chapter and stopped. As someone who frequently reads Beckett and Nietzsche, even I was wondering just what the hell I had read.

>In which case, importance is more relevant than trying to find an intrinsic aesthetic "goodness"

I agree, but I find it hard to gauge a novel's artistic impact when the writing style is so fucking weird. Am I just missing the context?

Well, most obvious is the stream-of-consciousness style. You're given immediate access to the thoughts of the characters as they happen.

There are some books where, if you are smart enough and industrious enough, you can get through them on your own regardless of their difficulty. Ulysses is not one of those books. I highly recommend buying an academic guide to it and using that as an accompanying text. Joyce is doing a lot of things that require explanation.

I don't know if it'd make you feel better to know that almost everyone feels the same way upon first reading without aready knowing what the novel is meant to have done, and that in fact many people who say they love and understand it without that knowledge on their first read are mostly lying

The first chapter is quite conventional conventional compared to later on, though. I'm a bit confused that somebody who's able to handle things like Molloy would be this taken aback by Stately, plump Buck Mulligan and Stephen the jejune Jesuit's funtime all of the sudden

the odyssey presents the "beginning" of the west: odysseus's return home from the war. Joyce introduces Bloom in his home, but immediately he leaves for breakfast.
this "negating" or "opposite" structure Bloom moves through says one thing: the west, established by the odyssey, is now (1910s, tail-end of modern era) a shadow figure of what it began as, and where the hero once was a warrior, he now feeds milk to pussems, where he once possessed his wife, he now is beholden to his wife's affair, and caters to her in bed. he is also a jew, if that helps. (there is definitely historical signifigance behind Bloom's heritage but i've yet to srudy history enough to confidently cite anything beyond intuition.)

I think you'd benefit from leaving it for a few years, maybe reading some Woolf and Eliot, and then coming back to it. That might help you appreciate understanding the mindset a little without you having to take essentially a history course.
Having said that I've read shittons of Eliot and Woolf and I hate Ulysses so what do I know.

>writing style is so fucking weird
I have never read Ulysses nor do I hold stake in this discussion, but that alone is a good attribute. It's original and it sets it apart, I guess.

Hmm, interesting. So more or less the entire plot is just subtext for literary dissection of the Western canon?

>redpill

Please leave.

Sorry yeah you were asking about how Ulysses is related to the Odyessey. Well, the Latin name for Odysseus was Ulysses: the book is named after the Odyssey, and you'll find extensive mirroring and allusion between the two texts. But yes, it's in dialogue with the whole canon via Homer.

Is Woolf really worth the time investment? I can see how it would be a good intro to this kind of writing style but for fuck sakes, do you really need an entire chapter talking about some guy's routine as he gets ready to leave the house? I don't remember which novel that was exactly but it left a horrible impression.

For Woolf, yes you absolutely do. What else is worth writing about but life? Tons of authors, including Dickens, Mallarme, etc. have fetishised the ordinary. That's what writers want to do -- capture experience. But through these little moments like buying flowers or watching a biplane, Woolf gives a wonderful philosophy of the interconnectedness of subjectivity in the modern world.

So, yeah you've really gotta let yourself go and try and get into it because it's very wanky writing, but it's also amazing writing.

I don't really find anything challenging about Beckett's writing style, even with all the abstraction his writing is completely devoid of pretense. Ulysses, on the other hand, seems like it requires a primer just to get into it.

if it's really such a great book, wouldn't it be enjoyable on its own? that's how I'm going to read it. if Joyce is as good as everyone says I want to read it how he intended it to be read and I can go through it again and find all the references on a second read.

Ah, you have asked the question that many ask, or ought to ask. IS Ulysses a great book?

that sounds like a lot of work for nothing