Can we talk about how good this is? I am being completely honest,

>>8734616
pft, it's just about being cucked from beyond the grave.

>>8734616
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this openly on lit, but this was actually the only story from Dubliners I really liked.

>>8734671
pleb.

>>8734671
you didn't like an encounter? old creepy guy joikin it? cmon bud.

>>8734671
I was pretty underwhelmed when i read it too. I've heard it's one of those books that gets much better w/ rereads so I'm gonna give it another flick-through soon. I'm a little suspicious of the people who gush about it after only having read it once.

>>8734718
portrait was far better, but don't take it from me, i read Ulysses before any of the others.

>>8734620
this

>>8734728
>i read Ulysses before any of the others.

That's like trying to cum before getting a hard on

i know that feel. i remember not enjoying the other stories in dubliners. then when i got to to the dead, i glided through the whole thing without losing focus once. it felt like the best thing i'd ever read - and i still feel like that's true, even though i was/am oblivious to a lot of the deeper stuff within it.

kinda scared that if i read it again i'll displace that feeling with one of "meh"

>>8735019
nice

the last passage is absolutely beautiful.

Having forbidden themselves discussing and evaluating their modernist books in terms of pleasure, they therefore need another criterion in order to be able to discuss them at all. It is vitally important to avoid judging these modernist books according to the criterion of pleasure, since this would immediately expose their complete and utter worthlessness: after all, five minutes of Stendhal or Cervantes are more fun than all their shitty modernists put together — and they know it. They must therefore find another criterion according to which some of their modernism can be considered more "artful" than others. And this is where the meanings (and especially the hidden, all-too-hidden meanings...) and the messages come in. It's already an old and tired story): what occurred previously in painting with the gradual shift toward Abstraction, in poetry with the abandonment of rhythmic structure, in the plastic arts with the introduction of the ready-mades, and so on and so forth in every single artform. In conclusion: As each art deteriorates and degenerates due to the gradual abandonment of laboriously invented and refined conventions (which, contrary to popular belief, do not restrict an art but on the contrary create, refine, and help it flourish — the reason bunglers find conventions "restrictive" is because they lack the training and discipline required to adhere to them and the talent and creativity to add to (i.e. further complexify) and/or modify them), we find in every field the same movement: a regression to previous, in many cases even primitive critical standards. Moreover, at the same time as standards collapse the number of aspiring artists increases (indeed, as we have seen, it is this very increase that leads to the collapse, the two movements unfolding simultaneously once the masses have been "emancipated" and the means of artistic creation become widely available), whilst the resulting artworks come to increasingly resemble a repulsive junk- and rubbish-soup that no one in their right mind would want to have anything to do with.