So fellow anons, does /lit/ have a consensus on Joyce? What are

>>9187628
>does /lit/ have a consensus on Joyce?
yes.

>people who have actually read it
genius, unique work, certainly one of the books even written, a lot of people believe literature will not reach such high peak ever again

>people who quit in the middle of it
meme, retard, pretentious intellectual jerking off

>>9187688
*this post was pointed at ulysses*

>>9187688

True. Those who read all of it realize they have to parrot the erudite opinion of it, despite not being learned enough at all to appreciate it themselves (some of them even reading a fucking annotated version without reflecting on that very fact at all), lest they be seen as what they are, total posers who failed to realize that the emperor, in fact, was not wearing any clothes.

Those who quit halfway learned a valuable lesson on the importance of not being a middlebrow pleb.

This isn't even an ironic post. I do not believe for a second that there is as much as a single person on /lit/ with the erudition needed to appreciate Ulysses. If you read the annotated version, I have nothing to say to you. That is beyond any doubt the lulziest fucking thing of all time.

>>9187628
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is one of my favorite books. Dubliners was god-tier too. I watched the Odyssey and Hamlet movies (never read the books), then moved on to Ulysses, and a lot is going over my head, but it's pretty clear that it's because I did not do enough learning beforehand. The prose in some spots are great (i'm only 300 pages in). I enjoy the stream of consciousness writing style, and I want to write in this style as a writer.

>>9187745
keep going, anon. it was not my case, but to some people, going through chapters like oxen of the sun was a bit painfully, but the last chapter, penelope...I wish I could read it for the first time again and again and again...its THE best ending

>>9187628
As much as I dislike the effect his work has had on 20th century literature (all the imitators etc.) he really is the only competition that Shakespeare has for greatest English writer.

It's this reading of Joyce that makes him out to be a simple literary trickster, playing complicated linguistic games, that irritates me. That seems to be the perspective most of the people who claim to be working in his tradition have, and it's like they've never read him.

I mean I was expecting his work to be cold and cerebral because of his reputation, but he's quite literally the warmest and most human novelist in the language. I wish people took more of that aspect of his work to heart, and less of the bababadalgharaghtaks and ineluctable modalities.

>>9187719
You don't need to be an erudite to love Ulysses.
Even a casual reader will love it if they read it carefully, and they have a love for language

>>9187688
>Certainly one of the books even written.
Certainly, certainly.

Dubliners was an exercise in succinct, effective, yet elusive prose. The surface stories are great, but there's a whole world between the lines if you take the time to look.

Portrait was a brilliantly written character study, very experimental and full of flourishes. It's the quintessential bildungsroman/kunstlerroman, even if I did find the end lecture on aesthetic beauty tedious by the end.

Finnegans Wake is unironically my favorite book I've ever read. It's just fucking fun. Every sentence is a puzzle teeming with wordplay like puns, spoonerisms, and portmanteaus and that could not possibly appeal to me more.

Also the "it's indecipherable" cracked.com meme is bullshit

>>9188668
It's a great shame so many people ignore FW. Of course it's arcane but it's far from being just a gag. An in-depth study and it starts to be the greatest work of the 20th century.

>>9188756
I remember spending around 45 minutes on single pages, it was a blast to read
I still pick it up now and again because no matter what I'm doing creatively, the book always gives me inspiration.

>>9188588
kek

OP here, interesting discussion, anos! I've just started Portrait and so far im really enjoying it. I was expecting a crude, obscurantist, cold and indecipherable book. Turns out that it's filled with life, insights and many interesting reflexions on The nature of the prose itself.