![9780141182667[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/tsNphOa.jpg "9780141182667[1].jpg")
>read pic related
>characters coming out of nowhere
>random ramblings throughout
>doesn't seem to follow any particular aim
>it just suddenly stops
What was the point of this?
>>7383631
try reading it again, use spark notes if you don't get it.
>>7383631
farts
god you're retarded
>>7383631
Can I read this without Dubliners? I know I "can", I'm just asking if there are references or something I would miss or not, or if they're negligible.
>>7383703
I read Dubliners after I read Portrait. I don't think Dubliners is necessary. It just eases you into Joyce.
>>7383703
it makes sense to read them chronologically because you trace the man's writing and can watch it go from simple but strong up to the pinnacle of the modern English language
also OP you're probably just not cut out for reading stream-of-consciousness yet. This book isn't even half as hard as Ulysses
>>7383631
How is it random if it charts his school and home life and documents his musings and disenfranchisement with religion, love and life?
You need the most basic of prompts like "he said" / "he thought" your books?
>>7383716
serious question:
i've since long enjoyed reading stream of consciousness-writing, partly because it's challenging to read (english isn't my mother's tongue).
is s.o.c. considered harder in terms of reading than most other forms of literature?
i always thought what made it hard was my lacking vocabulary or unfamiliarity with more abstract forms of the english language
>>7383694
>can't explain the point of this
Guess OP was right.
>>7383722
>highly religious
>next chapter
>random character that comes out of nowhere notes that Stephen is no longer a believer
>the two proceed to talk about random shit made up on the spot
>no intention whatsoever to explain why the loss of faith
B R A V O J O Y C E
Anyone have a guide to getting into James Joyce?
Or should I just go Dubliners -> Portrait of an Artist -> Ulysses
>>7383747
Literally chronological. Guy only wrote four long works it's not like it's complicated.
Then read chamber music if you really care.
>>7383725
it is. OP is just retarded
>>7383751
Can I leave Dubliners for last? Would it make much difference not reading it before tackling Ulysses?
>>7383759
you can leave it if you want but it gives you a lot of useful context for ulysses + events/characters in dubliners make cameos in ulysses.
Let's admit Dubliners, as opposed to the rest of his mayor works, is relatively bad.
>>7383741
>dat sermon
>dat lust
>dat constriction of religious ideals vs individual plans
>>7383764
>dubliners
>bad
found the pleb friendos
it's objectively superior to portrait, and is foundational to ulysses (more so than portrait). portrait is unrefined and what joyce was trying to do with portrait was done more and better in ulysses. portrait is above only chamber music in terms of importance/quality of joyce's oeuvre.
>>7383768
I'd agree on this. Dubliners does what it tries to do extremely well as far as expressing its theemes and atmosphere goes.
Portrait was a mildly successful experiment that Joyce expanded upon hugely in Ulysses.
I loved Portrait but Ulysses has conquered me. Maybe I'll give it another go in a few years. Feels way too fucking dry and opaque for me though. I enjoyed Stephen's chapters but it's become a confusing slog with Bloom.
>>7383725
stream of consciousness is what makes or breaks your ability to read
if you can handle the free association, barrage of images and ideas, and jumps from one thread to another, you can handle most things
>>7383759
characters from Dubliners show up in Ulysses if i recall correctly
>>7383822
just read it for the mastery of the language and the experience. Wikipedia summaries are sufficient for a first reading grasp of the plot
>>7383722
>disenfranchisement
I don't recall him losing his right to vote, anon. Do tell.
>>7383764
Not really. You would have to pretend The Dead doesn't exist and even then it's pretty good.
A feeble, garrulous book.
>>7385160
The Dead isn't even the best story in Dubliners, though I agree with what you are saying.
>>7383741
You are keking me right.
You did not understand that individual versus society complex that he is constantly referring to?
Nationalism versus the artist
Religion versus the artist
Language versus the artist
Family versus the artist
He is walking away from his college just after being told he can join the order, and he is considering if he should join it.
He realizes his ideals of being a brother of the order are foolish. He hates the smells, the cold, the monotony. He wants freedom. He goes for a walk on the beach and feels this freedom.
Page 171
>He shrank from the dignity of celebrant because it displease him to imagine that all the vague pomp should end in his own person or that the ritual should assign to him so clear and final an office...[it] was a grave and ordered and passionless life that awaited him, a life without material cares...
etc.
I finished it a while ago and I really liked it. It has some beautiful parts, like I think it's chapter three, where the priest explains judgement day and hell. Beautiful imagery.
>>7383631
I never fully appreciated Joyce until I heard a reading of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
He's got a masterful command of the English language, where I thought Joyce was just old and awkward.
I've almost finished Ulysses.
I knew I wasn't ready, and having read it, I never would have been. It has taken me about ten weeks to read and there were times where I had to give it a day or two because I risked becoming fatigued by it. I'm picking up on some of the more obvious allusions to things like Hamlet and The Odyssey (The blinding of the Cyclops being my favourite) but I am certain that most of the references are going over my head.
Despite all of that, his use of language is a thing to behold. In some regards I am finding Ulysses easier to read than Portrait simply because I know it's supposed to be complicated. Portrait felt a little bit like he wanted to ground the book in realism but still use something of a modernist style and to me it didn't quite work.
Due to my lack of understanding of the content I feel like a bit of a fraud saying it's one of the best things I've ever read, but having no academic background and a lack of experience with analysing texts I will never have what it takes to decipher it.
No one man has any right to be that intelligent. It's almost being greedy.
>>7385970
Coincidentally, I just finished that part. It scared the shit outta me, I seriously considered converting back to catholicism for a second.I never had my first conformation and holy communion because I was scared of telling people I masturbated all the time. My soul is doomed.
