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Yes - took 2 Joyce seminars back in college and never got through more than excerpts of FW. Funny process - at first you think Ulysses is hard, and it is, but y
by mbubb 11y ago
Yes - took 2 Joyce seminars back in college and never got through more than excerpts of FW. Funny process - at first you think Ulysses is hard, and it is, but you get used to that world. FW is dense.
Another work which always seemed made for the Internet is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project
there is even a precursor to the hyperlink in the way that links to other topics jump around the work and imply multiple connections.
Things like https://mannahatta2409.org/ https://mannahatta2409.org/ remind me of what Benjamin did in a way.
- waterlesscloud 11y agoI took a Joyce class in college. We spent most of the quarter on Ulysses, a chapter at a time. We spent one class period on the first page of Finnegan's Wake. As you mentioned, you adapt fairly quickly to Ulysses, but Finnegan's Wake is a whole other universe. I found it helped with both works to mentally read them in an absurdly exaggerated Irish accent. Especially FW.
- abruzzi 11y agoPart of the reason it stops readers quickly is the opening chapter is much harder than later chapters (that not to say that later chapters are easy, just nowhere near as dense ad the beginning). In that way is kind of like Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" in which part one is by far the hardest to read, since it is written, stream of consciousness, in the mind of a mentally disabled person. Later parts are easier to follow.
- JadeNB 11y ago> Another work which always seemed made for the Internet is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project If we're throwing out ideas, I'd love to see a web version of Rayuela (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Julio_Cortázar_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Julio_Cortázar_nove... ).
- mbubb 11y agoI remember reading that. At the time my absolute favorite novel. Its beautiful. He's a great great writer. The short stories. "A Certain Lucas"; "Around the day in 80 worlds" but nothing quite like Hopscotch. Jumping to film - I always thought that a lecture/ essay on Blowup Blowout and ) a bit of a stretch) The Conversation all descended from Cortazar's short story would make a great study.
- sogen 11y agoyeah, Cortazar stuff is great, wow, another Lucas fan!
- JadeNB 11y agoI dunno—I was introduced to the short stories first, and none of the novels compare for me (not even Hopscotch, much as I enjoy it). Cronopios and Famas, We Love Glenda So Much, House Taken Over—he has hilarious, chilling, and beautiful short stories.
- agumonkey 11y agoI had the hardest time following Cortazar surrealism.
- ctogden 11y ago> Another work which always seemed made for the Internet is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project I think http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/arcades.html http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/arca... would appeal to you then. It looks like Eric Meltzer, Max Fenton, and some others may be working on another project based on The Arcades Project.
- gcv 11y agoUlysses is definitely doable, but it marks a point when high-brow literature stopped being something every reasonable, intelligent, and educated person enjoys reading. It's a chore (less so than FW, of course), and of questionable value — yeah, it's cool to get all the references to Homer, etc., but I don't think anyone puts down Ulysses with anything other than a sense of relief of having scaled it as an obstacle. (Yes, I studied Ulysses. Voluntarily and on my own time. I don't mean to belittle Joyce's talent. Ulysses is obviously a huge accomplishment, beyond nearly all writers.) Compare that with, say, Dickens. People would drop what they were doing to read the next installment of Little Dorrit.