3 ms·

> Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. That pretty well sums up my experience with Ulysses and Finn

> Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. That pretty well sums up my experience with Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake as well, though to be fair I have never given the latter much of a try.

demadog 6y ago
Have you read Dubliners? Such a good collection of stories. Honestly he mastered “great” writing and seems he just got bored and wanted to play at a higher level.
- bvm 6y ago
  The Dubliners is my desert island book. I can happily just sit there and re-read The Dead over and over again and never bore of it, there's so much there. Especially the way it builds to that incredible ending passage. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
  - barking 6y ago
    I haven't read The Dead but I greatly enjoyed John Houston's film adaptation of it. I also never read Ulysses but the BBC produced a very listenable book at bedtime of it that I can remember listening to in the Summer of 1991 as the coup was underway in Russia (I wasn't there btw)
  - biswaroop 6y ago
    Yes! Sorry, I'm just here to fan over Dubliners too. Every winter, on a snowy Massachusetts day, I read them all over again. It's incredible how The Dead and Araby contain so much of what makes us humans. It's hard to explain the images and feelings Joyce brings out in me as I'm reading them. I've met people who think it's boring, and while I understand that different people are attracted to different styles of writing, I'm always amazed that it's possible to dislike Dubliners.
- flatline 6y ago
  Yes - I really like his writing pre-Ulysses. I have tried to read that book for years. There are parts of it I enjoyed, it was just too much effort for the reward to tackle the whole thing.
jhedwards 6y ago
My advice is to treat Finnegan's Wake not as story to sit down and read but as a massive collection of jokes and experiments mixing together languages and stories and meanings. There is a section, for example, that mixes something like the inventory of a pantry with a sexual encounter, so if you read it out loud you seem to be listing off various food products, but somehow underneath it all... something else it going on. It's best to read out loud IMO because above all else it sounds funny. It's playful and silly and fun, so if you sit quietly and try to make sense of it you will miss the point.

demadog 6y ago

Have you read Dubliners? Such a good collection of stories. Honestly he mastered “great” writing and seems he just got bored and wanted to play at a higher level.

bvm 6y ago
The Dubliners is my desert island book. I can happily just sit there and re-read The Dead over and over again and never bore of it, there's so much there. Especially the way it builds to that incredible ending passage. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
- barking 6y ago
  I haven't read The Dead but I greatly enjoyed John Houston's film adaptation of it. I also never read Ulysses but the BBC produced a very listenable book at bedtime of it that I can remember listening to in the Summer of 1991 as the coup was underway in Russia (I wasn't there btw)
- biswaroop 6y ago
  Yes! Sorry, I'm just here to fan over Dubliners too. Every winter, on a snowy Massachusetts day, I read them all over again. It's incredible how The Dead and Araby contain so much of what makes us humans. It's hard to explain the images and feelings Joyce brings out in me as I'm reading them. I've met people who think it's boring, and while I understand that different people are attracted to different styles of writing, I'm always amazed that it's possible to dislike Dubliners.
flatline 6y ago
Yes - I really like his writing pre-Ulysses. I have tried to read that book for years. There are parts of it I enjoyed, it was just too much effort for the reward to tackle the whole thing.

jhedwards 6y ago

My advice is to treat Finnegan's Wake not as story to sit down and read but as a massive collection of jokes and experiments mixing together languages and stories and meanings. There is a section, for example, that mixes something like the inventory of a pantry with a sexual encounter, so if you read it out loud you seem to be listing off various food products, but somehow underneath it all... something else it going on. It's best to read out loud IMO because above all else it sounds funny. It's playful and silly and fun, so if you sit quietly and try to make sense of it you will miss the point.