Am I missing something? I understand the focus on Stephen's

File: top2016.jpg (3MB, 1820x4352px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 1820x4352px

That's it. It's all just to get you ready for Ulysses, really.

Wow, all the book had was great writing? What a scam.

>>8682788
I always heard this. It's pretty good; I was just expecting more.

I found theres a lot to enjoy with all the mood and texture that the writing creates in this novel, also Part 1 was actually one of the most engaging things I've ever read.

>>8682899
Yeah I'm rereading right now and part I is incredibly well-written. I could read an entire novel in its style - its so visceral, while still maintaining the innocence and questioning of childhood.

>>8682765
He has taken the most hackneyed form available (bildungsroman) and done it with new language that perfectly fuses prose with content.

He's dancing around on top of Mount Everest, there isn't anywhere else left to go in literature really. Well, then he goes for the moon obviously.

Imagine being Ezra Pound getting stuff from Joyce, Hemingway and TS Eliot in the mail. He would have been reading Ulysses and The Waste Land at about the same time I think, he must have been going out of his mind.

It's not like it's an action packed adventure, or an enthralling page turner, but I enjoyed it. The epiphany on the beach was beautiful.

>>8682920
>I could read an entire novel in its style
As soon as I get published, you will >:)

The part about eternal burning in hell made me a bit too scared.

>>8683750
this

>>8684204
this was snooez

>>8682765
It's shite and you shuold feel plebish for liking it.

>>8682765
Have you never read a Bildungsroman before?

it's essentially ulysses for babby. Even at that it's absolutely fucking brilliant. There's a case to be made for it being the best novel of its size written in English. It's so perfectly balanced - lyrical without being histrionic, experimental without being overdone; readable without being too simplistic.

>>8682765
Are they still publishing this with introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson? It's good but not without a glaring mistake or superficial footnote here and there. Like the part in the beginning where Stephen's dad is talking to his friend about their former revolutionary exploits, specifically making bombs, except they're using obvious euphemism or code, and 'Mr. Crasey had told him [Stephen] he had got those three cramped fingers making a birthday present for Queen Victoria', to which Johnson supplies the anecdote that it's about Irish revolutionaries having been shipped off to English prison and then '"picked oakum' at Her Majesty's leisure' (n23.1-2), earning them crooked fingers. That they're clearly speaking about bombs is made even clearer when they rephrase it as 'making champagne' later on the same page, but here Johnson's only written 'explosives'? as if almost without a guess.
There's also the allusion to 'the girls and women in the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann', and 'whose women (Johnson writes) are fairly feeble' (n147.35), which is a great injustice to Hauptmann because, like in his Bahnwärter Thiel, there are at least two kinds of women: The good, meek, feeble ones (who have usually died) and the machine-like beasts that replace them.
Tl;dr: Johnson needs revision.

>>8684204
literally had nightmares that night of death coming for me

>>8682765
yes you're missing something. You're a noob arent you, it's okay

>>8685610
>You are Le missing something
>Doesn't say what is being missed

Don't post about books you haven't read. Also, don't post unless you are going to contribute.

I just finished reading this. I feel the same as OP but im not disappointed the great writing is more than enough

You should read more about the context of Irish society at the time. It's also loosely autobigraphical of Joyce.

>>8685722
are you kidding me? Waste my time thinking about something smart to say to someone asking what "he's missing"? Dumb questions get dumb responses.

>>8685765
It's not a dumb question. You're just a self entitled prick, and probably haven't even read the book. Consider a lobotomy.

>>8685747
I considered this, but never followed through. I have some knowledge of the time, but I'll read up some more.

Is joyce satirizing the artistic, gloomy teenager who thinks they've figured the world out? Or am I supposed to take Stephen seriously? Personally, I think it's the former.

>>8686699
Both

>>8686711
I think this might be right. I find it incredibly arrogant to say something like "well he wrote 200 pages of beautiful prose as a meta joke" but at the same time Stephen can be ignorant and annoying as shit.

>>8686699
Yeah I think he meant for us to feel sympathy for Stephen while realising his shortcomings.

>>8686699
Certainly some of it is ironic but I don't think that's really his point. I mean what's the point of satirizing the teenage phase of life that everyone goes through? Everyone knows what you mean already, they've grown out of it.

>>8686808
>>8686722
>>8686716
>>8686699
Hes criticising the turn of century bildungsroman more than the character of stephen, but he does that too, like all of his characters. I mean the original title was stephen hero

>>8686281
>a pseud should have to back up his claims with knowledge instead of emotion
Come on man. You're on a board for pseuds. You really can't expect much.

>>8686848
>I mean the original title was stephen hero

"Can Stephan into an Hero"

>intellectual
spiritual

What more do you need?

>>8689626
Explosions

>>8688206
>>intellectual
>spiritual
artistic

>>8686848
the novel's not a goddamn satire you doof

>>8689774
it has elements of satire in it, it plays with conventions, a premature post-modern approach

Gonna read this throughout December, hopefully finishing on its 100th birthday. Read Dubliners this summer, liked it the most out of any of the "classics" I've read, so i'm really excited for it

>>8689774
Read the post again you doof, where the fuck did you get that

>>8689789
It's honestly one of the best novels ever written, and Ulysses is even better.

>>8682811
>I was just expecting more.
Like what?

>>8690160
haha

>>8682788
Whats so hot shit that makes Stoner by Williams 10th?

>Muh prose: the book.

>>8691058
Are you implying we ought to read literature for something as philistine as plot? Might as well thrillers and crime novels then

>>8691122
"Muh prose" is the /lit/ equivalent of /tv/'s "muh cinematography" or /mu/'s "muh production". You're a huge pleb if you only read books for their prose.

>>8691016
its a real existential kick in the nuts, which we all enjoy from time to time. Not to mention its formally flawless. I mean there is literally zero experimentation or higher level creativity going on but you can look past that because it's so perfect in every other respect.

>>8691873
You are the huge pleb if you can't appreciate good prose.

>>8691873

That's absurd. The style is not at all analogous to the production of a pop band: it is analogous to the actual emotional soul of the music. The essence of music is the structure and cadence of sound; the essence of literature is the structure cadence of words and ideas. The most satisfying and plausible plot or argument will make you feel nothing unless it is presented with elegance, sublimity, and care; but only the totally insensible can feel nothing when confronted with a book like A Portrait.

>>8686848
But the fragments that survive of Stephen Hero make Stephen seem like a much more sympathetic, less spergy person.

>>8691018
>Call mom

I might be going full autist here but whatever retard did this trying to be clever (I mean, if you've read the last sentence, you've read all of it, right?) and then goes to fuck everything up and expose himself as the pseud he is.

And I know Joyce didn't have refrigerators and dry cleaners but still.

>>8691986

Well, perhaps he means to indicate the initial trip to France which Stephen was called from because of his mother's last illness. Or maybe he's just a total pseud.