I'd recommend John Huston's film 'The Dead' to anyone who would like experience something by Joyce. I did read a bit of 'A portrait of the artist as a young man'. He really got into the head of a small boy who was being bullied in one part. I never finished it though, I can't remember why.
I don't think that I could ever read Ulysses, I did listen to a reading of it on the BBC's book at bedtime many years ago and liked parts of it.
Finnegan's Wake would drive me insane, I'm certain.
Re: 'The Dead', I got a copy of it as a present last christmas after boring people for years about what a good film it is, though I hadn't seen it in years.
AFAIK it was John Huston's last film and a labour of love (his daughter Angelica is in it).
It's a bit dated now (made in the 80s) and low budget but it still holds up imo. The main character has some long thoughts to himself about life, death and how little we really know those closest to us, that are very moving imo.
The Dead is a good film, undeniably, but its basis is the final short story of Dubliners, which is Joyce's most approachable work; everything afterwards was increasingly avant-garde, but Dubliners is at least written according to conventional rules of both English grammar and literature (though there's a lot going on behind the scenes).
(I personally very much enjoyed Portrait... and Ulysses - the latter is very difficult in places, but on the whole an astonishing achievement. I'm saving Finnegans Wake for my retirement.)
If I try Ulysses again it will probably be an audiobook, I could never make any headway with it in text. I might try getting hold of Dubliners in book form.
James Norton's audio book of Ulysses is superb, he really captures the beauty of the language. I'd recommend it more as an audiobook that written, at least at first, just as I'd recommend listening to Shakespeare rather than reading the text.
genius.com has an annotated Ulysses, [0] and it might be even better to listen and read at the same time.
If you want to try tackling Ulysses again, I have two recommendations:
First, Frank Delaney is doing a wonderful podcast, "Re: Joyce"[1], unpacking the novel in short segments. The original episodes cover just a few sentences each; lately the format has expanded to a whole page, in the hope that he'll finish before 2040! Currently, he's just started in on "Scylla and Charybdis", the ninth chapter. His enthusiasm for Joyce and Ulysses is deep and delightful.
Second, in 1982, the Irish radio station RTE produced an essentially unabridged dramatic reading of the novel. Besides being a terrific way to experience the book, it nicely counters one of the major difficulties for newcomers to Ulysses: Distinguishing dialog and internal monologue from narration, and deciding who, exactly, is saying what! It's available for free on archive.org[2].
That's an amazing resource. I remember frank delaney from bbc radio years ago, I had no idea he was still around, looks like he's moved to america and reinvented himself.
Thanks for the info.
Joyce's Dubliners is a collection of short stories, one of which is 'The Dead'. It's quite accessible, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read something by James Joyce.
I also read 'A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man' and didn't think much of it. I made it through Ulysses, but frankly half the time I could barely understand WTF was going on. I started on Finnegan's Wake and gave up after realizing that the prose wasn't going to get any less crazy.
Dubliners though is quite accessible and a very nice read.
Came across this nice quote by Kafka recently, which seems relevant:
"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."
I don't know how that would apply to books but I can very much relate to it with newspapers. People read papers that agree with their viewpoints, it's unpleasant reading political opinions that go against one's own. It's cognitive dissonance I suppose.
i think everyone ought to read whatever books they fucking want. what's with pretentious assholes always telling everybody what they should and shouldn't do?
Kafka was himself an author. I think authors like to believe that their work changes people, that books and other writing are not simply content to be tailored for specific demographics. His use of 'we' in the quote sort of suggests that he might be speaking mainly for himself. Perhaps he was just trying to explain his particular kind of want.
He isn't telling you what to do. He is struggling with the question of what the best way to live is, he assumes you are doing the same, and he's offering his opinion on one aspect of it.
"Everyone ought to read whatever books they fucking want" isn't that useful as an intellectual opinion. Yes, fine, but what kind of books should we want to read if we want to lead our lives the best way possible? Why read at all?
if i want to read something that makes me laugh or gives me an escape for a few hours, who are you guys to tell me i'm wasting my time? mind your own damn business.
Honest question: what is the philosophical basis for the trend I seem to often see (expressed here as "Why read at all?") that pure entertainment is not a valid part of "the best way to live"?
