Anglos just assume anything related to Ireland is inherently nonsense, thus making Joyce completely incomprehensible to them.
Also, Ulysses is an eminently readable book, like it's very dense which means you have to read it a couple times and read commentary/annotations, but that's something every great work of literature requires. They teach you this in HS English. Finnigan Wake I could take or leave, but Ulysses is a genuine masterpiece.
Everyone interested in Joyce should read Re Joyce by Anthony Burgess - basically commentary and annotations of Joyce's work for normal people. I'm never going to read Wake, but definitely feel like I got a piece of it in my head from Burgess walk-through of the text.
I have Don Gifford's 'Ulysses Annotated' which is comprehensive but almost as long as Ulysses itself.
Another option you might want to try is the Ulysses lecture series that the Great Courses produced, its cheap/free to listen to on Audible. The professor give a 1 to 2 hour lecture on each chapter, going through the events, giving background and some light commentary.
Is it better do you think to read the notes beforehand so I know what I'm getting into, or afterwards to contextualize what I read? Or maybe both? Probably both is best for me lol.
I'd read a section of Ulysses, the relevant annotations, and then I'd reread the section of Ulysses. Other strategies may vary, and of course I already knew that if I wanted to read the book I wouldn't mind reading it twice. The first two sections of Ulysses are perfectly comprehensible - it's when you get to "Ineluctable modality of the visible" that a lot of people give up. (Stephen Dedalus walking down the beach thinking about Aristotle.) So maybe you can do the first fifty pages or so and see how far you want to take it.
The thing to do is to forget that the field of the novel is as limited as the cult of the contemporary best-seller is making it, and to consider that Joyce may be within his rights in turning language into one of the characters of Ulysses (perhaps in Finnegans Wake the only character). In Ulysses, the poeticising and the pastiche and parody serve, as we shall see later, a dramatic enough purpose; they also deepen the human characters by adding to their ordinary human dimensions the dimension first, of history, then of myth.
You can also skip most chapters and come back later without missing too much. Like Wertheimer said, a lot of people get real frustrated at Chapter 3 and give up, but I personally think you can just skip it, especially for a first go through.
It'd be a separate volume, but Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated. Or you could go another route and read Anthony Burgess's Re-Joyce, which attempts to make the case that annotations are unnecessary.
I think I'd rather go with the annotated, just because like if I get to the end of the book about why we don't need annotations then I could have just read Ulysses without annotations in that time, and if I disagree at the end then I have to read the annotations anyway. :galaxy-brain:
Damn, the annotations book is 700 pages long? And that doesn't include Ulysses? That's intimidating damn.
It's basically footnotes. Useful as a reference but not necessary to read cover-to-cover. Like, there's a part in the "Cyclops" episode that's a few pages of ridiculous names, and Gifford tells you what they're referring to. But you don't need to know that Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler means "penis in bath, inhabitant of the valley of testicles" to know that it's a funny name.
Anglos just assume anything related to Ireland is inherently nonsense, thus making Joyce completely incomprehensible to them.
Also, Ulysses is an eminently readable book, like it's very dense which means you have to read it a couple times and read commentary/annotations, but that's something every great work of literature requires. They teach you this in HS English. Finnigan Wake I could take or leave, but Ulysses is a genuine masterpiece.
Was thinking might try it someday, just because I've heard so much about it over the years. Is there a particular annotated edition you think is good?
Everyone interested in Joyce should read Re Joyce by Anthony Burgess - basically commentary and annotations of Joyce's work for normal people. I'm never going to read Wake, but definitely feel like I got a piece of it in my head from Burgess walk-through of the text.
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I have Don Gifford's 'Ulysses Annotated' which is comprehensive but almost as long as Ulysses itself.
Another option you might want to try is the Ulysses lecture series that the Great Courses produced, its cheap/free to listen to on Audible. The professor give a 1 to 2 hour lecture on each chapter, going through the events, giving background and some light commentary.
Is it better do you think to read the notes beforehand so I know what I'm getting into, or afterwards to contextualize what I read? Or maybe both? Probably both is best for me lol.
I'd read a section of Ulysses, the relevant annotations, and then I'd reread the section of Ulysses. Other strategies may vary, and of course I already knew that if I wanted to read the book I wouldn't mind reading it twice. The first two sections of Ulysses are perfectly comprehensible - it's when you get to "Ineluctable modality of the visible" that a lot of people give up. (Stephen Dedalus walking down the beach thinking about Aristotle.) So maybe you can do the first fifty pages or so and see how far you want to take it.
Fuck I don't even know what those words mean without context much less in a sentence :ohnoes:
This is good advice though, I'm bad at reading and would need a strategy.
Here's Burgess, ReJoyce, page 22:
So basically don't worry and just vibe with it :cat-vibing:
Secretly a lot of hard books work perfectly fine that way.
I love learning that I am not the only living person to have read that book. We should do a whole thread on Burgess some day.
I'm down. The people who dig Joyce's fart humor will love Inside Mr. Enderby.
The chapter about Shakespeare in Enderby's Dark Lady is fucking magnificent.
You can also skip most chapters and come back later without missing too much. Like Wertheimer said, a lot of people get real frustrated at Chapter 3 and give up, but I personally think you can just skip it, especially for a first go through.
It'd be a separate volume, but Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated. Or you could go another route and read Anthony Burgess's Re-Joyce, which attempts to make the case that annotations are unnecessary.
I think I'd rather go with the annotated, just because like if I get to the end of the book about why we don't need annotations then I could have just read Ulysses without annotations in that time, and if I disagree at the end then I have to read the annotations anyway. :galaxy-brain:
Damn, the annotations book is 700 pages long? And that doesn't include Ulysses? That's intimidating damn.
It's basically footnotes. Useful as a reference but not necessary to read cover-to-cover. Like, there's a part in the "Cyclops" episode that's a few pages of ridiculous names, and Gifford tells you what they're referring to. But you don't need to know that Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler means "penis in bath, inhabitant of the valley of testicles" to know that it's a funny name.
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