Actually Pynchon would probably be elevated
above joice in my list of demoted modernists.

I quite enjoyed the "Crying of Lot 49" but could
never get my mind around "Gravity's Rainbow".

Heard "Mason and Dixon" was good (but that was
a conventional novel wasn't it?).

Correcting my "stream of consciousness".

"joice" = "Joyce"

Ironic eh.

I didn't find Gravity's Rainbow objectionable as a story, and I love Faulkner's stories -- I even think the form works for that milieu. That said, I'm with you as to the rest. Toss Salinger out while you're at it.

:)

As one of those who has made 'hostile comment' on your 'dismissal' of James Joyce, i have this to say in mitigation: it is not a criticism of Joyce (for the purposes of this comment, lets take that to mean Ulysses specifically) per se that I object to but:

1) the fact that you dismiss it without having read it - we'll at least give Peck the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has at least done that.
and
2) your rather quaint, not to mention very funny, insistence that because you couldn't read it, nobody could have read it, and that the people who enjoyed the book are just 'pretending'.

As for that notorious hatchet man Peck...some of his stuff is viciously erudite and he does hit a few raw nerves...but because he just hates literally everything, his criticisms become meaningless.

Peck's view of literature in a nutshell: its all rubbish except...the works of Dale Peck. (and who has read them? in fact, who cares about them one way or the other?). and i take the liberty of speculating that if someone else had written his 'Martin and John', he would bash it as heartily as he does everything else.

Brit:

Some have read Ulysses--no one has ever read Finnegan, icluding Joyce himself.

OJ

Now there I can agree with you. Finnegan is horrendous...I've got to about page 6 about 10 times!

I think a lot of the problem with Finnegan is that I can read the first paragraph and enjoy it like a poem, perhaps a TS Eliot.

But while I can enjoy slogging through a single Eliot poem with some illuminating notes, 300+ pages of it would be far too much like hard work.

But I find Ulysses glorious...I've read it and enjoyed it twice, and I intend to read it again.

And I have no doubt that there are some hardcore (masochistic) obsessive academics whose idea of heaven is to work through Finnegan, one paragraph at a time, every night for a decade. and good luck to them!

Brit:

With all due respect, the point of reading Ulysses for folks is that it gives them sense of intellectual cache and belonging to an elite, not because they enjoy it. It's unenjoyable as literature.

heh heh...thank you for elevating me to the intellectual elite!

and i thought i just liked Ulysses for the dirty jokes....

I read Ulysses under Wallace Gray in college and lived the lie for about ten years that Ulysses was one of my favorite books. I even went as far as to reference it and internally smile when I noted all the pencil marks on the sides of the pages, right from the beginning to the end.

Of course I sense an eliteness to have read it, but as far as literature goes, when we start applying real benchmarks and not a typical liberal unquantifiable heading based on a generation-to-generation fallacy then it becomes obvious that Joyce was an unwholly self-absorbed genius-savant thunkhead who wrote one of the biggest 3 card monte tricks academia could have fell for. (Note- remember what the word "academia" meant to you 10-15 years ago versus now).

Shakespeare is literature.

I usurped Updike, Roth, Cheever and Mailer (I just hate him is most of the reason), in my head along with Ulysses as a true set of literturists. They are, by definition, too self-absorbed in their own hype to have been real "writers."

"the fact that you dismiss it without having read it"

A common fallacy perpetuated by intellectuals to shut down debate they know they will lose.

There are lots of things in life that are dismissable without having been experienced. I don't have to go to prision to know I wouldn't like it; I don't have to call a psychic hotline to know it's a fraud; I don't have to attend a Micheal Moore movie to know it's a continuous lie; I don't need to read Chomsky to know he is evil; I don't need proof that Elvis is dead, and I don't need to read Joyce to know that he and his writings are an overrated fraud.

Neil

Now you are entitled to bash Ulysses...because you've read it.

And will you concede that, a couple of chapters apart (esp Proteus and Oxen of the Sun), it is actually not a particularly 'difficult' book to read.

certainly not much harder than say, The Tempest.