Just off the top of my head, some schools of Buddhism come to mind. Then after a few more seconds it occurs to me that most major religions have some form of ascetic system that frowns upon indulgences such as pure entertainment. In other words, you can have your choice of philosophical bases.
That addresses the "where does it come from?" but not the "why", which I would generalize as entertainment distracts from the pursuit of a better way of living.
Thanks for the answer! I was hoping for more specifics than "some schools of Buddhism" and "ascetic systems from most major religions", but on hindsight I see that asking people to do that level of research for me on a forum like this is too big an ask.
There aren't any specifics, because asceticism is everywhere. From the Zen Buddhist writings of Dogen in the 1200s to modern U. S. Christian Baptists, there's going to be someone standing nearby telling you music and dancing are not good things (one example common to both Dogen and some Baptists).
So where did it originally come from? Who did it or said it first? I have absolutely no idea, nor do I care. So, yeah, you're on your own. :-)
"Although all pleasures are good and all pains evil, Epicurus says that not all pleasures are choiceworthy or all pains to be avoided. Instead, one should calculate what is in one's long-term self-interest, and forgo what will bring pleasure in the short-term if doing so will ultimately lead to greater pleasure in the long-term....
"An example of a natural but non-necessary desire is the desire for luxury food. Although food is needed for survival, one does not need a particular type of food to survive. Thus, despite his hedonism, Epicurus advocates a surprisingly ascetic way of life. Although one shouldn't spurn extravagant foods if they happen to be available, becoming dependent on such goods ultimately leads to unhappiness."
Well, if he said "If we want to lead our lives the best way possible, then you ought to read this and this, not that" it would still be pretentious. Is it really clear cut that one set from all of literature is the best for everybody? Of course "read whatever you like is a bit on the opposite side, too easy, too shallow. One could then decide "fine, I'll just read kid's comics all my life." Read varied literature, from different cultures, try different genres, and try to read some classics, as they're classics for a reason, would probably be better advice.
agree that he probably did not mean it as a universal law, but rather meant that he prefers reading books that confuse and bewilder him. As an example, here's a really short story of his, "A Little Fable":
"
"Alas", said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I am running into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.
"
My take has always been that what you take out of a given book, whether it's Vince Flynn or James Joyce, has more to do with you as a reader, than the book you're reading.
That is, if you're the kind of person who thinks deeply about things, looks for insights and connections, questions how things work, etc., you're going to draw some insight from a James Patterson book, or Stephen King or whatever.
OTOH, if you're not that kind of person, you can force yourself to grind through mechanically reading the words of Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow, or Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake or whatever, and wind up no better off at the end than if you'd read from a random word generator for the same period of time.
I really abhor remarks like this one, suggesting that there are things people "should" or "shouldn't" read. As another commenter remarked, it's pretentious.
What's more, it's deceptive, because it sounds sage and insightful and worth pondering, particularly because it's well-worded and comes from a famous author, but in point of fact it's just another guy saying "Read what I deem to be of quality, not what you enjoy reading." His own skill as an author does not change that.
There's something of value to be found in most written works, one way or another, and they all have different purposes.
What's pretentious is taking such strong issue with a statement that starts with "I think we ought...". I think you ought to get over yourself, as Kafka was expressing an opinion, one with which you're free to disagree. Argue your dissent, even if it's just "Kafka? Yeah, fuck that guy.", but stamping your foot because you perceived it as some dead guy telling you what to do is just silly, IMO.
As to the topic at hand, I like me some entertainment fiction on occasion, but I'll never make the claim that Stephen King's latest changed my life.
There is a difference between a coder recommending certain code they find elegant, and a coder saying "you should not read code that is not written with this design pattern, as it is a waste of yours or anybody's time, because it is not how I write code."
Kafka trained as a lawyer, he didn't literally believe that no one should read any book that doesn't create an intense emotional impact. He was a fiction-writer, and he was arguing for a particular model of what fiction can do, which his works certainly embody.
Those who interpret words in such a narrow and literalistic way, though, would probably be best off skipping his works.
