Favourite chapter?
Least favourite chapter?
Proteus and Eumaeus here.
>favourite
Currently half-way through Circe and it might just be my favourite chapter so far. Cyclops was absolutely great as well.
>least favourite
I forced myself through Oxen of the Sun. The last few pages of that chapter were fun though.
>>7434139
Circe is incredibly fun. Bloom being crowned Emperor of Dublin is absolutely hilarious.
I understood absolutely nothing about the last few pages of Oxen of the Sun. With the earlier styles I could maybe get the gist of some of it, but when Joyce starts writing in future English slang I might as well have been reading Greek.
>Favourite
Ithaca. Easily the most emotional chapter of the book. The juxtaposition of that with the cold scientific language just really worked somehow. It was just a relatively easy read while somehow still being quite beautiful. Second favourite would probably be Cyclops, it was just funny.
>Least favourite
Definitely Oxen. It was a slog. I didn't mind Proteus as much but I didn't get very much from it. Proteus really annoyed me for a lot of reasons. Steven was building up a whole reading of Aristotle throughout Telemachus and Nestor and then Proteus is just so fucking obfuscatory that it's impossible to get any conclusion to it. Somehow Oxen still manages to be worse.
What did you get from Proteus OP? Perhaps it stands up well to in depth analysis that I didn't give it the time for.
>>7434182
>What did you get from Proteus OP? Perhaps it stands up well to in depth analysis that I didn't give it the time for.
I didn't really care for the philosophy in Ulysses. Proteus, yes it's obfuscatory, but the chapter has the best language in the novel hands-down, which IMO is the point of the book. I just let it wash over me and cried.
>>7434182
>>7434216
>.Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.
>>7434150
I mostly enjoyed the last pages of Oxen since I thought the language and prose reflected how they all got drunker and drunker until they all eventually stumbled out into the night.
The rest of the chapter was incredibly dry and longwinded, and since it was only mimicking other literary periods and writers it was refreshing to get finally get a strong cup of genuine Joyce at the end.
>>7434250
I thought the parodying of medieval romance authors as if Stephen and his friends were chivalric knights was very funny. That was my favourite part of Oxen.
>And he showed them glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of two pound nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song which he writ. They all admired to see the foresaid riches in such dearth of money as was herebefore.
I thought Oxen was hilarious throughout, the couple less unusual styles asides (Victorian...), but that might not have been the point of it...?
>>7434083
Lestrygonians
Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there? Must have felt it. See things in their foreheads perhaps. Kind of sense of volume. Weight. Would he feel it if something was removed? Feel a gap. Queer idea of Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn't that cane? Bloodless pious face like a fellow going in to be a priest.
also i liked the scene in which he talks about deaf Pat reading lips since people talk freely in front of him, and being a source of information for the patrons. don't remember the chapter though. i loved the way he tied the deaf and the blind back to the ineluctable modalities.
>>7434351
Also Lestrygonians had all those lovely bits where Bloom thinks about earlier in their marriage gets sad about Molly then makes an active effort not to think about it.
>>7434371
the biggest thing i liked about that book was how excited i was thinking about the next time i read it, and wondering what i'd notice and miss that time around, it just felt like a book you could return to and return to and you'd get a different picture each time. it was way above my head though, i'll admit that any day. most of it i don't remember and what i do, i don't think i understand. it ruined a lot of books after though, just for want of a challenge, a puzzle each page, and the pure beauty of the language. inb4 pleb
>best
Proteus or Ithaca
>runner-up
Sirens
>worst
Eumaeus
>overrated
Penelope
>underrated
Wandering Rocks
I liked Nighttown the most of all. Fucking brilliant.
