Ulysses: Great book or...

DeVore

... pile of obscure self-indulgent toss.

I went to Belvedere College and while its a great college, I hated the fact that everyone thought Joyce was the greatest writer since print was invented.

Ulysses was and is utter rubbish in my opinion. If I wanted to be stupefied by someone who obviously doesnt want me to understand wtf they are talking about, I'll go talk to Shinji for a while (j/king Rob!).

I hate the whole obscurity of the book, but more then that I HATE the way people agree avidly with each other that its the greatest book ever. It smacks of Emperors New Clothes, noone wants to say its just utter cr@p because *everyone* agrees its genius. Dhaaarling!

Tom the philestine.

Draco

I have a policy of staying away from most so-called 'classics'. Any of the ones I was forced to read in school, or the *very* few I've read off my own bat have proven to be big dirty bags of $hite. Take Dickens for example. Boring, depressing uninteresting, badly written (have I commited hersy there?) unadultrated drivel. I don't care about the people of mid-late 19th century England. I don't care if the contitions they lived in were awful, that they were crushed with hopelessness, that they died young and broken, that the bosses were cruel and evil. A 'classic' has to still be able to say something even after 100+ years since it was written. Dickens just tells me don't be a pleb and be the boss.

Draco

WhiteWashMan

nope, hated joyce.
i read a few of his books, portrait of the artist as a young man stands out and it bored me terribly.
i dont kow why people hearald this as a classic, or any of his other books.
if i want an irish writer who entertains me, then i'll read flan o brien

pox

cant comment too much on joyce (I read
a couple of pages a few years back,
amounted to about 2 sentences I think)
and didnt think much, but i agree with
the emporer's new clothes analogy, too
many people force it, and dont have
the strength of character to disagree.

like franz ****ing sleepyville kafka.

DeVore

I guess you guys have never read it. Bunch of illiterates

DeV.

Excelsior

I think a lot of people would agree with you dev. in fact more ppl hate this book, in my experience, than like it. I bought a big fu<k off hardback anthology of Joyce because he was so great, and it was a waste of a large amount of money. it isn't good at all. maybe you need conditioning to enjoy it, but that is not the purpose of a great book surely: enjoy this and learn much, but only if you have fulfilled these conditions, mind.
the only way i can ever imagine myself finishing that anthology is if i have to spend large periods of time in hospital with nothing else to do....

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It is so lonely here in my indecipherable tower of speech impedimency

DeVore

Umberto Eco also struck me as that kinda writer (the kind that gathers followers because they want to be his followers, but since I cant say I've ever read his stuff I could be being unfair to the poor man. Anyone read his books?

Shiminay

I've only read Portrait of an Artist and that was for my Leaving Cert. I didn't think it was too bad, but slightly too "structured" for me - no real randomness - chapter starts badly, chapter ends on a high, chapter starts badly, chapter ends on a high... and so on

But then again, I'm a Fantasy and Sci-Fi fan, so what would I know about literature

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
http://homepage.eircom.net/~davitt

Excelsior

nothing kharn, nothing at all, in fact, where did you learn to write?
kafka boring borin....
too bored to finish sentence.
my brother swears by umberto eco, but then again he uses the word "transtextuality" far too much for my liking

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It is so lonely here in my indecipherable tower of speech impedimency

Shiminay

I didn't. I use voice rec software to do everything for me

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
http://homepage.eircom.net/~davitt