Well that's just it, me either! Nor could I expeditiously find a copy of the letter in question. So I wouldn't presume to know his full meaning. But when you see the quote alone like this, the takeaway is straightforward enough, regardless of the author's original intent, and it's the appropriated implication which I do not agree with.
But frankly I would not be surprised if he did mean it literally and exactly. After all, it does seem to be in line with Kafka's work, doesn't it? Avoid happiness, court misery and grief? That could be a tagline to a Kafka biopic.
But it's just his opinion. Some people like happy endings. And to imply that a feel-good story isn't worth reading is the true narrow opinion. As though Pixar's films were not sufficiently profound for lack of tragedy. Good god, imagine if Kafka was the creative director at Pixar! "Finding Nemo" would be an endless and fruitless search probably resulting in the father descending to madness and wondering if he ever had a son at all.
I like to think that Finnehans Wake was an elaborate practical joke aimed at the literary establishment.
Can imagine Joyce chuckling to himself as he imagined generation of literary critics and bedevilled students trying to make sense from its fractured dreamscape.
I love the book, though. It's words come closest to capturing in words what it is like to dream. Glimpsed fragments of meaning, locations and people and ideas that shift and stir in and out of existence. A lingering sense that there was some kind of narrative there, but there's no way you could ever describe in words what it was.
I've been reading the Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman recently, and this is exactly how I feel about them (especially the one I'm currently on: volume 9 "The Kindly Ones").
So you'd subscribe to (g) in his list of possible interpretations:
(g) The reliable readiness of critics, doctoral candidates, and know-it-alls to enshrine difficulty for its own sake, to rise to the bait of erudite obscurity that Joyce laid for us in this, the greatest literary prank ever played (outside of revealed religion).
> I like to think that Finnehans Wake was an elaborate practical joke aimed at the literary establishment.
This is how I feel about the two books by J.M. Coetzee[1] I've read, Disgrace and The Childhood of Jesus, minus the 'elaborate' part, they're simply practical jokes, and wholly unremarkable. A bit like Jean Micheal Basquiat's art. That's not art, it's a fucking joke. Coetzee must be having a good chuckle when he sees the critics write "a masterpiece" and "richly enigmatic".
"At times the book would wash up on the beach of my life and I would hear the bottled voice of its djinn, promising everlasting bliss to puzzle hermits, inexhaustible cred to know-it-alls. I always forebore."
I may be in the minority, but when I read someone's thoughts on Joyce I don't particularly want to decipher a new metaphor or two per sentence. If that was my intention I would just pick up the original.
For me it was a supremely enjoyable sentence. The article itself is complex, and what it had to say it could've said in simpler words. But brevity need always not be the soul of wit; at least for some, these flourishes, this showmanship of language, they are a gift to savour.
At some point in the course of that year, my younger son and his classmates wrote poems about their parents, immortalizing their most salient aspects and traits, and in my son’s poem I am depicted, arrested for an instant in the midst of the eternity it must have seemed to him, “reading Finnegans Wake.” If in his poem he erected a kind of statue to his father, then Finnegans Wake was the pigeon that had come to roost on my hat.
“What’s it about?” the same boy asked me, not long after the omnipresent bird had first alighted on the paternal tricorne.
p.s. I didn't look at the article's author until I finished it, and I cannot believe he is the writer of something as good as "Kavalier & Clay"... Maybe Chabon wrote in an obnoxious way to mirror the obnoxiousness of FW.
"Dubliners there was the unlovable A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which starts well, charting bold, clear routes, like “Araby,” through the trackless waters of childhood, then fouls its rotors in a dense kelpy snarl of cathected horniness, late-Victorian aesthetics, and the Jesuitical cleverness that, even in Ulysses, wearies the most true-hearted lover of Joyce."
Do others also find this article very hard to read? (Esp sentences like the one above)
"bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk" Oh the sweet sound of lightning that only Joyce could've understood. Finnegans Wake's concept is great in terms of challenging language and structure, but the unfinished result is a disaster. If anyone dedicates time to analyze FW, then they misspent years trying to understand gibberish.
After an earlier HN discussion extolling Finnegans Wake, I read the book (and read several guide books, and listened to it on several versions of audio), and I have to say that for me it was an epic waste of time. I hate to brand myself a philistine, but want to provide a counterpoint to people who say the book is so funny and a grand experience.
