4 ms·

For me, the moment that transformed the book from a chore to a delight was the moment I realized it was funny. I was allowed to laugh, but I was also allowed to

by diiq 14y ago

For me, the moment that transformed the book from a chore to a delight was the moment I realized it was funny. I was allowed to laugh, but I was also allowed to miss jokes, miss references. There are so many, that if one flies over your head, then next one will fly straight into your open mouth. The Rise of The New Bloomusalem is hysterically funny. I could never have made it through, if it were merely an intellectual exercise. It's a slapstick, pun-filled, over-the-top festival. There are songs, and dances, and plays, and fights, and sex (maybe), and proofs by algebra that Hamlet was Shakespeare's grandfather, or vice versa... IT'S FUNNY.

wisty 14y ago
Postmodernism - funny writers being studied by people with either no sense of humor, or a very mean-spirited one. (Oh wait, it's HN). What I mean, in long form: Postmodernist works (e.g. Catch 22) are often hilarious. The hallmarks of postmodernism (references, subverting memes, subverting conventions, subverting everything, breaking the fourth wall) are the kind of thing you see more in British comedy than "serious" literature. Postmodernist writers either miss the jokes completely, or kill them with overanalysis. I am postulating that either the academics we call "postmodernist" don't actually get the jokes, or are very wryly re-telling them with a straight face, then secretly laughing at the people who don't realise it's all a joke (which I consider mean-spirited).
- diiq 14y ago
  I subscribe to Danto's 'post-historical' description of PoMo (though it's fallen somewhat out of favor). He claims that, with the end of modernism came the end of rules and sweeping movements -- it was no longer possible to distinguish, on physical examination, between art and non-art. So everyone started making art in ten thousand different ways. By that measure, all writers writing today are, technically, postmodern; but even among those writers who are writing difficult, academic, contemporary literature, there are stuffy pompous ones and funny snarky ones and everything in between. It's hard to think of it, because we don't consider the books we like as literature. Vonnegut, certainly by Timequake, is deeply postmodern. Murakami undoubtedly is, and is often very funny; Jasper Fforde tickles; hell, a very strong case could be made for Douglas Adams as a leading Postmodern humourist.
  - Fargren 14y ago
    Where is Murakami funny? I've found him wise and deeply moving, but never funny.
    - diiq 14y ago
      He is often wise and moving. But In Kafka on the Shore, a nameless concept embodies itself as Colonel Sanders, who is a magical pimp. A line from The Second Bakery Attack1: "Why my wife owned a shotgun, I had no idea. Or ski masks. Neither of us had ever skied. But she didn't explain and I didn't ask. Married life is weird, I felt." Murakami makes me laugh a lot. 1 http://ctina.com/bakeryattack.html http://ctina.com/bakeryattack.html
    - evan2m 14y ago
      See "A Wild Sheep Chase." It's full of humor.
  - philh 14y ago
    > By that measure, all writers writing today are, technically, postmodern By that measure, isn't absolutely everyone, living or dead, a postmodern artist?
    - diiq 14y ago
      No; Jan van Eyck painted the way he did in large part because that is what he was expected to do; 'Art', for him, in his time, had a fairly specific definition. It is the lack of such a definition that makes postmodernism. If someone painted like Jan van Eyck today, it would be postmodern --- both because of the year, and because of the current culture of art. Same painting, different classification. (There's a hilarious story by Borges with almost exactly this premise: "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote") Please understand refraining from saying whether this freedom is good or bad. I mean only to name a distinction between western art up through modernism -- art which met specific expectations according to period and place --- and western art post-modernism, which defies any uniform expectation.
FreakLegion 14y ago
Yes! You only need one reason to read Ulysses: You'll enjoy it, if you let yourself. Ulysses is hilarious, moving, and thought-provoking, all at the same time. But if you're afraid of it -- if you're afraid of missing a reference, of not appreciating the mise-en-scène of turn-of-the-century Ireland, of somehow not "understanding" the Homeric scaffolding or the rest of the book – then you won't enjoy it, and maybe literature isn't for you. I know kids in their early teens who've loved Ulysses because they don't have these fears, don't see reading as something they can fail at. They can't fail at it because literature isn't reducible to being "understood," therefore not reducible to being "misunderstood." You wouldn't talk about music in terms of its understandability[1], at least not entirely, and you shouldn't approach literature that way either. All that said, if you want another reason to read Ulysses, do it because it will force you to read and think about writing and language and people in a different way, and that different way is a tool you really ought to have in your toolbox. Which is to say, reading Ulysses can also be worthwhile in the same way that learning a functional programming language is. 1. And for anyone who hasn't really studied music, you'd be amazed by the number of references you're missing there, too. You just don't notice and don't care because those references aren't essential, which is true of Ulysses as well.
- diiq 14y ago
  Well named: fear of your own ignorance is an excellent way to hate literature. No one can 'get' it all. There's too much, and besides, half of it might not be there anyway. Devour lit with popcorn. Odysseus is a superhero; Knect a nerd; Bloom a clown. And I'm a creepy teddy bear, saying "Reading is Fun!"

