I'm 18. Want to read Ulysses. I'm in AP Lit, have read books like Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights.
Am I ready for it, or will I not understand a thing?
Let me kiss your neck and I'll tell you.
>>7706479
>Am I ready for it
Not even close. Ask again after you've read the whole of the western canon.
I just got into reading last year and didn't have too much trouble with it. You can read it alone for the sounds of the words and it will be enjoyable
First: you are going to have to learn Greek. I reccomend taking a native speaking lover.
Then:get in shape. Master cleanse hot yoga and run a couple 5k's.
Try to volunteer at a hospital or soup kitchen. If you are into Ayn Rand, serve in the military.
Raise a puppy and snap its neck when you have house trained it.
Go in a safari or become a bufighter. Drink absinthe and SlimFast. More to come...
>>7706487
I asked my librarian for it and she said that she'll not only give me an annotated copy of the book but an annotated analysis alongside it. What say you my prospects then, fine sir?
>>7706481
Easy there, Count.
>>7706508
>fine sir
you're already a lost cause
>>7706508
Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights are nothing compared to Ulysses. You might get it by heavily, and I mean HEAVILY, relying on the annotations you've been given but it's going to be a challenge.
As you become a better reader you will take more things from it. It's meant to be read more than once.
>>7706508
>Fine sir
>>7706508
Not any better. Your librarian shouldn't have even given it to you.
>>7706526
I'm sorry but you act as if you understand it yourself and know everything about it. Care to give your take on it since you seem to have it down?
>>7706479
>>7706508
>meme music
>I'm 18
>have read books like Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights.
>I asked my librarian for it
>...fine sir
>mfw
No, but seriously, close this as soon as possible and go start reading something.
>Am I ready for it, or will I not understand a thing?
Do you really expect people to answer that for you? Go ahead and find out for yourself.
>>7706561
>>7706535
>>7706531
>>7706523
My oh my. And I thought my home board, /mu/ was full of people with their heads up their asses: this place takes the fucking cake. I'm going to assume the role of an older person, probably mid-40s, at the parental point in their life: you should all be ashamed of yourselves for discouraging intellectual curiosity in the bright, inquiring minds of those younger than you -- those who possess the most curiosity about the world out of all the ages. I can't believe how pretentious and up your own asses you lot are. Telling the younger generation they could never read this or that, assuming they're too immature and naive to understand ENGLISH words written by ENGLISH authors, diverting them from what they want to do out of the assumption that their mind can't comprehend certain meaning. The absolute fucking temerity (that's To Kill a Mockingbird for you, which I understand quite well thank you very much). I thought this, of all places, would be the place for acceptance, tolerance, and an openness to curiosity and inquiry. I guessed wrong. I guess I'm only a stupid fucking kid who listens to meme music and who will never rise to the heights of your self-absorbed, vapid drollery. Fucking snobs. Fucking English majors. This might've even dissuaded me from going into English in college, my favorite subject. You're the reason why I hate fucking English now. I can write brilliant analytical essays, but after writing so many of them, I realized how pretentious, formulaic, and droll they really were: just like your respective attitudes. So you know what, I'm done with the conformity and the fucking listening to what pseudo-intellectuals have to say: I'm going to read Ulysses on my free time (fuck the assigned books I have for English) and do whatever the hell I want. And you're not going to fucking stop me.
>>7706585
Kill yourself
>>7706508
>I'm in AP Lit.
Doesn't mean shit if you haven't taken the test. Anyone gets into those classes.
>have read books like Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights.
Neither of these books are remotely hard.
Read the Iliad and the Odyssey? And I don't mean some candy-ass abridged version, I mean the real fucking poem. If so, you might understand about an eighth of the book with the help of an annotated analysis. I doubt you'll make it all the way through.
With that said, good luck.
>>7706585
>My oh my
>>7706585
9.0 best new pasta
>>7706585
You're a meme kiddo
>>7706585
Could this be the new vore thread???
>>7706585
Wasn't obvious that it was bait until this post. Even so, pretty convincing. Great job anon!
>>7706585
>My. Oh my
>You lot
Sounds euphoric. I've read Ulysses and I'm 19. It was arduous and difficult and I didn't get everything but I'll give some advice. Read The Odyssey, Hamlet, Macbeth, Dubliners and The Bible before hand. You'll be able to understand more that way. Also, for the Chapter, "The Oxen of the Sun" read Le Morte De Arthur, Robinson Crusoe and David Copperfield. This may seem bizzare but believe me that you need these books under your belt at the bare minimum.
