[HN Gopher] James Joyce's Ulysses reviewed (1922)
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James Joyce's Ulysses reviewed (1922)
Author : see-also
Score : 40 points
Date : 2022-02-04 21:08 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| bambax wrote:
| > _If I understand him aright be sets out to depict not merely
| the fair show of things but the inner truth_
|
| I can't parse this. It reads like an OCR error; should it read
| "If I understand him alright, he sets out..."?
| radiowave wrote:
| "Aright" is probably correct, if a bit archaic from our
| perspective, but "be" is almost certainly OCR error (plus lack
| of proof reading), and not the only one.
|
| Long live the Grauniad. (That being a nickname given to The
| Guardian due to its tendency for typos.)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Not just typos - from [0], we have
|
| _"The absence of corrections yesterday was due to a
| technical hitch rather than any sudden onset of accuracy."_
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/12/guardian-20
| 0-t...
| jwilk wrote:
| "James Joyce: The Critical Heritage"
| <https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.120428> includes
| a copy of this review (pages 213-216). It says:
|
| > _If I understand him aright he sets out_ ...
| geden wrote:
| Much to learn here for modern music journalists. Instead of
| inserting their own desires, shallow beliefs and ego into the
| review, the book is reviewed for what it is, with the artists
| intention considered and respected.
|
| Compare and contrast with this tiresome Guardian review, which
| leaves you very unclear about the performance but all too sure
| about what the reviewer likes and wants
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jan/30/the-smile-revi...
| mhh__ wrote:
| I don't get that impression. Art exists in real life and can be
| contextualized as a result of that. The performance is
| described, too.
|
| I won't put words in your mouth but striving for some notion of
| apolitical art is folly. Especially if it's art by Thom Yorke,
| surely?
| powersnail wrote:
| It's hard to put my finger on what exactly is wrong with the
| Guardian's article on Radiohead, but it feels like the author
| was meandering a lot in this short piece. It reads like a
| bullet-point list of things he noticed during the
| performance, and all of those things are in pieces and
| unconnected. It's not cohesive.
|
| You could write this entire article by listening to half a
| dozen 5-second clips of the performance, giving the
| impression of a student who writes an essay about a book
| based entirely on spark notes.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I have a suggestion: I read Ulysses about ten years ago and liked
| it but really didn't get that much out of it. About five years
| ago, I tried Ulysses again, listening to it as an Audible audio
| book with several skilled actors speaking the roles. That was
| great! I then also listened to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as
| a Young Man in audiobook form and enjoyed it much more than
| reading it in school 50 years ago.
| prisout64 wrote:
| It is unreal to me that someone like Joyce was a real human, he
| seems like some otherworldly figure. Someone like Joyce will
| never exist again.
| powersnail wrote:
| Just to help pulling his figure back to humanity a little bit,
| here's some letters that he wrote, about his fetish for dirty
| farts. Not that there's anything wrong with it, just that Joyce
| was a real human with humanly desires after all.
|
| https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/02/james-joyces-...
| arkj wrote:
| >You may like or you may dislike Ulysses, and you are entitled to
| express your opinion of its merits or demerits, but you are not
| entitled to demand that it should be other than it is;
|
| This is profound. Replace "Ulysses" with "X" and it holds true
| for much of the hate spreading today.
| [deleted]
| Lamad123 wrote:
| I tried reading it in late 2015 and it was just hard! The only
| thing I remember and find really funny is the dog on the beach
| peeing on an unsmelt rock!
| jyriand wrote:
| You can try listening to podcasts by Frank Delaney called
| Re:Joyce. He goes through the book sentence by sentence. Sadly,
| Frank Delaney died before he could complete the podcast series.
| pauldavis wrote:
| We can learn from him, and learn from his fate.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Talking about James Joyce, vs. _really_ reading his works...it
| 's kinda like the difference between talking about Einstein,
| vs. really reading (including understanding the math) his major
| works (in high-level physics). Except reading Joyce brings far
| more old-school more social cachet.
| cormullion wrote:
| I liked the apt reference to the "blue pencil", "used
| specifically because it will not show in some lithographic or
| photographic reproduction processes." (wikipedia)
| I-M-S wrote:
| One of my professors said (or quoted) that Ulysses is "a good
| write rather than a good read", which I still think is the best
| description of the book
| dasloop wrote:
| Ulysses is like a very funny joke that you don't understand.
| Well, a lot of jokes actually.
| caminmccluskey wrote:
| It's a very tricky book to get a handle on, I must confess I've
| only made it halfway. I made a sort of "reader's companion" app
| to try to make sense of some of the esoteric language and
| references - https://camin.xyz/ulysses-companion/ (not at all
| mobile friendly)
|
| Full credit goes to John Hunt, The Joyce Project at
| joyceproject.com for the annotations, I just found that site very
| tricky to use as I read.
| throwdante wrote:
| For anyone struggling with Joyce, I recommend Finnegan's Wake.
| You are guaranteed to find Ulysses easier to read after this.
| jhedwards wrote:
| On the contrary, I find Finnegan's Wake easier because it's
| more "fun". It's filled with silly word-play and funny sounds,
| and I don't feel compelled to try to make any particular
| meaning out of it or find a coherent story inside it, though if
| I do find one it's a nice surprise.
|
| Reading Ulysses, on the other hand, I know there is a story
| there, so when I lose the thread I get a bit frustrated. It's
| an absolutely gorgeous experience, of course, but one riddled
| with such frustration. I'm not sure if maybe reading an outline
| of the story first would help, so that I have the general idea
| in my head before going into it?
| billfruit wrote:
| Seriously though, I would recommend Dubliners.
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