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His reasons were that 1. it's like Shakespeare in its engagement of both the high brow and low brow of human psychology, 2. it's good for the digital age where
by Tycho 14y ago
His reasons were that 1. it's like Shakespeare in its engagement of both the high brow and low brow of human psychology, 2. it's good for the digital age where we can hyperlink text and bring things like annotations and intertextuality to the forefront (previously the mainstay of literature departments where people had the time to study such things)
It would make a good iPad app actually.
Btw, I think you'll find there's lots of people on Hacker News quite willing to entertain a discussion about something like Ulysses. It's a diverse community.
- gruseom 14y agoBut those aren't reasons. The first is a non sequitur on top of an appeal to authority: Shakespeare did X, Joyce does X, Shakespeare is good so Joyce must be good. The second is beside the point; a book that isn't worth reading isn't more worth reading on an iPad! (Reminds me of Chesterton's quip: if a job is worth doing it's worth doing badly.) The closest he comes to saying why Ulysses is worth reading is that it is a "great psychological novel" and that just begs the question. By the way, I recognize the phenomenon as a former grad student in (Russian) literature: when you're immersed in something, it can be hard to articulate its value to outsiders. You keep pointing to things that you take for granted, but others don't.
- Tycho 14y agoWell I think it's implicit that one of the things he thinks makes Shakespeare great is this engagement of 'poetry and patter' and he thinks Joyce also does this. It's not really an appeal to authority to say 'if you like Shakespeare, you'll this...'; and also implicit that the book is widely understood to be good, just difficult/inaccessible (but the digital age can solve that problem. Like, if ever there was a good time to read Ulysses, it's now).
- scarmig 14y agoSomeone was working on a hypermedia version of Ulysses a couple years back. Unfortunately, copyright issues and the Joyce estate killed the project.