>>7706585
don't talk to me like that boy
>>7706537
What do you want to know, specifically? There's a lot that can be said about it.
>>7706658
What is it trying to communicate? Its fundamental idea, its main message... something for us mortals to visualize and grab at even if we can't fully comprehend the text
>>7706668
Life and almost all things within it.
>>7706672
Okay, let me bring you back now. What exactly do you mean when you say life? What specifically about life is he talking about? Are there politics? Are there thoughts on death and immortality?
Lust? Greed? Heartache? Sadness? Anger? Loss? Depression? Complacency? Indifference? Religion? God?
Just tell me.
>>7706682
All of that and more.
There's a reason its so dense.
>>7706668
If you want to reduce it down to its goals, essentially, it was Joyce attempting to transcribe the waking human consciousness using all sorts of information he'd accumulated over the years and stream of consciousness techniques that were inspired by his background in music (he was a singer before he was a writer) in a way that would transform and elevate the mundane experience.
>>7706689
That's... it?
>>7706585
Kill yourself my man.
>>7706615
i'm feeling a strong 7 to light 8
>>7706699
That's the intent behind the design, but it doesn't summarize the content. When that other guy said the content included everything, he wasn't exaggerating. It touches on basically every theme you could think of.
>>7706585
holy shit
Its a masterpiece but very few chapters are actually entertaining.
I can appreciate it, but I've never gotten more than 3/4ths through it. I get tired of it and drop it every time.
>>7706585
Anon I just want to say you did a pretty good job with this whole thread. 8/10.
>>7706615
Anon, the pasta is a 30 out of 10
>>7706479
Even if this is bait, sigh, let me give you the bare minimum of prep to do. A Portrait of the Artist. There. You can read a commentary, like Gifford's Allusions in Ulysses, along with the text to figure out what's going on. And in fact often it's less critical to identify analogues, allusions and so on than to just keep going with it. Better to read all of Ulysses and understand 75%, than to read 15 pages and understand 95% -- or worse, to never get around to reading it because of all the preparatory reading you're "supposed" to have done.
>>7706747
Is it really worth a read, or is it only an elitist book that people pretend to enjoy for intellectual cred?
>>7706766
Not that anon but it is really worth the read. Only morons and contrarians think it is just pretentious masturbation. That is a true pleb test. If anyone tries to tell you that Ulysses is just for showing off or something like that, ignore all of their opinions forever.
>>7706766
LOL yeah sure Ulysses' fame is sheerly based on posturing and fakery. There you go. You don't have to read it anymore.
>>7706883
I'm not a wunderkind, but I kind of wonder whether or not you're being sarcastic.
>>7706898
Im 25. I've read it twice now. First time when I was 23. Ive read the greeks and all the other Joyce books minus FW. I still hardly understand the book. Don't try to tackle it yet. Build you base more. Read more then try or else you will be basically just wasting your time and reading sparknotes
>>7706479
If you are citing 'AP Lit' as a credential and asking if you are 'ready' to read a book, no, you aren't
>>7707415
Why did you retweet that?
>>7706585
/mu/ used to be my home board too, and I'm disappointed that you guys don't see this as the bait is it. Especially after >>7706585. It's funny but it's obvious as fuck that he's trying to be the sort of obnoxious faggot who would post something like this seriously
>inb4 "i was only pretending to be retarded"
>>7707633
/lit/ has literally always plowed through b8 threads to force them on topic, as done here. OP is always a faggot.
>>7707633
dude shut the FUCK up.
you were never /mu/.
>>7706585
ITT: Drollery
>>7707715
What was I, then? Just a cancerous newfag?
>>7706479
OP THERE IS A ULYSSES READING GROUP STARTING FRIDAY AND WE ARE GOING TO READ FIFTEEN PAGES AND DISCUSS DAILY
JOIN US
>>7707633
/mu/ and /lit/ are the biggest hipster boards, followed by /tv/, but /tv/ is dragged down by baneposters and Star Wars fans.
>>7706585
Are you this guy?
