OK, I know there is Irishmen here, Gazza included! Northern Ireland or Southern Ireland.....it's the same bloody island

I had to read Ulysses a second time befire finally getting it
And it's one of the most thrilling books I've ever read, apart from Dostojevkij's last 3 masterpieces

When it comes to "finnegan's wake".....I have given up. So I was wondering if anybody on IORR ever got thru that one? If so.....give us a review;
thank you
Would be very interested in hearing the "common IORR man"'s opinion.

try the "dubliners" next - and then go to dublin and sit and have a pint in some of joyce's favorite watering holes.

Bought a nice hard cover Ulysses at the Joyce Center in Dublin years ago. Got halfway through, will try again.

I wonder how many James Joyce Pubs there are in the world.

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StonesTod
try the "dubliners" next - and then go to dublin and sit and have a pint in some of joyce's favorite watering holes.

So that's as far you got, Tod....... jeezus

Thought your head was just taking a break when depending on this whiskey and water-holes.


I was about to start another OT thread. It's about the 2nd world war.
If you give a go....I start it. If not.....Texas is in trouble



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-01-14 22:08 by Erik_Snow.

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redsock
Bought a nice hard cover Ulysses at the Joyce Center in Dublin years ago. Got halfway through, will try again.

It is a tough one, but it is worth the struggle

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Erik_Snow

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StonesTod
try the "dubliners" next - and then go to dublin and sit and have a pint in some of joyce's favorite watering holes.

So that's as far you got, Tod....... jeezus

Thought your head was just taking a break when depending on this whiskey and water-holes.


I was about to start another OT thread. It's about the 2nd world war.
If you give a go....I start it. If not.....Texas is in trouble

you go

'Ulysses' is on my Top 10-list.

No 1 is Jaroslav Haseks 'Svejk'....





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-01-14 23:23 by Come On.

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Erik_Snow


When it comes to "finnegan's wake".....I have given up.

When I heard Jody Foster's kooky speech last night on the Golden Globes I honestly thought, "This makes about as much sense as Finnegan's Wake." I've only read bits of Finnegan's Wake, merely to marvel that Joyce got away with it.

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Come On
'Ulysses' is on my Top 10-list.

No 1 is Jaroslav Haseks 'Svejk'....

Ulysses is a masterpiece, I never read Finnegan's Wake. I really like Ireland. Svejk is entertaining, but he is such a disgustig figure.My number one is the "Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann.

Maybe I should read Ulysses then. I have been avoiding Joyce since everbody says he is unintelligible. Started with "Crime and Punishment" years ago but ended up reading Gogol, Kropotkin and Bakunin instead. Maybe I should try it again? Writers like Dostojevski and Joyce kind of scares you away...

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Stoneage
Maybe I should read Ulysses then. I have been avoiding Joyce since everbody says he is unintelligible. Started with "Crime and Punishment" years ago but ended up reading Gogol, Kropotkin and Bakunin instead. Maybe I should try it again? Writers like Dostojevski and Joyce kind of scares you away...

Try reading Faulkner...ugh.

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latebloomer

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Stoneage
Maybe I should read Ulysses then. I have been avoiding Joyce since everbody says he is unintelligible. Started with "Crime and Punishment" years ago but ended up reading Gogol, Kropotkin and Bakunin instead. Maybe I should try it again? Writers like Dostojevski and Joyce kind of scares you away...

Try reading Faulkner...ugh.

That's what I was going to say - truly! Tho if you get Ulysses you'll eventually be able to suspend
your disbelief and get Faulkner (takes endurance).

I have tried Finnegan's Wake several times, but it has resulted in my hurling it across the room
repeatedly that the spine cracked. No way to treat a book, I know. (I'm a librarian.) But the
spine is the only thing I've cracked re: Finnegan's Wake. It's too abstract. I'll keep trying, tho.
I feel pretty lame for not being able to access it.

-swiss

Going to college in the deep south of Georgia, I couldn't escape William Faulkner, Swiss. But I did have some good professors that helped me navigate Yoknapatawpha County. I did come to appreciate his writing and lots of the southern writers - Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and, of course, Truman Capote and Harper Lee.

