James Joyce - have you read any of his work?

Nope I haven't read any and have no plans to either

Bits of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Have opened them and given up, if I want to pretend to be an intellectual I'd just natter on about Flann O'Brien at least his books were readable and slightly funny

I'm disagree. I think Joyce's Dubliners allows us to explore the meaninglessness of consciousness, especially when observed through a Foucauldian perspective of governmentality and power. Phenomenological discourses evident in Joyce's works allow us to witness precultural paradigm of reality and prestructuralist semanticism, thereby providing an opportunity for deeper-sounding, intellectual sh*te-talk.

Yeah, I've read Dubliners, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man and Ulysses. Really enjoyed them all but Finnegan's Wake looks like it'd be impossible to get through.

ireland.man wrote: »

I'm disagree. I think Joyce's Dubliners allows us to explore the meaninglessness of consciousness, especially when observed through a Foucauldian perspective of governmentality and power. Phenomenological discourses evident in Joyce's works allow us to witness precultural paradigm of reality and prestructuralist semanticism, thereby providing an opportunity for deeper-sounding, intellectual sh*te-talk.

Well said that man !

I've read Dubliners and Portrait and enjoyed them very much. Started on Ulysses a few times, but never made it past the first 20 odd pages.

When my nephew turned 30, he and a few mates did up a list of things to do before they turned 40. Reading Ulysses was one of them. So they joined a Trinity book club, that got together one night a week to read a chapter of Ulysses. Each night, they went somewhere new that was mentioned in the book & had a few pints at or near the spot, which really added to the overall craic factor.

Having it be a Trinners thing, sounds fierce high falutin altogether. But he said that the group was made up of a lot of very average Joe's like him, who were always curious about the hype surrounding Joyce, but found him too hard to tackle on their own. It took them about 6 months to get through it all, but he said it was one of the best things he ever did.

don't you need to know a bit of homer before starting ulysses? ulysses is latin for odysseus so one would assume..?

Anyway a nice old man told me in Easons to stay away from Finnegan's wake, looks he was as baked as a cake when he wrote it.

I made an attempt at Finnegan's Wake, got about 100 pages in and decided f*ck it, life is too short for this.