5 ms·

Except the article we’re replying to makes essentially this same argument, while asserting that many Joyce scholars have come to the same conclusion.

coldtea 8y ago
Well, the article is a middlebrow filler piece, filled with autobiographical cuteness, and little substance. There is tons of great Joyce scholarship without those lightweight complaints. And yet, there doesn't need to be, to be frank. Books are to be read and perhaps re-read by readers, not to be over-analysed for decades by obsessives. For literary works, as a reader you either get it or you don't, and if do it's primarily on a visceral level that beyond the plot and the craft includes the emotions, the flow of words, the mental imagery etc. It's not meant to be some great riddle to be solved, as if it's the Voynich manuscript.
- kbutler 8y ago
  > Books are to be read and perhaps re-read by readers, not to be over-analysed for decades by obsessives. I submit that Finnegans Wake is the exception proving that some books are specifically written "to be over-analysed for decades by obsessives."
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
But the argument in the article and by various other scholars is specifically about Finnegans Wake. Joyce wrote several distinctly different books that should never be lumped together as “impenetrable modernism”. Dubliners is so straightforward that its stories are commonly assigned to school pupils. Portrait is a bit more experimental, but again it is often read by young people. Ulysses definitely requires a good grounding in artes liberales at the university level (or simply being a very bookish person regardless of formal education or not), but if you have that, then you can certainly read right through the book. Some allusions or references might escape you, but you can always refer to a commentary, because it is pretty well agreed what everything in that book means. The Wake is a whole other story. Joyce’s oneiric storytelling and sheer amount of puns makes it difficult to pin down even some of the basic plot. But don’t let that book or scholars’ fatigue and ultimately dismissive view of it turn you off from everything else that Joyce wrote.
- exelius 8y ago
  I didn’t read the article that way at all; I read it as implying that Wake was intentionally written in a way to be unapproachable so as to frustrate literary critics (whom Joyce was undoubtedly aware of and influenced by). Almost like an inside joke that nobody else was in on. The author even mentioned the approachability and seductiveness of his other works, so I took her comments as being restricted to the one book. I’m no Joyce scholar by any means so I don’t know if that’s true, but that was my reading of the article anyhow.

coldtea 8y ago

Well, the article is a middlebrow filler piece, filled with autobiographical cuteness, and little substance. There is tons of great Joyce scholarship without those lightweight complaints. And yet, there doesn't need to be, to be frank. Books are to be read and perhaps re-read by readers, not to be over-analysed for decades by obsessives. For literary works, as a reader you either get it or you don't, and if do it's primarily on a visceral level that beyond the plot and the craft includes the emotions, the flow of words, the mental imagery etc. It's not meant to be some great riddle to be solved, as if it's the Voynich manuscript.

kbutler 8y ago
> Books are to be read and perhaps re-read by readers, not to be over-analysed for decades by obsessives. I submit that Finnegans Wake is the exception proving that some books are specifically written "to be over-analysed for decades by obsessives."

Mediterraneo10 8y ago

But the argument in the article and by various other scholars is specifically about Finnegans Wake. Joyce wrote several distinctly different books that should never be lumped together as “impenetrable modernism”. Dubliners is so straightforward that its stories are commonly assigned to school pupils. Portrait is a bit more experimental, but again it is often read by young people. Ulysses definitely requires a good grounding in artes liberales at the university level (or simply being a very bookish person regardless of formal education or not), but if you have that, then you can certainly read right through the book. Some allusions or references might escape you, but you can always refer to a commentary, because it is pretty well agreed what everything in that book means. The Wake is a whole other story. Joyce’s oneiric storytelling and sheer amount of puns makes it difficult to pin down even some of the basic plot. But don’t let that book or scholars’ fatigue and ultimately dismissive view of it turn you off from everything else that Joyce wrote.

exelius 8y ago
I didn’t read the article that way at all; I read it as implying that Wake was intentionally written in a way to be unapproachable so as to frustrate literary critics (whom Joyce was undoubtedly aware of and influenced by). Almost like an inside joke that nobody else was in on. The author even mentioned the approachability and seductiveness of his other works, so I took her comments as being restricted to the one book. I’m no Joyce scholar by any means so I don’t know if that’s true, but that was my reading of the article anyhow.