I recommend reading a couple pages [1] to get a feeling for Finnegans Wake - it's amazing the density of concepts Joyce crams into words, with multiple meanings in almost every word. I kept thinking the book would make more sense if I kept reading, but no, it's like this the whole way through. A few things get better, for instance, the initials HCE constantly appear, so in the first sentence you should get an aha feeling from "Howth Castle and Environs". But that's a pretty small payoff.
If you enjoyed the book and found it hilarious, more power to you. But as someone who likes challenging books and put a lot of time into Finnegans Wake, the book didn't do it for me.
[1] Finnegans Wake is online at http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm along with detailed notes, but unlike Shakespeare, looking up mystery words doesn't make things any clearer.
58 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadRe: 'The Dead', I got a copy of it as a present last christmas after boring people for years about what a good film it is, though I hadn't seen it in years. AFAIK it was John Huston's last film and a labour of love (his daughter Angelica is in it). It's a bit dated now (made in the 80s) and low budget but it still holds up imo. The main character has some long thoughts to himself about life, death and how little we really know those closest to us, that are very moving imo.
(I personally very much enjoyed Portrait... and Ulysses - the latter is very difficult in places, but on the whole an astonishing achievement. I'm saving Finnegans Wake for my retirement.)
genius.com has an annotated Ulysses, [0] and it might be even better to listen and read at the same time.
[0]: http://genius.com/albums/James-joyce/Ulysses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-apGqB98RI
First, Frank Delaney is doing a wonderful podcast, "Re: Joyce"[1], unpacking the novel in short segments. The original episodes cover just a few sentences each; lately the format has expanded to a whole page, in the hope that he'll finish before 2040! Currently, he's just started in on "Scylla and Charybdis", the ninth chapter. His enthusiasm for Joyce and Ulysses is deep and delightful.
Second, in 1982, the Irish radio station RTE produced an essentially unabridged dramatic reading of the novel. Besides being a terrific way to experience the book, it nicely counters one of the major difficulties for newcomers to Ulysses: Distinguishing dialog and internal monologue from narration, and deciding who, exactly, is saying what! It's available for free on archive.org[2].
[1] http://blog.frankdelaney.com/re-joyce/
[2] https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook
I also read 'A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man' and didn't think much of it. I made it through Ulysses, but frankly half the time I could barely understand WTF was going on. I started on Finnegan's Wake and gave up after realizing that the prose wasn't going to get any less crazy.
Dubliners though is quite accessible and a very nice read.
"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."
Agreed that cognitive dissonance could be a part of the part of propaganda that is hatefacts.
edit: typo
"Everyone ought to read whatever books they fucking want" isn't that useful as an intellectual opinion. Yes, fine, but what kind of books should we want to read if we want to lead our lives the best way possible? Why read at all?
That addresses the "where does it come from?" but not the "why", which I would generalize as entertainment distracts from the pursuit of a better way of living.
So where did it originally come from? Who did it or said it first? I have absolutely no idea, nor do I care. So, yeah, you're on your own. :-)
"An example of a natural but non-necessary desire is the desire for luxury food. Although food is needed for survival, one does not need a particular type of food to survive. Thus, despite his hedonism, Epicurus advocates a surprisingly ascetic way of life. Although one shouldn't spurn extravagant foods if they happen to be available, becoming dependent on such goods ultimately leads to unhappiness."
http://www.iep.utm.edu/epicur/
" "Alas", said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I am running into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Little_Fable
That is, if you're the kind of person who thinks deeply about things, looks for insights and connections, questions how things work, etc., you're going to draw some insight from a James Patterson book, or Stephen King or whatever.
OTOH, if you're not that kind of person, you can force yourself to grind through mechanically reading the words of Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow, or Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake or whatever, and wind up no better off at the end than if you'd read from a random word generator for the same period of time.
What's more, it's deceptive, because it sounds sage and insightful and worth pondering, particularly because it's well-worded and comes from a famous author, but in point of fact it's just another guy saying "Read what I deem to be of quality, not what you enjoy reading." His own skill as an author does not change that.
There's something of value to be found in most written works, one way or another, and they all have different purposes.
