Bloomsday again

[robinturner]

Am I alone in finding Ulysses a fairly easy read? At least compared to Fnnegans Wake.

Comments

[thewasteland.livejournal.com]

You know, I've never actually picked up either book (shocking, I suppose, since I received my degree in Literature). I've made the jokes about Joyce in the same way that I've made the jokes about War & Peace, without ever really skimming any of the works. *shrug* I think it has just become a conversational piece.

Would it be a far leap to compare it to The Patriot Act? Many people have opinions about it, but few have actually read it.

[b0rg.livejournal.com]

Guess you have your BS filter trained very well :) I never managed to get past 5th page, and I've tried hard few times...

[b0rg.livejournal.com]

Well, War and Peace is just tedios to read - 3 bricks of a book. Ulysses is tedios and complicated. Not that I'm afraid of complicated books (having read MS Windows Media Format Description yesterday), but it's just more than I can take :)

[several-bees.livejournal.com]

I didn't really find it complicated, but agree on the "tedious" claim. There are sections I enjoyed, but the stylistic fun I found nicer as an idea than as something to actually read a thousand pages of.

I'm sure it is indeed easier than Finnegans Wake, though. So hoorah for that. Or, er, something.

[b0rg.livejournal.com]

English not my native tongue - so it is a bit complex for me to read...

Love it...

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

I've read it four times, and each time I get further. Last foray 900pp+.

I'd say reading the Tokyo Phone Book, in japanese, is probably easier tha FW.

Btw/ I once worked with a lady editor who used to work with Lawrence Durrel at Faberx2. He was so impressed that he wrote her a letter of recommendation which she had framed in her office. Durrel said something like, "I must thank you for your help and great talent on the project... It's a pity you weren't around in the 1920s, we'd have had much less trouble with Finnegan's Wake..."

I was impressed (evidently, so was Durrel).

Au contraire...

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

That's probably an advantage.

Re: Au contraire...

[b0rg.livejournal.com]

Do you really think so? :-)

Re: Au contraire...

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

Yes - it's so full of latin, greek, icelandic, gaelic - then the wall-to-wall puns, and cross-linguistic "echolalia ... if you don't start with english it would hardly make things more difficult than they are already...

Re: Au contraire...

[b0rg.livejournal.com]

Just thought I mention that my native is Russian :) I've tried it in translation - didn't help it much either.

BTW do you know that in Soviet Russia was a whole research institute full of PhD's in literature working on decyphering Ulysses references? As far as I remember they've succeeded.