Thanks for starting this thread Erik_Show, you've all convinced me I need to give Ulysses another try.

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latebloomer
Going to college in the deep south of Georgia, I couldn't escape William Faulkner, Swiss. But I did have some good professors that helped me navigate Yoknapatawpha County. I did come to appreciate his writing and lots of the southern writers - Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and, of course, Truman Capote and Harper Lee.

Thanks for starting this thread Erik_Show, you've all convinced me I need to give Ulysses another try.

he convinced you?? he barely said anything about it! you convince too easily. stick to your guns or something....

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StonesTod

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latebloomer
Going to college in the deep south of Georgia, I couldn't escape William Faulkner, Swiss. But I did have some good professors that helped me navigate Yoknapatawpha County. I did come to appreciate his writing and lots of the southern writers - Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and, of course, Truman Capote and Harper Lee.

Thanks for starting this thread Erik_Show, you've all convinced me I need to give Ulysses another try.

he convinced you?? he barely said anything about it! you convince too easily. stick to your guns or something....

I was being polite StonesTod, you should try it sometime.

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latebloomer

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StonesTod

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latebloomer
Going to college in the deep south of Georgia, I couldn't escape William Faulkner, Swiss. But I did have some good professors that helped me navigate Yoknapatawpha County. I did come to appreciate his writing and lots of the southern writers - Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and, of course, Truman Capote and Harper Lee.

Thanks for starting this thread Erik_Show, you've all convinced me I need to give Ulysses another try.

he convinced you?? he barely said anything about it! you convince too easily. stick to your guns or something....

I was being polite StonesTod, you should try it sometime.

He's tried it a couple times...it really ends up being no fun for anyone...

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Munichhilton

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latebloomer

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StonesTod

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latebloomer
Going to college in the deep south of Georgia, I couldn't escape William Faulkner, Swiss. But I did have some good professors that helped me navigate Yoknapatawpha County. I did come to appreciate his writing and lots of the southern writers - Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and, of course, Truman Capote and Harper Lee.

Thanks for starting this thread Erik_Show, you've all convinced me I need to give Ulysses another try.

he convinced you?? he barely said anything about it! you convince too easily. stick to your guns or something....

I was being polite StonesTod, you should try it sometime.

He's tried it a couple times...it really ends up being no fun for anyone...

I know...sigh.

The book THE CORRESPONDENCE OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD includes a letter from James Joyce to Fitzgerald in which Joyce refers to himself as "your much obliged but most pusillanimous guest." A footnote explains Joyce's words thus: "Joyce's description of himself as 'pusillanimous' probably refers to the occasion when Fitzgerald worried him by offering to jump out the window to express his admiration."

What an interesting topic. It beats talking about Sway for the 200th time.
One of my closest friends was an English Lit major and always broke into a cold sweat
when Joyce was mentioned.

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Erik_Snow
OK, I know there is Irishmen here, Gazza included! Northern Ireland or Southern Ireland.....it's the same bloody island

I had to read Ulysses a second time befire finally getting it
And it's one of the most thrilling books I've ever read, apart from Dostojevkij's last 3 masterpieces

When it comes to "finnegan's wake".....I have given up. So I was wondering if anybody on IORR ever got thru that one? If so.....give us a review;
thank you
Would be very interested in hearing the "common IORR man"'s opinion.

Finnegans wake is not a book you have to read from page 1 to page 628. It's circular and you can begin where ever you like. And stop where ever you like.
Ulysses is the day-book and Finnegans wake the night-book. Ulysses is mainstream compared to Finnegans wake.
A norwegian might find the book's "ibscenest nansense" (obscene nonsense/Ibsen) amusing, as a dane I do: "Toller day donsk?" (Do they speak danish/ are they done?).
FW contains so many wonderful passages. This chapter-ending for instance - where the rain falls over different parts of Dublin and lets the language and the mind of the main character Humphrey rain away (or go from awake to asleep and dreaming (sdoppiare means "opening" in italian)):
"Fengless, Pawnbroke, Chilblaimend and Baldowl. Humph is in his doge. Words weigh no no more to him than raindrips to Rethfernhim. Which we all like. Rain. When we sleep. Drops. But wait until our sleeping. Drain. Sdops." (p. 74)

Frankly, I never really believe people when they say they finished Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake....

