Joyce

So Veeky Forums, where do I start with the most patrician meme of them all? Portrait or Dubliners?

Dubliners.

Doesn't matter. Read both then read Ulysses.

Memeigans wake can be skipped. Or just keep it in your bathroom and open at random and read a page or 2 while you take a dump.

You have to read his personal select letters first to understand his live of being a peasant potatoe nigger.

Portrait motivated me to lose my virginity to a hooker, so there's that.

This is why you do this

>Memeigans wake can be skipped.
>Plebs actually tell themselves this

Pseuds say it can't be.

I like Finnegan's Wake but it's just not something to try to read cover to cover. Joyce would probably laugh if you did.

feel free to share a few indispensable nuggets of wisdom you picked up in Wake.

doesn't really matter. Dubliners my favorite of the three, but they're all good. a fun thing while reading Ulysses is using a notebook to keep track of characters, because their movements throughout the day are really deliberate and well done and pleasing. for example, a boat is seen in the distance in chapter 2 but it doesn't make another appearance until one of the final chapters, when Bloom and Stephen meet the captain in a bar.

Language can been learned quickly and there are words that need to exist that don't yet. Our language is our limiter and we are reluctant to address that with mountains of vocabulary (even though we probably should).
There is legitimate beauty in the purpose of obscurity. .

Will definitely do. I have done this in every Pynchon book iv'e ever read and I can say its helpful and adds to the enjoyment. Any other advice?

idiot pseud confirmed

almost every paragraph is "about" the interplay between the past, present, and future. one chapter does this by contrasting the drunken discussions of bar patrons with a fictional retelling of certain Irish icons.

all this being said, Ulysses has serious flaws. probably 30-40% of the novel is parody, which is undeniably boring. stream of consciousness is sometimes interesting, but not exactly his most interesting or pretty literary device. my least favorite aspect of Ulysses is its lack of consistency; the style of a chapter is always different from the previous, which is cool but also frustrating because Joyce's prose is killer when it's fluid, not when it's verbose and obscure. so maybe read Dubliners first because it's his "most compassionate" book, and also it's my favorite–i'd still consider him one of my favorite writers if he'd only published Dubliners.

I'm sorta reading both Dubliners and Portrait at the same time. I'm pretty entry level and finally beginning to appreciate prose, and I'm in love with reading Joyce. I'll probably burn through both Dubliners and Portrait in a week, but definitely re-read them. He began as a brilliant poet before writing fiction. Watch some of the YouTube documentaries on him and read a few articles on why he's so brilliant to give his work the full appreciation it deserves. You're in for a real treat.

disregard the negative bits of this post. on /mu/ the other day some guy said "why does charles mingus put a flamenco guitar solo in the middle of this track, it ruins the flow." that is what happens in life. ulysses is a perfection of the imperfection of life and as such it isn't always pretty or it doesn't flow the exact way one gets used to or expects. "life is pretty good but sometimes it rains, i'm wet, i get cold, i just can't bring myself to enjoy it. life? 6/10"

"i don't like it" is not a criticism. shit on it all you want, by all means, but when you misleadingly word your displeasure as fact you could be turning someone else off to something they might enjoy, all because you can't take your ego out of your writing.

"i don't like it" is, in fact, one of two outcomes of a criticism. you are right, my displeasure is not a fact, nor did i intend my criticism to seem like fact. my "ego" is present in my criticism because it's the same ego that formulates reflections of the work, so naturally it is present when discussing personal opinion.

my points about the novel remain valid. if you have no interest whatsoever in works of prose that employ parody, obscurity, or any of the other qualities of maximalism, you probably won't enjoy much of Ulysses.

he's right though.
Finnegans Wake is beautiful.

>'
We gots ourselves some kinda expurt here.

Holy shit bro, if you can't get the title right just keep the opinion to yourself.

I like the chapter of Ulysses where he writes bad on purpose.

Literally every single piece of James Joyce's writing is absolutely marvelous and the only people who genuinely think he is bad most likely have not given it the right amount of effort it deserves.

First read either Dubliners or Portrait, but definitely read both. Then read Ulysses, and then Finnegan's Wake.

>expurt

Plus he wrote basically living off NEET bux.

Read his fart letters instead

More beautiful prose does not exist in the English language

You are the only idiot, and pseud in here. Get the fuck out of this board you uncultured swine.

Am I the only one who thinks this unironically? His farther letters are stunning works of poetry. I think them better than most of ulysses

>uncultured swine.
nice toy story reference

*fart

I'm reading Ulysses for the first time, for a class, so in-class discussion is helpful- but I have to admit I'm not getting a lot from the stream of consciousness sections other than the obvious (and I've studied the classics fairly extensively). Did everybody else have trouble extracting meaning from Ulysses on their first time or am I dense?

I totally agree

>My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or fling you down under me on that softy belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shape of your upturned dress and white girlish drawers and in the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair. It allows me to burst into tears of pity and love at some slight word, to tremble with love for you at the sounding of some chord or cadence of music or to lie heads and tails with you feeling your fingers fondling and tickling my ballocks or stuck up in me behind and your hot lips sucking off my cock while my head is wedged in between your fat thighs, my hands clutching the round cushions of your bum and my tongue licking ravenously up your rank red cunt. I have taught you almost to swoon at the hearing of my voice singing or murmuring to your soul the passion and sorrow and mystery of life and at the same time have taught you to make filthy signs to me with your lips and tongue, to provoke me by obscene touches and noises, and even to do in my presence the most shameful and filthy act of the body. You remember the day you pulled up your clothes and let me lie under you looking up at you while you did it? Then you were ashamed even to meet my eyes.

The writing is as technically stunning as the content is obscene.

>le life is cyclical
>so deep XD

I hope you're trolling.

tfw I just realized William Gass based his entire style off of Joyce's erotic letters to Nora

joyce the homie for drawin them giambattistovicocircles

gotta break that abcedmindedness

That was beautiful and revolting.

Was it worth it?

I want more like this. Do any erotic writers come close?