I love this book, specially the first part of the book when he describes his childhood. The scene where the boys are all running through a field in the end of the afternoon after speaking to the principal of the school about an unfair punishment is pure beauty. It also sets the tone for the book: that was the first time Daedalus rebelled against the outside world.
>>7386064
Is that what Ulysses is? A shitload of references?Family Guy on speed for pretentious hipsters?
>>7387443
You don't seriously consider something for a second :)
Did you know that Shia LaBeouf recently found god?
>I found God doing Fury. I became a Christian man, and not in a fucking bullshit way—in a very real way.
>>7387453
No. Now go away.
>>7387464
haha I might have spent a few hours downloading bible texts for the kindle
Memes aside, Shia's an interesting character. Have you seen this interview he done?
http://thecampaignbook.com/interview/
>>7383764
you're crazy. it has some of the greatest short stories in english
I enjoyed the prose in this book, but frankly found it not as enjoyable as Dubliners. Haven't read Ulysses yet, though, so I'll see how it compares.
>>7386064
Mate no-one understands Ulysses. You'd have to be a Dubliner born at the end of the 19th century (i.e. live inside Joyce's brain) to get all of his references and allusions. That's not really the point of the book. Ulysses is about form and language above all, if you enjoyed that then there's nothing fraudulent about your experience.
Is anyone else here Stephen Dedalus?
He's probably the character in literature I've identified with the most.
>>7386064
>Portrait felt a little bit like he wanted to ground the book in realism but still use something of a modernist style and to me it didn't quite work.
lmao the ironic thing is that Ulysses is the realist novel par-excellence. Joyce wrote it with a map of Dublin and a stopwatch. Everything in the newspaper including the race happened that day IRL too.
the "particular aim" is in the title
>>7383631
its prep for Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. It basically explains why he wrote them.
>>7385164
le contrarian face
>>7383764
its more traditional and less boundary pushing but its in no way bad. The closing of the Dead is one of the best written paragraphs there is
>>7383631
Something weird that I noticed in Portrait, Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and Proust's In Search of Lost Time Volume I is that the use of stream of consciousness starts off strong in all of the works, then weakens, and seems to vanish by the end. I think this was most true with To the Lighthouse.
Anyone else notice that? Joyce has Stephen learning language and growing up, Woolf has the family's nuanced ideas of each other mixing constantly, Proust has his falling to sleep Overture. But after this, it just sort of stops.
The point is to expose writers who don't write as effete poseurs.
>>7388559
Get thee to an expensive shrink.
Joyce thread?
I'm reading Ulysses and i just finished Aeolus, it's the first chapter i did not enjoy, i don't even know what they were talking about, i understand the Odyssey parallelism but in terms of "plot" nothing substantial happened and the characters talking felt like filler, did i miss something?
I am going to have to agree with
Portrait > dubliners
Dubliners wasn't nearly as stylish as portrait.
I like the way the stories in dubliners progress thematically, though, starting with young people as main characters and moving forward in age until the dead. Fatalism. And then the first story is about death from the point of view of a young boy. It's a cycle.
I just really like the more experimental writing in portrait.
>>7390445
the mindless pursuit of novelty above all else and the abandonment of aesthetic principles when this is taken to the extreme is what has hastened the decline of literature
congratulations you're part of the problem
plebs
>>7390023
A chapter that has parallels to a chapter about a huge wind, filled with a bunch of journalists and media types is hilarious. They are nothing but "wind" themselves. I find it hilarious that the chapter has nothing happen because it proves that those people say a lot without saying anything so all you're left with is "wind".
>>7386064
I finished it late last night. I wanted to read Penelope in one sitting because that seemed the only real way to do it. Utter perfection. I could feel the emotion building the closer I got to the end.
Maybe I'll revisit it in ten years when I have even more "experience" with literature. I've only really been reading consistently for about three years.
>>7390466
Joyce was simply more talented at experimental writing. Stream of consciousness seems more natural to him than anything.
>>7390497
there's no reason to prefer portrait over ulysses. dubliners was perfect execution of the traditional form and ulysses was the near-perfect execution of his experimental form. portrait was an imperfect execution of something that's halfway between both, and is inherently inferior.
i think portrait gets a disproportionate amount of love/praise/leeway due to the fact that the subject matter + stephen the character resonates more strongly with people who tend to be interested in literature. people who are pursuing "muh literary lifestyle" tend to see, a little or a lot, of themselves in stephen, whereas i think most people find it more difficult to relate to the characters in dubliners
also to claim stream of consciousness came "natural" to him is absurd. joyce worked meticulously to craft ulysses and finnegans wake.
Guys, if I want to get into Joyce, what is the best order of progression with his books?
I'm assuming that 'Ulysses' should be read last as it's his magnum opus and is most difficult. What about 'Dubliners', 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', and 'Finnegans Wake'? Which one first, second, and third? Cheers.
>>7390522
fuck just read the thread. chronological.
>I'm assuming that 'Ulysses' should be read last as it's his magnum opus and is most difficult
nope that would be FW
>>7390510
Dubliners is far from perfect. Like a third of the stories are boring as hell and I barely remember them. Ulysses may not be perfect, but there are probably more godlike lines in that book than any other novel.
Also, when I say it was the most natural, I mean to Joyce it seems like probably his personal favorite to write. I say this because stream of consciousness enters into the other forms, like in Aeolus.
I also think molly was probably the hardest to write.
>>7390522
Just go chronological.
>>7390561
you're just a pleb then there's not much else to say
>i thought it was boring therefore it wasn't good
hello middle school, hello reddit
Just because you can't grasp what the author is saying, doesn't mean it's profound, or even readable.
