James Joyce was a complicated man • Hacker News Board

Re: James Joyce was a complicated man

#51

Post by bbor » Mon, Jul 01, 2024, 12:01 AM UTC

sourcepluck wrote: post #8

bbor wrote: post #5

A) Great article, thanks for posting! I would say the headline is a little bit of clickbait (the "complication" implied there is that he had complicated feelings about Ireland, plus maybe some sexual kink stuff), but in 2024 I can't complain. After all, as an ex-Adsense employee, it's more my fault than theirs! B) "From then on, Joyce lived in Europe." Isn't Ireland in Europe...? C) “Just as ancient Egypt is dead,” h…

B) "From then on, Joyce lived in Europe." Isn't Ireland in Europe...? -- technically yes, of course. In reality? Eh, it's complicated. There's probably a few reasons, but if you told an Irish person they were European, people would be bemused, at least.

But… if they’re not European… what are they? Sea Peoples? Are you actually proposing that we should designate a north-Atlantic version of Oceania??

Because I’m not entirely anti, to be honest!

Re: James Joyce was a complicated man

#52

Post by AlbertCory » Mon, Jul 01, 2024, 5:19 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #42

AlbertCory wrote: post #4

This is actually one of the best summaries of Ulysses I've ever seen, and I took an extension course at Stanford on the book. We also had an approved commentary book. I don't remember most of these themes being raised. I remember the teacher saying with awe, "He can do whatever he wants with the English language!" and me thinking, "Who cares?" He also went on and on about Joyce's stream-of-consciousness writing, and…

>I remember the teacher saying with awe, "He can do whatever he wants with the English language!" and me thinking, "Who cares? I would normally think that saying someone can do anything they want with (X) would be an assertion of absolute mastery, and one should care if someone is an absolute master in something. This candidate can do whatever he wants with our main programming language, yeah but I'm still going to h…

> it would be easy to make more absurd examples

Like, for example, "this man can do whatever he wants with flipping a coffee cup!" (that's a real example, btw)

"this woman is an absolute master of beer pong."

The skill has to be valuable.

Re: James Joyce was a complicated man

#53

Post by AlbertCory » Mon, Jul 01, 2024, 6:07 PM UTC

kridsdale3 wrote: post #24

AlbertCory wrote: post #4

This is actually one of the best summaries of Ulysses I've ever seen, and I took an extension course at Stanford on the book. We also had an approved commentary book. I don't remember most of these themes being raised. I remember the teacher saying with awe, "He can do whatever he wants with the English language!" and me thinking, "Who cares?" He also went on and on about Joyce's stream-of-consciousness writing, and…

I did similar, in university 20 years ago. Your post brought up hidden memory of the same excitement by the prof, and my reaction, as I was already pretty exposed to postmodernism. Maybe its a Big Deal because it was an early break-out from Modernism (as this essay goes in to detail on its membership within) and into Post-.

Yes, his "innovations" aren't particularly interesting now. The things in this article are though, and I wish the prof had dwelt on those instead.