Dubliners

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Has anybody ever read it?

I read it. It is an amazing book.

James Joyce was a genius.

Read it. Didnt like it. Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer is a better modernist piece but did come a lot later; though he was influenced by Joyce, and it wasn't his first like Dubliners. Portrait is, well, artistically quite an achievement, the parallels between that and Picasso are profound, however the protagonist is, to put it politely, precious. He wouldn't get through the day in my corner of the world. Though considering I think a lot of modernism is utter tripe this is high praise.

I'm glad you didn't mention Woolf *shivers*. Not. A. Fan.

I liked it, but Joyce's writing style takes a while to get used to.

Dos Passos is brilliant. He's one of my favorite writers. His USA Trilogy is one of my favorite works by any author.

I've not read Dubliners. I've read Ulysses and Portrait. Can't rec Ulysses. It's ridiculous. The underlying concept of the novel is brilliant, but its execution deserves to be ripped on, thoroughly. I don't care that it was voted best novel of the 20th century. I effing read it--the whole damn thing. So I get to critique it. And frankly, Joyce was too infatuated with some of him ideas. Narcissism was the great flaw of many modernists, and Ulysses drips of Joyce's narcissism. There's just too much in that novel that Joyce was overly fond of and which needed to be severely edited, as it takes away from the novel's integrity, rather than contributes to it.

There, I said it. It needed to be said.

I can rec Portrait, though. That one was very well executed, IMO.

UGH I can't get through a single creative writing course in my college without being asked to read a story from it. Don't like it. Too interested in being deep, as opposed to entertaining. And no, I don't think one is better than the other--I think the best way is to be both and anything that only veers towards one and COMPLETELY fails in the other, is halfway decent at best, and pretentious or mindless at worst.

Joyce has no accessability; he doesn't care to make anything easy for a reader. He'll list 30 names in two pages and expect you to follow along and remember them all. (See the beginning of "The Dead.") It's poorly written because none of these characters are given great opening, character-establishing moments in their introductions. It's just NAME NAME NAME NAME NAME. Why should I care about any of them?

Sometimes Joyce's stories are way too hamfisted about their point. Other times they leave me wondering what the hell the point is and I don't realize it until I've read it three or four times.

I can respect some of his work, but I'd never read it if I didn't have to for school.

I know it's not for everybody, but the works of Joyce are likely to appeal to many of us with AS. (Yeah, you know what's coming next: it's likely he was one of us.) Anything you are forced to read (usually by some snooty prof. standing on the shoulders of giants) is a drudge, but give it a chance. I think "The Dead" could have been shorter and less reliant on an understanding of Joyce's Dublin, but try "Counterparts," and "A Little Cloud." But the stories pale besides Ulysses. I know some here "think in pictures" but my mind works like Bloom's. One damn association after another. The curious confusion of the outsider. The logic those who fit in do not understand. The ill-expressed, rejected symapthy and love for others. The fumbling for friendship. The repetition of words and phrases.