Has anyone else not only read this book, but studied it academically?

which fucking publisher do i commit to if i want to read this? vintage? penguin? help

>>8781540
commit suicide

>>8781540

dover.

In Roland Barthes' essay "The Reality Effect," he discusses this short passage from Flaubert: "an old piano supported, under a barometer, a pyramidal heap of boxes and cartons." Barthes' thesis is that, since he can glean nothing about the story, the scene, the characters, the author, nothing, from Flaubert's inclusion of this barometer in his description, that the barometer is meant only to -- by its inclusion in and of itself -- convey a sense of realism (an artifice, but still a sense). The idea is that, since Flaubert is unable to describe in acute minutiae every detail of the scene and still create some readable passage of prose, his only recourse when attempting to compete with photography and sound-recordings as an artist dedicated to mimesis is to capture the apparently random and arbitrary nature of that reality. Therefore, for a passage of prose to be convincingly realistic, it must convey the mundane, arbitrary nature of reality -- meaningless coincidence, objects without reference or purpose, and so on. When Flaubert includes this barometer, which does not interact with the scene in any way, tells us nothing about any character, has no symbolic meaning, and has absolutely no significance outside of itself, its only remaining purpose is to convey that this scene is convincingly real, as a marker of that random and arbitrary reality.

I can find no barometer in Ulysses -- by which I mean I can find no a-referential object. Within Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, such objects (and other elements) abound, but Ulysses reads so delicately and carefully contrived. It's less comparable to other modernist, realist novels than it is to a symphony. Every word has purpose; everything fits and attaches itself to some other element either within or outside of the book. If this is true and if Barthes' is correct (and I believe he is), then I would argue that Ulysses is not a realist work (at least within a modernist context).

>>8781642
Interesting perspective. I know Joyce was a big fan of Flaubert. I suppose one might argue that Joyce has a Project in mind, so to speak, and that Ulysses sacrifices its realistic arbitrariness in order to achieve that project. Ironically, that project seems to have been heavily tied up in Joyce's own, relatively unique perspective on realism, and in particular how it relates to the various styles in which he writes. So he writes an unrealistic novel to comment on realism, I suppose.

>>8781669
>>8781642
>sincerely discussing books on a japanese hentai board.
You're not smart, and your perspectives are cringy and unoriginal. Why do you do this? Does it make you feel like big men? Go back to posting pictures of John Green, please.

>>8781601
I don't often tell people to kill themselves, mostly because I saw 4chan 10 years ago and those words lost impact. But you, dude, jumping on that gun the moment someone asks a question you have the answer to. You should actually kill yourself.

>>8781520
test

>>8781642
>implying reality has an apparently random or arbitrary nature

>>8781717
whoa he was just asking which publisher to commit to. i was suggesting he commit to suicide publishing

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>>8781520
I really don't think it attempts to combat psychoanalytical thinking in any meaningful or conscious way.

If you think about Modernism as an extension of late 19th-century Realism in the tradition of Flaubert, with Proust as a middling figure between the two traditions, then I think Modernism is trying to preserve that Realist tradition within the scope of emerging psychoanalytic ideas. Recreation of the interior life of the subject as a product of sensory impressionism and the id-iotic subconscious drives as mediated by the super-ego in the production of the ego [as the reference point for the subjects persisting sense of self] is one of the major themes of expositional Modernist literary writing.

I would even take it a step further and say Post-Modern literary writing is also trying to preserve the same realist tradition, only now it is attempting to showcase the selfs production of its identity by incorporating fantasies, delusions, hallucinations, dreams, pan-cultural reference points, and the perspectives of others as integral factors in the reality the self's production of its own awareness.

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>>8781858
so this is modernist then?

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>>8781721
Barthes' thesis is not that reality is unpredictable or entirely arbitrary, but that often elements of reality don't have tangible, meaningful, or relevant significance to certain stories we can tell about that reality. On my desk, I have a bottle of Advil, a solo cup full of pens, a half-eaten cookie, some small change. None of these items are at all relevant to this discussion. I could, with some great effort, imbue them with some symbolic significance or thematic relevance, but as I've presented them, they are completely void of any. There is a story to be told in which they are relevant, but it is not this one. Hence, any complete picture I can paint about my reality will contain many elements which are apparently (note: apparently) random and arbitrary in relation to the narrative.

I'm sure you've seen, at least once, that insipid Venn diagram [fuck it, I'll just post it]. The creator of the infographic insists that when an author indicates some object and colour, that object and colour likely have no intention beyond their bare, denotative, descriptive parts. This is of course total crap, but what Barthes' is suggesting is that even in instances where an author places an isolated, meaningless object into a scene, that decision has a purpose -- to convey a heightened sense of reality.

Perhaps I could have conveyed Barthes' point in clearer, simpler terms, but I -- frankly speaking -- blame you for trying to derive meaning from a single-paragraph summary of a hugely influential academic work without reading that academic work -- a single-paragraph summary on a Manchurian zoopraxiscope discussion board no less.

Will someone please post a single picture of the meme trilogy in this order?

1) Ulysses
2) Gravity's Rainbow
3) Infinite Jest

Thanks!

Why does Stephen refuse to stay with Bloom at the end?

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>>8782839