by diiq 14y ago

wisty 14y ago

Postmodernism - funny writers being studied by people with either no sense of humor, or a very mean-spirited one. (Oh wait, it's HN). What I mean, in long form: Postmodernist works (e.g. Catch 22) are often hilarious. The hallmarks of postmodernism (references, subverting memes, subverting conventions, subverting everything, breaking the fourth wall) are the kind of thing you see more in British comedy than "serious" literature. Postmodernist writers either miss the jokes completely, or kill them with overanalysis. I am postulating that either the academics we call "postmodernist" don't actually get the jokes, or are very wryly re-telling them with a straight face, then secretly laughing at the people who don't realise it's all a joke (which I consider mean-spirited).

diiq 14y ago
I subscribe to Danto's 'post-historical' description of PoMo (though it's fallen somewhat out of favor). He claims that, with the end of modernism came the end of rules and sweeping movements -- it was no longer possible to distinguish, on physical examination, between art and non-art. So everyone started making art in ten thousand different ways. By that measure, all writers writing today are, technically, postmodern; but even among those writers who are writing difficult, academic, contemporary literature, there are stuffy pompous ones and funny snarky ones and everything in between. It's hard to think of it, because we don't consider the books we like as literature. Vonnegut, certainly by Timequake, is deeply postmodern. Murakami undoubtedly is, and is often very funny; Jasper Fforde tickles; hell, a very strong case could be made for Douglas Adams as a leading Postmodern humourist.
- Fargren 14y ago
  Where is Murakami funny? I've found him wise and deeply moving, but never funny.
  - diiq 14y ago
    He is often wise and moving. But In Kafka on the Shore, a nameless concept embodies itself as Colonel Sanders, who is a magical pimp. A line from The Second Bakery Attack1: "Why my wife owned a shotgun, I had no idea. Or ski masks. Neither of us had ever skied. But she didn't explain and I didn't ask. Married life is weird, I felt." Murakami makes me laugh a lot. 1 http://ctina.com/bakeryattack.html http://ctina.com/bakeryattack.html
  - evan2m 14y ago
    See "A Wild Sheep Chase." It's full of humor.
- philh 14y ago
  > By that measure, all writers writing today are, technically, postmodern By that measure, isn't absolutely everyone, living or dead, a postmodern artist?
  - diiq 14y ago
    No; Jan van Eyck painted the way he did in large part because that is what he was expected to do; 'Art', for him, in his time, had a fairly specific definition. It is the lack of such a definition that makes postmodernism. If someone painted like Jan van Eyck today, it would be postmodern --- both because of the year, and because of the current culture of art. Same painting, different classification. (There's a hilarious story by Borges with almost exactly this premise: "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote") Please understand refraining from saying whether this freedom is good or bad. I mean only to name a distinction between western art up through modernism -- art which met specific expectations according to period and place --- and western art post-modernism, which defies any uniform expectation.

FreakLegion 14y ago

Yes! You only need one reason to read Ulysses: You'll enjoy it, if you let yourself. Ulysses is hilarious, moving, and thought-provoking, all at the same time. But if you're afraid of it -- if you're afraid of missing a reference, of not appreciating the mise-en-scène of turn-of-the-century Ireland, of somehow not "understanding" the Homeric scaffolding or the rest of the book – then you won't enjoy it, and maybe literature isn't for you. I know kids in their early teens who've loved Ulysses because they don't have these fears, don't see reading as something they can fail at. They can't fail at it because literature isn't reducible to being "understood," therefore not reducible to being "misunderstood." You wouldn't talk about music in terms of its understandability[1], at least not entirely, and you shouldn't approach literature that way either. All that said, if you want another reason to read Ulysses, do it because it will force you to read and think about writing and language and people in a different way, and that different way is a tool you really ought to have in your toolbox. Which is to say, reading Ulysses can also be worthwhile in the same way that learning a functional programming language is. 1. And for anyone who hasn't really studied music, you'd be amazed by the number of references you're missing there, too. You just don't notice and don't care because those references aren't essential, which is true of Ulysses as well.

diiq 14y ago
Well named: fear of your own ignorance is an excellent way to hate literature. No one can 'get' it all. There's too much, and besides, half of it might not be there anyway. Devour lit with popcorn. Odysseus is a superhero; Knect a nerd; Bloom a clown. And I'm a creepy teddy bear, saying "Reading is Fun!"