I haven't got to the stage where I've stopped liking Ulysses yet. perhaps I'm still 'living the lie' - only time will tell :)

I also still like Philip Roth, Updike and some of Mailer (especially 'The Fight'), so maybe I'm just not as far down the road to intellectual enlightenment as you!

I love to read.

I tried Ulysses once. I don't think I've ever picked up a book that put me so far off so quickly.

Raoul

Thanks for that.

Please let me have your review of the next Lord of the Rings movie. You won't need to watch it, just write away...

And while you're at it, why not give me your thoughts on the next Tom Wolfe novel. he hasn't written it yet but I'm sure your comments will be perfectly valid.

"I don't have to go to prison to know I wouldn't like it"
No, but if you want to make an interesting or vaulable comment about the experience of being a prisoner it might help to at least visit for a few minutes.

"I don't have to attend a Micheal Moore movie to know it's a continuous lie"
No, but if you want to take issue with him it helps to at least know what he says. i've seen 'bolwing for columbine' and i know its a load of manipulative rubbish with lots of false reasoning. But i only know this cos I've watched it and thought about it.

"I don't need to read Chomsky to know he is evil"
Unless you read him, you cannot make your own decisions at all. You can only rely on what other people tell you.

I find your argument utterly nonsensical.

Brit:

Very carefully, take the cap off the container of bleach and then take a large slug. After that, you can open the bottle of 10W-40 and do the same. Then polish them off with a scoop of lye.

Please post tomorrow and tell us about the experience.

Jim:

Very carefully, take a copy of Ulysses. Don't open it, don't even read the first page.

Now, discuss the literary merits or failings of the book with someone who has read it.

Tell me how you get on.

Your analogy is quite irrelevant. I'm talking about a literary debate.

I won't even try to read "Ulysses" until there's a Dover Thrift Edition.

"The Dubliners" and "Portrait of the Artist..." were nothing special, though.

If you're going to read Irish literature, I highly recommend Michael McLaverty over James Joyce.

I read Ulysses, cover to unholy cover, and found it interminable and far too internally self-cute. What had been distaste for Joyce became blood-soaked hatred by the time I finished.

Ok, that's a bit much, but you get the idea.

As do others who have commented, I agree with the sentiment, but not necessarily the specific examples given--specifically Nabokov. With the possible exception of Ada, VN's novels (unlike, say, Pynchon's) work on multiple levels. They are accessible on a first reading as purely entertaining yarns, but still offer enormous riches upon each subsequent reading. Pale Fire is the funniest book I've ever read (with the possible exception of A Conferderacy of Dunces).

Yes, Pale Fire! Excellent book. I'll also speak up for Gravity's Rainbow, which I found compulsively readable and also often funny. I had a college English prof who couldn't get into it, which I thought odd because he read Ulysses every year. And let me again put in a good word for J.R. by William Gaddis, which has the most realistic dialogue of any novel. Ever. It's also very funny.

if you really want to get into it, confederacy of the dunces is incredible abd anything Tom Wolfe writes is exceedingly excellent.

Now, I hope not to offend, but I think Nabakov is obviously brilliant, but, come on, he's over-the-top absorbed, and almost unreadable himself.

Haven't we finally come to the post-absorbed stage of literature, which could be analogized by in the general framework of Orrin's theories on conservative humour and liberal humour. The same applies here. Any literature which is benchmarked as good based on fallacies, cleverness, airs is generally just alot of hot air that, in past generations, got consumed as something excellent, ie Goodbye Columbus, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman, Ben Affleck...you get the point.

What's good....noted above.

Brit, glad you enjoy Ulysses, as you share a general consensus with alot of people, most of which wouldn't find themselves agreeing with the general concepts of this blog. You see, here on this blog we are so intellectually enlightened that we can comment on Joyce without having ever read it. We are that good.

What is comes down to is there is a general conservative operating principle that guides this blog towards understanding and cutting through the bs and resting confidently on conclusions in some instances which are efficiently not required to be examined fully before arriving at the answer.

Arf.