Tuesday, November 15
James Joyce
It's time for another installment of "writers I like pretty good", an irregular feature on JTT. Quite a switch, from online advice columnists. But here it is, from Araby, in Dubliners: "Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself as a creature driven and deried by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."
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That is such an awesome quote! Love it.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
The Dubliners rocks. "Araby" rocks, too.
ReplyDeleteHell yeah.
I need to read it again.
"Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself as a creature driven and deried by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."
ReplyDeleteIf this was a modern text, today's critics would tear it apart. Joyce uses anguish and anger as substitutes for actual description. Don't tell us anger and anguish, they would say, show it to us. Eyes really can't burn, they would say, you are being too melodramatic.
But of course this is Joyce. I like the qoute, myself.
I thought it was modern--(I guess Modern).
ReplyDeleteI'm with you to a point. There are a lot of abstractions within the quote, but that doesn't mean that the ideas weren't already discussed within the text. I agree though that without context, I'd be a little lost here. But then again, that's normal for me. This line may be a summation of earlier events. I need to just get up and go get my copy and see.
One time cleaning out a fish cooler, I got bleach in my eyes.
Eyes burn. Great googly-moogly they burn. (I guess technically the bleach was doing the burning, if I want to think about it that way, but at the time I sure didn't. My eyes, man, my eyes are BURNING!)
But also if we judge our past writers by contemporary standards, many of them wouldn't get published anyway. I think Dubliners was finished in 1905--don't remember the actual publishing date.
Oh, yeah. I'm directing that at those critics, (those fabulously formed straw men for my argument) not the Loaf-luvin Oppegard, because he is totally right. And I would say even at a traditional workshop level, it would get chewed to bits.
ReplyDeleteBut it is 100 years old, so...
Go read the chapter Oppegaard has posted. Although I think everyone right here did. I'm going to read it again.
Read Dubliners, too, if you get a chance.
I'm reading Frank O'Hara's Complete Poems, Angela Carter's The Sadeian Woman, and Rushdie's Midnight's Children.
Hottest line in lit, from end of Penelope Chapter, Ulysses: "I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes"
ReplyDeleteAfter all those eight sentences lasting forty pages, you just die when you read Molly say that about Bloom. I'm dying right now
Dubliners was finished in 1907, but not published til 1914, "a victim of Victorian squeamishness" according to the blurb on the back of my book. I love these Dover $1 editions!
ReplyDeleteI bought this at Zandbroz Variety on Broadway in Fargo, on 5/24/96. I still have the receipt tucked in the book.
word verification for this post: rzsex! Dirty.
Molly, yes.
ReplyDeleteI've been called everything from an "asshole" to a "dumbass" for reading Ulysses. Thanks for letting me know people pick this stuff up and at least react to it.
It's funny. I sat and giggled when I read it and I can't wait to read it again.
Ok, would you guys recommend Portait of the Artist as a Young Man before Ulysses or does it matter? Anybody's thoughts would be welcome.
ReplyDeleteUlysses is a tough slog. Portrait is much more accessible (though, you know, Joycey accessible). If you have the umph (and want to read books about your book while you're dealing with it), Ulysses really is all that. It is hilarious and heartbreaking and impossible. It is LIFE, my dirty! Phukkin hard ast work, though.
ReplyDelete"...yes I said yes I will Yes"
ReplyDeleteI think this could come in handy in a lot of daily situations... with the right inflection.
I recommend reading them in order. Portrait would be next. You get to see the progression (or decline as some would say) of his writing. Then Ulysses and then the Wake. Compare the first page of Dubliners to the first page of Finnegan's Wake and you'll see hat I mean. But, ultimately, it's all up to you. Have fun with it. There are several helpful texts, diagrams, and schemata for his novels, too. It may be fun to read them first without any outside help, but I think it is helpful to have an idea of what the project was to begin with.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little anal and I prefer to read authors this way. Sometimes I'll read the most popular work first. With Rushdie, I read Satanic Verses first. I liked it, so now I am reading his work in order of publication and when I get to Verses, I'll reread it. Same with Pynchon.
I've been to the writer's museum in Dublin. It's sweet. In a nerdy writer way.
ReplyDeleteDamn, Oppegaard, that sounds like fun. Did you see the bust of Joyce? Were they still using the money with his picture and the opening words from Finnegan's Wake? Money with Finnegan's Wake quotes!
ReplyDeleteDid you go to the Guinness brewery?
I need to go there some day.
Twin Cities Blogger gathering. Saturday night at Psycho Suzi's -- Post it!
ReplyDeleteThe pubs and the writer's museum are great, but Dublin's really a two-day affair at best. No, I didn't go on the guiness tour, I read that it wasn't that good. I stood next to Joyce's statue, though! It's in the middle of a pedestrian street.
ReplyDelete