What am I in for, Veeky Forums?

Wonderful book...possibly my favorite of all. On my third reading now. I've had great luck with the new bloomsday book and re-Joyce podcasts.

But Trout Mask Replica is a piece of shit album user.

So he ripped off Anthony Burgess's title.

I usually go to plot summary after I've read something if I'm confused, then read the original text again to pick up thing other than just content/narrative, i.e. form, theme, style.

Safe as Milk was way more enjoyable anyways

People say the same for Ulysses as well because they don't "understand" it

It sounds pretentious, but for that common division between people's opinion they're similar

Have that exact edition sitting right next to me kek
Gonna read more of Ithaca today, dunno if I'll finish it

It really is a great book; I can see why it gets the praise it does. I've never read anything like it before. It works on every level: as novel, as allegory, its plot, its form, its prose. Excited to finish.

Favorite chapter(s), anons? Mine are Cyclops and Hades. I also didn't think Oxen of the Sun was that bad.

oh yeah also these are really good resources
modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Category:James_Joyce
malinikaushik.com/bloomsday/images/UlyssesMapofDublinLoRes.jpg

>This is a place where the lines that divide masterpieces and unbelievable wastes of time are blurred deliberately by anonymous psychopaths who want to meme your life away

That seems a little strong, user. We're not that bad.

This.

> It is the Trout Mask Replica of lit

I honestly think you are only comparing them because they are both memed hardcore style on Veeky Forums and /mu/, respectively. There doesn't have to be a "Trout Mask Replica" of Veeky Forums. Please resist the temptation to describe things using shitty imperfect analogies (e.g. "X is the Y of Z!"). This shit triggers me.

>People who don't like Beefheart don't "get" him

Fuck that, dude. I listen to tons of experimental music from disparate genres and I think Beefheart is just lame. It's not like you need some higher degree of culture or intellect to "appreciate" Trout Mask Replica. On the other hand, that argument could most definitely be made for Ulysses.

heavily recommend reading alongside audiobook, helped my pleb ass anyway

>ctrl-f "arse"
>ctrl-f "farts"
>0 results

Get it together, Veeky Forums

I read it a couple of months ago using that edition. It was great.

Check out the teaching company's Joyce lecture. Listening to the appropriate section after the few confusing chapters helped a bit. (specifically Oxen and Sirens)

There's a torrent floating around online somewhere.

Ithaca is my favourite. It's devastatingly beautiful.

im reading it along with summaries i can find on the internet, just finished oxen of the sun
its not TOO bad. people complain about joyce's references but they're usually done in such a way where they can be ignored/missed if you dont get it. gotta be willing to translate the different languages when its stephen's inner monologue though

is sirens considered difficult? it was one of the most fun/easiest to me and im not trying to show off because i still dont get large sections of proteus and oxen

Personally I had some trouble with it. It was a little rough for me determining what exactly was going on at points, and a lot of the audial jokes/technique went by me. I felt like I was constantly not getting what he was trying to do. Still enjoyed it though. I actually didn't have a ton of trouble with Oxen aside from the beginning. Proteus utterly kicked my ass though.

Is it wise to read The Odyssey beforehand? I'm about 50 pages in and I feel like I've missed a lot of allusions.

Nah not really. I mean it would nice to pick up some references but you'll live.

Reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is important imo.

>I mean it would nice to pick up some references but you'll live.
not him, but are there then references or not? I mean, is it just the "lel Telemachus lel Scylla and Charybdis", or are there actual references like once per page.

>My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

>You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope you will surprise me some time when I am asleep dressed, steal over to me with a whore's glow in your slumberous eyes, gently undo button after button in the fly of my trousers and gently take out your lover's fat mickey, lap it up in your moist mouth and suck away at it till it gets fatter and stiffer and comes off in your mouth. Sometimes too I shall surprise you asleep, lift up your skirts and open your drawers gently, then lie down gently by you and begin to lick lazily round your bush. You will begin to stir uneasily then I will lick the lips of my darling's cunt. You will begin to groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in your sleep. Then I will lick up faster and faster like a ravenous dog until your cunt is a mass of slime and your body wriggling wildly.

>Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird! There is one lovely word, darling, you have underlined to make me pull myself off better. Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier.

>Gass

Okay so one example is The Citizen throws a biscuit tin at Bloom while he's leaving the pub. This is an allusion to the cyclops Polyphemus throwing a mountain at Odysseus when escaping his island. It's stuff like that.

Hamlet is the one book characters in the novel talk about and assume familiarity with. Portrait gives backstory to one of the two main characters. I think those are more important to read to understand Ulysses than the Odyssey.

>mistakes

Such as?

Bad taste

TMR is the greatest rock album of all time

Pretty much correct, but I would say that's one of the more overt references (unless I've been missing a ton) and that most are more vague. You're 100% right about Hamlet and Portrait though. I would definitely advocate reading those over the Odyssey.

Mostly spelling/punctuation stuff that you can figure out pretty easily. At times though there will be a bunch of "should read:" footnotes together and that can be annoying.

Currently finishing up Hades, and Calypso is my favorite chapter thus far. I don't even want to try to break down Proteus on my first read.

yeah i feel like reading the odyssey gives you access to a lot of neat bonus "aha" moments but if you haven't read hamlet most of an entire chapter is going to not make sense or at least be pretty boring

This should be a Veeky Forums banner.

Not only that, but the "blinding of the cyclops" is genius. He's so narrow minded that being told Jesus was a Jew "blinds" him.

I haven't read Ulysses yet (just started Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man) but this sounds quite interesting. Care to elaborate?

The Cyclops in Odyssey has one eye and gets blinded by Odyssey. Somebody narrow minded might be described as "myopic", which means one-eyed. The man is incredibly narrow-minded and arrogant and he is blinded by rage at the notion of Jesus being Jewish because he is very antisemitic.

Except it doesnt rock