/lit/ - Literature

>>21812948
You’ll know if you can read the first chapter of Ulysses without consulting a reference guide.

>>21812948
I’d recommend giving it a go and finding out. What the first post recommends might be a good confidence test, but when you do consult reference guides or notes pretty much everyone will discover how much they didn’t know about the text from a blind reading. So it’s not necessary to “get everything” in the first chapter blind to read the book competently. I would personally recommend having readable notes (ie. not too in-depth) for a first reading, like the Penguin Student Edition. You might find supplementing that with the internet and websites like the Joyce Project useful. But of course reading it straight-through blind works if you prefer. Ideally you should also read Dubliners and Portrait before.

>>21812948
Just don't try too hard. Breeze through, that's how I read Ulysses, and I made it almost a third of the way through

>>21813139
>let me tell you how to read a book I didn’t finish reading

>>21812948
-read his prior major works
-be broadly familiar with Greek myth, preferably read the Odyssey
-read Hamlet and be broadly familiar with Shakespeare's works
-have some experience with Big Books so you don't get discouraged when you hit a wall
and then just read it. if you don't understand something, assume you'll figure it out later or have a chance to look it up on a reread. if you're really lost, try to orient yourself a few times, but don't worry about moving on. it's a big book that was designed to be overwhelming, but if you've done those things in the above list, you'll be able to understand enough to enjoy the reading.
it's ulysses, anyone who insists they got everything the first time either spent a year on it in a group or is lying. it's still just a book, and a fun one.

>>21813200
Thanks for the advice. I need to read way more Shakespeare but i do know Hamlet well, and the greeks. How do you look past his fecalphelia? It's not easy for me. Literally the only thing from Jkyce I've read is like one chapter of dubliners for a lit class, and the fart sniffing letters he wrote to his wife. They disturbed me. I just can't let this fart sniffer filter me but I'm afraid, dammit!

Don't pretend like you're going to understand every reference to classic lit or Irish history/oppression that he makes on every page. Just read it alongside a companion such as "the great bloomsday book" it will enhance your experience trust me. To this day Ulysses is my favorite book of all time, and when you understand where he's coming from it doesn't feel pretentious at all.

>>21813228
I wasn't interested in Joyce until I read the fart smeller epistles. Reevaluate your life.

>>21813228
get over your childish disgust. it's one of the least useful emotions. you find those letters gross, but they were works of art from one person who found them beautiful, written for another. now, no matter how "right" you are to be grossed out, in that context, what value does it have? the farts made them happy, and you're afraid of that?

but, no need to read all of Shakespeare's plays or anything, just know things like who Lear or Othello are.

I fucking hate seeing these cringe ass threads every day. Honestly just read it.

And if you really need training wheels just make sure you've read Dubliners first.

>>21812948
it's a book nigga, not a freaking job interview. besides i dont think anyone besides Joyce understands ulysses anyway. but reading about ulysses can be as much fun as reading about the book. there are entire essays analyzing the significance of the brand of soap that Bloom carries for example (https://www.bloomsandbarnacles.com/blog/sweny-the-alchemist).). and thats not even diving into the amount of schizo theories you see being tossed around about Finnegans Wake, now there's a rabbit hole.

>>21812948
If you can follow what's going on in the third chapter, you can read the whole thing.

>>21812948
Well, perhaps you are prepared to take the redpill about Joyce...

>>21813661
Art never communicated shit. Beyond that, all of Joyce's works engage meaningfully in theoretical discourse via symbolism and dialogue. Anon was seething based on schizo nonsense

>>21812948
Joyce peaked with The Dead and no one wants to admit it because they are afraid of being called pseuds.

>>21813679
Joyce peaked with Ithaca no cap fr fr

>>21812948
No one is really ever ready for it. A lot of its intricacies are still debated. It like riding a wave and just going with the flow. The first read should be without secondary material or companions. That would take all the fun out of it

>>21813661
One: Ulysses and especially FW, can very validly be criticized for turgidness, pretentiousness, obscurantism and rambling. However, if you read “Dubliners” or “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” you can see Joyce’s consummate artistry, which does not fall as much (if at all) into the flaws of his grandiose last two novels.

Two: The Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Soros-types, and the like, and other blood-sucking leeches on humanity should indeed be executed for the good of the mankind. I am not an antisemite and am not saying this just because any of them are Hebrews, besides Rockefeller, who seems to be White European, but they have tremendously good security, so this probably will not happen anytime soon, unless any one of them inexplicably goes against the “agenda” and they decide to make an example of them. That aside, even if one of them gives some grant to Joyce, that doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on Joyce, anymore than if they had an original Rembrandt in their house, that’d reflect badly on Rembrandt. These are very elitist types, often at least a bit more intellectual than the run-of-the-mill guy, and can sometimes have rather classy intellectual and artistic tastes, which they will use their wealth to indulge in. The public philanthropy and donation to the arts is also a good P.R. move.

Also, I can’t find any source for a Rockefeller grant to Joyce, even looking it up through different various search engines.

Therefore, I deem this another case of a /pol/-type being pseudo-intellectual. The PIP (pseudo-intellectual /pol/yp), often has a bit more brainpower than the average outright NPC, greater vocabulary, more sophisticated sentence structure, sometimes at least some taste or interest in philosophy and art, etc., but often only on a crude and perverted level of “just learning enough to be able to make my denunciations of XYZ for being heebed or globohomo sound very impressive.”

I understand that this post and my snobbishness may (understandably) upset, infuriate, and enrage you, inspiring you to call me a “kike,” “pozzed,” “basedboy,” “an effete limp-wristed intellectual,” want to murder/strangle/castrate me, etc., but I can assure you I am not a “Jewish,” nor am I vaccinated for COVID-19, nor do I support Ukraine. I hope this clears things up.

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when you are able to see the magnificence of God's creation in the single blade of a leaf. its useless to know the odyssey and hamlet inside out when you lack perceptiveness of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful in everyday life. If you have the latter then you are already living in the mind state of Joyce when writing Ulysses and can therefore understand it. if you lack this you must gradually read more of the great works of literature until the lens has been adequately crafted for vision.

>>21813661
Dubliners is probably the finest collection of short stories ever published. It is incredibly lucid and the prose - though at times virtuosic - is effortless and unpretentious. Yet it is laden with pathos and potent vignettes of human failing and frailty.
Tell me again why Joyce is a schizo incoherent.