ITT: Bitch about a classic that does absolutely nothing for you.
What the fuck is up with pic related? I was told Joyce was going to be Shakespeare-tier genius that would change my life forever, but this is the most boring book I've read in a long, long time.
I'm 300 pages through, and I can safely say I don't care what happens to Dedalus at all.
>>7478822
It had its moments, but I'm not a big fan of it either.
Ulysses was a different matter, also Dubliners, but I cannot see the genius in Portrait.
>>7478897
it contains the best prose ever written in the english language
>>7478822
Hate to break it to you anon, but shit is frontloaded. Bar a final melancholy shot the end is mostly ironic detachment from Stevie's opinions and not very funny farces with Irish students. But boarding school and the going out whoring bits really are top tier. Not for tension or intrigue but for breaking the rules seamlessly.
I guess you've read the long bit about hell. Best to take that as a history lesson in the impact of didactic idiots, otherwise it's a bit bizarre.
The Brothers Karamazov.
I'm 150 pages in. There are occasionally lines of profundity but it's mostly just very boring to me. I was able to read Ana Karenina much easier.
I'm reading the McDuff translation but I've also tried reading the CG version a few years ago and gave up on it around the same point. Should I keep going forward or is it just not for me?
>>7478905
I find Ulysses prose better than Portrait. Also, I find Nabokov's prose more pleasant than Joyce's prose in the Portrait.
I may give it another read soon, but leaving aside the part of Joyce in the school, which I deeply enjoyed, there was no other part that made me consider this book as a masterpiece. I found some of the religious descriptions lengthy and boring.
>>7478912
Wrong thread.
>>7478905
I wouldn't go quite that far, but yes the writing is exceptional and also revolutionary for its time.
>>7478912
>translation
>>7478913
>the part of Joyce in the school
>Joyce
I meant Dedalus btw
>>7478908
No shit, the long sermon on hell was legitimately my favourite part.
I liked Chapter One and the general descriptions of Clongowes and the childish perceptions of the death of Parnell and whatnot, but damn it's gone steadily downhill since.
I hope Ulysses isn't like this.
>>7478912
>Should I keep going forward or is it just not for me?
If you've tried to read TBK twice and haven't enjoyed it, then yeah, there's no harm in giving up. There's plenty of great literature out there.
>>7478919
Portrait is nothing like Ulysses really apart from maybe the first 3 chapters.
>>7478905
I found the prose in the last part to be insufferably turgid. What was that word again, tumpish? tundish? Some shit like that.
It's a pity because there are some really great parts, I'm thinking of the row at the dinner party and the priest's speech about Hell.
>>7478920
Do not listen to this. It is a great sadness to hear someone stopping TBK 150 pages in. you must keep going
Here's a controversial theory:
Is it possible that Ulysses, the jewel of Joyce's oeuvre, has the effect of illuminating the less precious metals that surround it?
The Dead obviously excepted, the rest of Dubliners and all of Portrait and Finnegans Wake are very touch and go. They're certainly not unanimously praised as Ulysses is.
>>7478935
cry, faggot
>>7478897
>Ulysses was a different matter, also Dubliners,
>Dubliners
I don't know about that senpai, I've read up to the boarding house story and it wasn't that engaging aside from 'Araby' but apparently the best short stories are in the latter half of the book?
and can someone me tell what's up with the epiphanies? why do the characters do a sudden heel turn in attitude?
>>7478946
Dubliners (and not just The Dead, which is overrated imo) is considered one of the greatest short story collections ever written.
>James Joyce wrote just one collection of short stories, but it ranks among the finest in world literature. His influence on the form is as great as that of his near-contemporary Anton Chekhov. Between them their innovations – informed most discernibly, in Joyce's case, by Ibsen, French symbolist poetry and the Irishman George Moore – have influenced nigh-on every short story writer of the last 100 years.
Portrait isn't as highly esteemed as Ulysses, but that's a pretty high bar to meet.
>>7478908
Oh damn the end of chapter 2 is god tier
Chapter 4 also
But chapters 3 and 5 are boring as hell
>>7478946
Dubliners is God tier what are you talking about
I agree about Portrait though
>>7478976
Some stories of Dubliners objectively suck
Clay comes to mind.
>>7478981
Clay is p.much the only bad one
>Eileen had long thin cool white hands too because she was a girl. They were like ivory; only soft. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory but protestants could not understand it and made fun of it. One day he had stood beside her looking into the hotel grounds. A waiter was running up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff and a fox terrier was scampering to and fro on the sunny lawn. She had put her hand into his pocket where his hand was and he had felt how cool and thin and soft her hand was. She said that pockets were a funny thing to have: and then off of a sudden she had broken away and had run laughing down the sloping curve of the path. Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold in the sun. Tower of Ivory. House of Gold. By thinking of things you could understand them.
Lessing, said Stephen, should not have taken a group of statues to write of The art, being inferior, does not present the forms I spoke of distinguished clearly one from another. Even in literature, the highest and most spiritual art, the forms are often confused. The lyrical form is in fact the simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion, a rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who pulled at the oar or dragged stones up a slope. He who utters it is more conscious of the instant of emotion than of himself as feeling emotion. The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature when the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of an epical event and this form progresses till the centre of emotional gravity is equidistant from the artist himself and from others. The narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons and the action like a vital sea. This progress you will see easily in that old English ballad Turpin Hero,nl which begins in the first person and ends in the third person. The dramatic form is reached when the vitality which has flowed and eddied round each person fills every person with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and intangible esthetic life. The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak. The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
—Trying to refine them also out of existence, said Lynch.
this is what made the book worth it for me, personally.
>>7478907
Exactly. White male artist raised Catholic who left the faith here. Portrait is for us, of which there are apparently plenty.
Was this supposed to be deeply moving or something? I just thought it was pretty boring and mediocre
>>7478905
"Best" "prose" in "English" "language"
>>7478935
I'll keep going. I think I'm definitely going to finish it.