>>7709532
leave me alone, i have nothing to do with that person and i realy dont appreciate the fact, that you are trying to implicate we are somehow alike.
This thread was so good it gave me my daily autismposting fix, now I'm finally free to read, thanks /lit/.
What are you guys reading? I'm reading GOG by Giovani Papini and Meme of Leaves, finishing both soon
>>7709298
not op but cooool can i join
>>7709577
im reading Black Spring, the first diary of Anais Nin, biography of Timothy Leary and a few others ^_^
>>7709592
Bot Leary and Anais Nin are people I'd like to know more but whose work I don't know how to approach.
Focus on Nin, I only wanna know about Leary because I like acid tbqh
>>7709600
Timothy Leary is super interesting. This book is pretty cool because it gathers information from so many sources. From letters to famous scientists and psychiatrists to even parts of his own autobiography (which he apparently lied a lot in, hah). Anais Nin and Henry Miller are my two new favorite authors. They are both such naturally talented writers. I am being inspired like never before to pick up writing.
>>7709630
Miller is p. boss, favourite of mine when I started reading more seriously, and also the main reason why I'm interested in Anais tbqh.
What's the Leary biography you're talking about?
>>7709640
Its called Timothy Leary: A Biography by Robert Greenfield.
its about 600 pages and has so much info on all the wild shit they were doing back in those days with psychedelics. check out this letter from Aldous Huxley that is in the book:
"On December 26, 1962, Aldous Huxley responded to a letter from Humphry Osmond in which Osmond had asked him why Timothy Leary was apparently 'impervious to the idea that psychedelic substances may be both valuable and dangerous if misused,' as well as why Tim could not grasp that 'because one dose of psilocybin is safe this does not mean that repeated and regular does are safe.' Huxley replied:------- Yes, what about Tim Leary? I spent an evening with him here a few weeks ago - and he talked such nonsense (about the conscious mind being merely a robot, about true intelligence residing only in D{eoxyribo}N{ucleic}A{cid} molecule, about some kind of Providence looking after the population problem, which therefore wasn't any problem at all) that i became quite concerned. Not about his sanity--because he is perfectly sane--but about his prospects in the world; for this nonsense-talking is just another device for annoying people in authority, cocking snooks [a British term for expressing scorn or derision as if by thumbing one's nose] at the academic world. It is the reaction of a mischievous Irish boy to the headmaster of his school. One of these days the headmaster will lose patience--and then goodbye to Leary's psilocybin research. I am very fond of Tim--but why, oh why, does he have to be such an ass? I have told him repeatedly that the only attitude for a researcher in this ticklish field is that of an anthropologist living in the midst of a tribe of potentially dangerous savages. Go about your business quietly, don't break the taboos or criticize the locally accepted dogmas. Be polite and friendly--and get on with the job. If you leave them alone, they will probably leave you alone. But evidently the temptation to cock snooks is quite irresistible--so there he goes again!"
I've recently gotten more into reading and im so happy to have found Henry Miller right away. Herman Hesse is another im really digging. Im pretty much always on the lookout for Herman Hesse, Henry Miller and Anais Nin whenever i hit up a bookstore these days.
>>7706479
>AP Lit
What school has this?
>tfw the only literature class my school had was contemporary american literature in ninth grade reading shit like Dan Brown
>>7706585
Best post all week. Mad/10
>>7706585
>Joyce
>English
>>7706585
John Green is the second coming of Joyce. He transcends the sublime, and every word is filled with weight and allegory. You can read this book from the perspective of any literary or critical theory and it JUST WORKS. The breadth of plot and the lushness of the world developed are outdone only by the masterful weaving of prose around characterization. At times the author veers into descriptions and tangents related to the mythos of the universe and then just when he begins to lose you he grasps you firmly and pulls you RIGHT BACK IN. It is so uncommon when a work of genre fiction crosses over to a literary masterpiece that it is almost jarring, but Green's only peers in this, Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace, stand as children before a mighty equestrian statue, one that will no doubt stand firm against the sands of time and literary criticism. Nothing less than a master's masterwork.
>>7709512
I'll never go to /tv/ though. Once I get bored of this board or it gets too shitty, I'll probably just stop using 4chan, which I am really looking forward to
>>7706479
This book is gonna kick your teeth in, but I say go for it. Plus annotations are for pussies.