What's pretentious is taking such strong issue with a statement that starts with "I think we ought...". I think you ought to get over yourself, as Kafka was expressing an opinion, one with which you're free to disagree. Argue your dissent, even if it's just "Kafka? Yeah, fuck that guy.", but stamping your foot because you perceived it as some dead guy telling you what to do is just silly, IMO.
As to the topic at hand, I like me some entertainment fiction on occasion, but I'll never make the claim that Stephen King's latest changed my life.
Would you say the same thing about an excellent coder recommending elegant code they didn't write?
Those who interpret words in such a narrow and literalistic way, though, would probably be best off skipping his works.
Notice I didn't pronounce a judgement on Kafka: I pronounced a judgement on the quote's implied meaning when presented in isolation as it was.
But frankly I would not be surprised if he did mean it literally and exactly. After all, it does seem to be in line with Kafka's work, doesn't it? Avoid happiness, court misery and grief? That could be a tagline to a Kafka biopic.
But it's just his opinion. Some people like happy endings. And to imply that a feel-good story isn't worth reading is the true narrow opinion. As though Pixar's films were not sufficiently profound for lack of tragedy. Good god, imagine if Kafka was the creative director at Pixar! "Finding Nemo" would be an endless and fruitless search probably resulting in the father descending to madness and wondering if he ever had a son at all.
I read for entertainment or to learn new things about stuff that interests me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ks60VrtJ4Y
Can imagine Joyce chuckling to himself as he imagined generation of literary critics and bedevilled students trying to make sense from its fractured dreamscape.
I love the book, though. It's words come closest to capturing in words what it is like to dream. Glimpsed fragments of meaning, locations and people and ideas that shift and stir in and out of existence. A lingering sense that there was some kind of narrative there, but there's no way you could ever describe in words what it was.
(g) The reliable readiness of critics, doctoral candidates, and know-it-alls to enshrine difficulty for its own sake, to rise to the bait of erudite obscurity that Joyce laid for us in this, the greatest literary prank ever played (outside of revealed religion).
This is how I feel about the two books by J.M. Coetzee[1] I've read, Disgrace and The Childhood of Jesus, minus the 'elaborate' part, they're simply practical jokes, and wholly unremarkable. A bit like Jean Micheal Basquiat's art. That's not art, it's a fucking joke. Coetzee must be having a good chuckle when he sees the critics write "a masterpiece" and "richly enigmatic".
That's just my opinion, of course.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee
But Finnegan's Wake, yeah. Too much for me. There are moments in Ulysses that touch that, but then reign back into focus, but Wake is just beyond me.
I may be in the minority, but when I read someone's thoughts on Joyce I don't particularly want to decipher a new metaphor or two per sentence. If that was my intention I would just pick up the original.
At some point in the course of that year, my younger son and his classmates wrote poems about their parents, immortalizing their most salient aspects and traits, and in my son’s poem I am depicted, arrested for an instant in the midst of the eternity it must have seemed to him, “reading Finnegans Wake.” If in his poem he erected a kind of statue to his father, then Finnegans Wake was the pigeon that had come to roost on my hat.
“What’s it about?” the same boy asked me, not long after the omnipresent bird had first alighted on the paternal tricorne.
p.s. I didn't look at the article's author until I finished it, and I cannot believe he is the writer of something as good as "Kavalier & Clay"... Maybe Chabon wrote in an obnoxious way to mirror the obnoxiousness of FW.
Do others also find this article very hard to read? (Esp sentences like the one above)
I recommend reading a couple pages [1] to get a feeling for Finnegans Wake - it's amazing the density of concepts Joyce crams into words, with multiple meanings in almost every word. I kept thinking the book would make more sense if I kept reading, but no, it's like this the whole way through. A few things get better, for instance, the initials HCE constantly appear, so in the first sentence you should get an aha feeling from "Howth Castle and Environs". But that's a pretty small payoff.
If you enjoyed the book and found it hilarious, more power to you. But as someone who likes challenging books and put a lot of time into Finnegans Wake, the book didn't do it for me.
[1] Finnegans Wake is online at http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm along with detailed notes, but unlike Shakespeare, looking up mystery words doesn't make things any clearer.