Mathijs

re: joyce:

What you have with the last two Joyce novels is 20th Century Stream of Consciousness within English literature.

Stream of Consciousness is a multi-voiced approach to character's thoughts, and is associated with, at the earliest, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room and Mrs Dalloway. Joyce's use of Stream of Consciousness was truly deployed in Ulysses, which is a 20th Century rewrite of Homer's Odyssey: Leopold Bloom being Odysseus, Stephen Dedalus being Telemachus, Molly Bloom, Penelope, and it's the epic, not of 20 years wandering, but the day in the life of a Dubliner, and whom he encounters.

However, Finnegans Wake is more non-linear: it doesn't have Molly Bloom's wonderful interior monologue at the end. It is based on the French medieval epic of Tristram and Iseult. Its main verbs and sentences begin in the middle, and not at the beginning. It has its own language, a little like Burgess's Nadsat, which is a combination of puns, Norwegian, Latin, and Irish.

Even the title "Finnegans Wake" is borrowed from a traditional Irish folk song, and there's an uncertainty of whether there should be an apostrophe, prior to, or after the "s".

Finnegans Wake is a complex, wonderful novel, but it requires a Norwegian phrasebook, a grasp of Irish expressions, an understanding of complex puns, and I'd suggest that Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is an easier read, and not as complex.

PS: Forgot to mention, Sterne predates 20th century S of C, but was a huge influence on it.

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latebloomer

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StonesTod

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latebloomer
Going to college in the deep south of Georgia, I couldn't escape William Faulkner, Swiss. But I did have some good professors that helped me navigate Yoknapatawpha County. I did come to appreciate his writing and lots of the southern writers - Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and, of course, Truman Capote and Harper Lee.

Thanks for starting this thread Erik_Show, you've all convinced me I need to give Ulysses another try.

he convinced you?? he barely said anything about it! you convince too easily. stick to your guns or something....

I was being polite StonesTod, you should try it sometime.

a couple more outbursts like this and i may call off our engagement.

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StonesTod

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latebloomer

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StonesTod

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latebloomer
Going to college in the deep south of Georgia, I couldn't escape William Faulkner, Swiss. But I did have some good professors that helped me navigate Yoknapatawpha County. I did come to appreciate his writing and lots of the southern writers - Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and, of course, Truman Capote and Harper Lee.

Thanks for starting this thread Erik_Show, you've all convinced me I need to give Ulysses another try.

he convinced you?? he barely said anything about it! you convince too easily. stick to your guns or something....

I was being polite StonesTod, you should try it sometime.

a couple more outbursts like this and i may call off our engagement.

Damnit you made me laugh...OK, you can come in the house again.

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latebloomer

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StonesTod

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latebloomer

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StonesTod

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latebloomer
Going to college in the deep south of Georgia, I couldn't escape William Faulkner, Swiss. But I did have some good professors that helped me navigate Yoknapatawpha County. I did come to appreciate his writing and lots of the southern writers - Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and, of course, Truman Capote and Harper Lee.

Thanks for starting this thread Erik_Show, you've all convinced me I need to give Ulysses another try.

he convinced you?? he barely said anything about it! you convince too easily. stick to your guns or something....

I was being polite StonesTod, you should try it sometime.

a couple more outbursts like this and i may call off our engagement.

Damnit you made me laugh...OK, you can come in the house again.

phew. that was close. can we settle on a date now? so many iorrians are asking me and needing to know so they can adjust plans acccordingly.

A quick summary of Finnegans Wake:

- No apostrophe needed because it's about the waking of all the Finnegans

- The hero "HCE" = "here comes everybody" = universal man

- HCE's dream is the dream of all mankind

- The book is about the cyclical history of mankind, the death and rebirth of civilisations

- The reader perceives the cycles and therefore is able to hopefully step out of the repetitious events of life

OK???????????