“4 Key Works by James Joyce You Need to Read”
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@alexpsmith @Nickiquote @mms I’m inclined to think that life is too short and my pile of unread books too big (he says, having just read LOTR again and embarking on a re-read of the 3 Musketeers books).
@swisslet @alexpsmith @Nickiquote As someone who is 70% in their first read of 3 musketeers: it's an amazing book!
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I really wish someone could tell this to me in my 20s... poor thing.
I think Finnegans Wake could be a transcendent experience for some people with the right background in Irish history and language but it's just not a book that was written for everyone to just ... read. It's a translation project.
Why exactly it was on so many lists of "must read" books that I encountered as a kid I will never understand. I would have been better off reading untranslated Beowulf.
Yes I'm a little annoyed about this.
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@swisslet @alexpsmith @Nickiquote As someone who is 70% in their first read of 3 musketeers: it's an amazing book!
@mms @alexpsmith @Nickiquote it’s a scream from start to finish. I love that D’Artagnan is such a prat. It’s the book that got me over my fear of “classic” novels after school and university. Turns out that some of them are absolute bangers. I think this book and its sequels were the first things I ever bought on Amazon in about 1999.
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I think Finnegans Wake could be a transcendent experience for some people with the right background in Irish history and language but it's just not a book that was written for everyone to just ... read. It's a translation project.
Why exactly it was on so many lists of "must read" books that I encountered as a kid I will never understand. I would have been better off reading untranslated Beowulf.Yes I'm a little annoyed about this.
But when I was younger I thought that "great writing" and a "great book" was a more intrinsic platonic sort of object.
I wanted to write great stories, so I was curious about anything that people called "great" ... this meant that I spent way too much time trying to find a way into an impenetrable text. It was a mean joke to play putting a book like that on those lists.
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@Nickiquote In my English degree the tutor suggested going to a shop and flicking through Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses to get an idea of what they were like but not to actually read them. It wasn't the most prestigious establishment tbh.
@internetsdairy @Nickiquote That tutor needs to suffer something painful. It's possible that a page or two of FW is sufficient to get an idea (though I would disagree), but there are 18 chapters in Ulysses in 18 different styles.
I'm definitely in the wrong discussion (I fell in love with JJ at 21 and reread Ulysses every year or two. FW I've only read straight through twice, but I reread chunks of it pretty often.)
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But when I was younger I thought that "great writing" and a "great book" was a more intrinsic platonic sort of object.
I wanted to write great stories, so I was curious about anything that people called "great" ... this meant that I spent way too much time trying to find a way into an impenetrable text. It was a mean joke to play putting a book like that on those lists.
@futurebird @Nickiquote i've found finnegans wake nice to skim here and there, enjoying random words/sentences/paragraphs and not trying to read it in a linear way like a novel. it's crazy to put it on that kind of recommendation list especially for people who are not literature nerds, lots of classics are so easy to pick up and trying something that difficult & obscure could be really demotivating if you end up with the impression that Big Important Books generally are like that
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“4 Key Works by James Joyce You Need to Read”
You absolutely do not need to read Finnegans Wake. This is a flat lie.
There is no Finnegans Wake Enforcement Service. You will not be fined for failing to read over a thousand pages of impenetrable neologisms.
There is no mandatory test to see if you know what Finnegans Wake means. The plot and characters of Finnegans Wake are not regular pub quiz questions.
No-one will even give you a badge for reading Finnegans Wake, although they should.
@Nickiquote I feel this way about JRR Tolkien's works, too. Except that it seems to be pub quiz stuff. Good thing that I don't enjoy pub quizzes much, either.
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I think Finnegans Wake could be a transcendent experience for some people with the right background in Irish history and language but it's just not a book that was written for everyone to just ... read. It's a translation project.
Why exactly it was on so many lists of "must read" books that I encountered as a kid I will never understand. I would have been better off reading untranslated Beowulf.Yes I'm a little annoyed about this.
@futurebird @Nickiquote I love Finnegan's wake! But trying to understand it is futile. It is like music on paper, it's rythm and sounds are delicious. I haven't finished it, but that doesn't really matter - reading it as a story is impossible anyway. I will never find out what happens, and that's fine. The proze is just amazing.
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“4 Key Works by James Joyce You Need to Read”
You absolutely do not need to read Finnegans Wake. This is a flat lie.
There is no Finnegans Wake Enforcement Service. You will not be fined for failing to read over a thousand pages of impenetrable neologisms.
There is no mandatory test to see if you know what Finnegans Wake means. The plot and characters of Finnegans Wake are not regular pub quiz questions.
No-one will even give you a badge for reading Finnegans Wake, although they should.
@Nickiquote For my 21st birthday present my grandparents took me on holiday to Ireland for family tree research. Was also given a copy of this to read. Have I ever finished it? No. Can’t say I’ve even started the darn thing.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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But when I was younger I thought that "great writing" and a "great book" was a more intrinsic platonic sort of object.
I wanted to write great stories, so I was curious about anything that people called "great" ... this meant that I spent way too much time trying to find a way into an impenetrable text. It was a mean joke to play putting a book like that on those lists.
