For anyone struggling with Joyce, I recommend Finnegan's Wake. You are guaranteed to find Ulysses easier to read after this.
Seriously though, I would recommend Dubliners.
James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)
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Re: James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)
#22Much to learn here for modern music journalists. Instead of inserting their own desires, shallow beliefs and ego into the review, the book is reviewed for what it is, with the artists intention considered and respected. Compare and contrast with this tiresome Guardian review, which leaves you very unclear about the performance but all too sure about what the reviewer likes and wants https://www.theguardian.com/music/…
I don't get that impression. Art exists in real life and can be contextualized as a result of that. The performance is described, too. I won't put words in your mouth but striving for some notion of apolitical art is folly. Especially if it's art by Thom Yorke, surely?
It's hard to put my finger on what exactly is wrong with the Guardian's article on Radiohead, but it feels like the author was meandering a lot in this short piece. It reads like a bullet-point list of things he noticed during the performance, and all of those things are in pieces and unconnected. It's not cohesive.
You could write this entire article by listening to half a dozen 5-second clips of the performance, giving the impression of a student who writes an essay about a book based entirely on spark notes.
Re: James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)
#23It is unreal to me that someone like Joyce was a real human, he seems like some otherworldly figure. Someone like Joyce will never exist again.
Just to help pulling his figure back to humanity a little bit, here's some letters that he wrote, about his fetish for dirty farts. Not that there's anything wrong with it, just that Joyce was a real human with humanly desires after all.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/02/james-joyces-...
Re: James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)
#24> If I understand him aright be sets out to depict not merely the fair show of things but the inner truth I can't parse this. It reads like an OCR error; should it read "If I understand him alright, he sets out..."?
"James Joyce: The Critical Heritage" https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.120428> includes a copy of this review (pages 213–216). It says:
> If I understand him aright he sets out…
Re: James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)
#25For anyone struggling with Joyce, I recommend Finnegan's Wake. You are guaranteed to find Ulysses easier to read after this.
On the contrary, I find Finnegan's Wake easier because it's more "fun". It's filled with silly word-play and funny sounds, and I don't feel compelled to try to make any particular meaning out of it or find a coherent story inside it, though if I do find one it's a nice surprise. Reading Ulysses, on the other hand, I know there is a story there, so when I lose the thread I get a bit frustrated. It's an absolutely gorg…
Reading an outline definitely helps. Don't worry about it diminishing the experience, it is, as you might have guessed, not a book where the pleasure comes primarily from the plot.
Being able to refer to a guide and say 'oh yes, this is Bloom talking to his boss in the as agency right now helps a lot in keeping yourself grounded.
Re: James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)
#26I have a suggestion: I read Ulysses about ten years ago and liked it but really didn’t get that much out of it. About five years ago, I tried Ulysses again, listening to it as an Audible audio book with several skilled actors speaking the roles. That was great! I then also listened to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in audiobook form and enjoyed it much more than reading it in school 50 years ago.
If you get a chance, listen to Dubliners, Joyce's collection of short stories, too, the last story is probably one of the best of 20th century English if not of all time.
Re: James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)
#27I tried reading it in late 2015 and it was just hard! The only thing I remember and find really funny is the dog on the beach peeing on an unsmelt rock!
You can try listening to podcasts by Frank Delaney called Re:Joyce. He goes through the book sentence by sentence. Sadly, Frank Delaney died before he could complete the podcast series.
How much of it did he cover?