>be me, pleb reader looking to expand taste
>be reading dubliners in preparation to attempt ulysses
>enjoy and follow the book up to the Two Gallants
>thorughly confused by the ending
>want to kill myself
>end up googling a summary of the short
>i am not smart enough to attempt ulysses
What books are there for this feel? Why couldn't joyce have given more clues so we know that the girl is stealing from her employer?
Start with the Greeks.
>be me, pleb music listener looking to expand taste
>be listening to random schoenberg on blast in preparation to attempt reading Adorno
>enjoy and follow some pieces for a few seconds here and there
>thoroughly confused by everything else
>want to kill myself
>end up googling Schoenberg on Wikipedia
>i am not smart enough to attempt Adorno
a portrait of the artist as a young man
but if you really want to be patrish and get a reasonable amount of the references in ulysses you're going to have to study the western canon for many years at least. you can get by by constantly referring to annotations but you lose the flow imo.
really though the book can be enjoyed by just about anyone for its own merits, some of the best prose in the language
If you are a pleb reader, don't read Joyce. He's too difficult for you, obviously. There are hundreds of easier yet equally important books that you can read instead.
>>7678152
Start on something easier, some of the chapters in Dubliners are very easy to understand, others such as two gallants are pretty hard. It's not really a matter of being a competent reader it's just that it is reallllllyyyyy fucking Irish, only a Irishmen could understand a lot of the stuff in Dubliners first time around
>>7678276
Dubliners was mostly written in 1905 which makes the language strangely archaic. Besides that, you basically need notes to explain all the irishisms and politics. Especially for Ivy Day in The Committee Room.
>>7678253
desu this. give portrait a whirl, and definitely do try and write a thesis driven paper on it to really solidify your understanding of stephen's evolution. this is crucial for reading his appearance at the start of ulysses, and grasping the passing of the torch which Bloom constitutes for joyce
Are there any good collections of essays on Joyce's works, or at least a decent annotated version of Dubliers or Portrait?
>>7679373
norton critical
>>7679376
thanks
>>7678152
>>7679207
Ivy Day in the Committee Room did this for me, not out of any difficulty wi the prose, but rather that it was too stuck in its own time. It was the only story I skipped in the collection.
>>7680192
It was late 19th Century Irish politics: the story, yeah. It's not terrible once you've read enough Joyce to more or less understand what it's on about but it is too much of a period piece for its own good.
>>7679373
Penguin's editions of Dubliners and Portrait have decent annotations, actually. You don't really need anything like norton or oxford for those two.
Also if you're planning on ever reading Finnegans Wake, I'd actually recommend doing it without any annotations or guides.
>>7680225
he specifically requested a collectin of essays which is why i rec'ed the norton. just for annotations i think any major publisher is fine. joyce is very extensively studied and annotated anyway.
>>7680251
He said either that or just ones with annotations. Norton is the best for essays/criticism but I don't really think Dubliners and Portrait really warrant that much effort.
>>7681792
why would you? it's a shitty story about white identity politics. garbage.jpg
>>7681792
I read it with annotations and got it. That doesn't change the fact that it's ultra-specific to its time period and setting, which can be grating.