@futurebird @Nickiquote I love how I saw this reply out of context and immediately guessed which author was the subject
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@futurebird @Nickiquote i've found finnegans wake nice to skim here and there, enjoying random words/sentences/paragraphs and not trying to read it in a linear way like a novel. it's crazy to put it on that kind of recommendation list especially for people who are not literature nerds, lots of classics are so easy to pick up and trying something that difficult & obscure could be really demotivating if you end up with the impression that Big Important Books generally are like that
I mostly encountered it in the context of "if you are a serious literature nerd you'd have read this and liked it"
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“4 Key Works by James Joyce You Need to Read”
You absolutely do not need to read Finnegans Wake. This is a flat lie.
There is no Finnegans Wake Enforcement Service. You will not be fined for failing to read over a thousand pages of impenetrable neologisms.
There is no mandatory test to see if you know what Finnegans Wake means. The plot and characters of Finnegans Wake are not regular pub quiz questions.
No-one will even give you a badge for reading Finnegans Wake, although they should.
@Nickiquote I’m currently trying to read Ulysses, and find it very hard going.
That’s coming from someone who has read Gravity’s Rainbow several times, and enjoyed it.
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@Nickiquote I’m currently trying to read Ulysses, and find it very hard going.
That’s coming from someone who has read Gravity’s Rainbow several times, and enjoyed it.
@Nickiquote I see what Joyce is doing. I see how it’s revolutionary, and how it’s liberating for other writers.
It just doesn’t make a very compelling book.
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@Nickiquote I found it a turgid and often incomprehensible mess. The real hero of the story is Joyce's long-suffering editor, who was often sent manuscripts from Joyce with hundreds of tiny, hand-written, barely legible corrections. I'm surprised that guy didn't just calmly stand up, leave his office and jump off the nearest bridge.
@ApostateEnglishman @Nickiquote Sometimes we mistake hard work for important work.
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I think Finnegans Wake could be a transcendent experience for some people with the right background in Irish history and language but it's just not a book that was written for everyone to just ... read. It's a translation project.
Why exactly it was on so many lists of "must read" books that I encountered as a kid I will never understand. I would have been better off reading untranslated Beowulf.Yes I'm a little annoyed about this.
@futurebird @Nickiquote I managed, more by accident than design, to miss out on the wake experience. I had Beowulf and various others. I didn't manage to dodge A Portrait Of The Artist - or Joyce for beginners, at uni though.
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I think Finnegans Wake could be a transcendent experience for some people with the right background in Irish history and language but it's just not a book that was written for everyone to just ... read. It's a translation project.
Why exactly it was on so many lists of "must read" books that I encountered as a kid I will never understand. I would have been better off reading untranslated Beowulf.Yes I'm a little annoyed about this.
@futurebird @Nickiquote Joyce was the new hotness in the 80s, even though he was writing in the 20s and 30s, so yes, a lot of book snobs put the Wake on their "You have to be this pretentious to ride" measuring sticks. I couldn't guess how many of them actually read it, but I'd bet a double cheeseburger and a Coke it wasn't even half.
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But when I was younger I thought that "great writing" and a "great book" was a more intrinsic platonic sort of object.
I wanted to write great stories, so I was curious about anything that people called "great" ... this meant that I spent way too much time trying to find a way into an impenetrable text. It was a mean joke to play putting a book like that on those lists.
I took a mandatory technical writing course for engineers and science majors. The first semester was as expected, no issues.
The professor couldn't teach the second semester, and a substitute was found. She decided we should read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
I had no prior experience with Joyce, read a few dozen pages and was left bewildered.
I wasn't the only one, and the next class deteriorated into a shouting match between the prof and the students. We wanted the curriculum and not whatever-the-hell this was.
She was replaced after a few more classes and the course returned to the mechanics of technical writing. I'm sure she was left with strong opinions of the heathens from the science and engineering faculties.
I still bristle at the mention of Joyce, and bear a small grudge against the Irish.
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“4 Key Works by James Joyce You Need to Read”
You absolutely do not need to read Finnegans Wake. This is a flat lie.
There is no Finnegans Wake Enforcement Service. You will not be fined for failing to read over a thousand pages of impenetrable neologisms.
There is no mandatory test to see if you know what Finnegans Wake means. The plot and characters of Finnegans Wake are not regular pub quiz questions.
No-one will even give you a badge for reading Finnegans Wake, although they should.
@Nickiquote Like quantum chromodynamics, if you think you know what the Wake means, you can be sure of one thing: you are wrong.
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I took a mandatory technical writing course for engineers and science majors. The first semester was as expected, no issues.
The professor couldn't teach the second semester, and a substitute was found. She decided we should read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
I had no prior experience with Joyce, read a few dozen pages and was left bewildered.
I wasn't the only one, and the next class deteriorated into a shouting match between the prof and the students. We wanted the curriculum and not whatever-the-hell this was.
She was replaced after a few more classes and the course returned to the mechanics of technical writing. I'm sure she was left with strong opinions of the heathens from the science and engineering faculties.
I still bristle at the mention of Joyce, and bear a small grudge against the Irish.
The only enjoyable thing that Joyce wrote are the letters to Nora.
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But when I was younger I thought that "great writing" and a "great book" was a more intrinsic platonic sort of object.
I wanted to write great stories, so I was curious about anything that people called "great" ... this meant that I spent way too much time trying to find a way into an impenetrable text. It was a mean joke to play putting a book like that on those lists.
@futurebird I can't really blame past you for thinking that the greatness of certain writing or books was some kind of ineffable yet immutable quality, considering how heavy that sort of propaganda used to be and how few tools we used to have to fight or even recognize it back in the day.
Anyway, however you came to it, I happen to think you're a great writer, and that James Joyce had nothing to do with that
