Kevin's Watch

A word of warning re the proposed 'Ulysses' discussion thread. The New York Joyce appreciation society met on the first Tuesday of each month to discuss 'Finnegans Wake'. After 12 years of meetings they were a third of the way down page 7. (A true story.)

The professor I had in college began his series of lectures on Ulysses by giving us a couple of minutes to start reading the book, when the time was up he asked how far people had got. One guy said that he was halfway down the second page. The professor stated that if you'd got past the end of the first paragraph (less than 50 words) you were reading too fast

u.

Vraith wrote:Heh...that kind of approach/attitude u. and peter mentioned really annoys the piss out of me fairly regularly.
I mean, sure, the small pieces, the attention to detail, matter...yet those things don't really mean [in fact diverge from meaning] without relation to the whole, and the process of moving through it.
They're not just failing to see the forest for the trees, they're causing themselves repetitive head injury syndrome banging their heads on one tree until they concuss the forest out of existence.

Yep. Like I mentioned in the 'Ulysses' thread, these people are getting trapped in Joyce's labyrinth. If you enjoy that, fine, but I am of the reading philosophy that to understand a work, you first must read it in its entirety. Then, and only then, would you go back and study it minutely... if necessary/you want.

Howard Bloom.... no Harold Bloom said that in the case of (some) Shakespeare it didn't matter how often you re-read it - it would continue to go deeper and deeper, to reveal more and more untill you reached the point where your intelect could take you no further. Similarly he felt I think with Emily Dickinson that most people would reach the limit of their power of comprehension somewhere in her work. I have heard the same said of Wagner's music - particularly the 'Ring Cycle', that even if you listened to it exclusively for the rest of your life it will still be yeilding up more and more as the years progress and you will never reach the end. Perhaps the works of Joyce would fall into this catagory in that it would be only by absolute and complete familiarity that it's deeper meaning would be revealed.

Vraith wrote:Heh...that kind of approach/attitude u. and peter mentioned really annoys the piss out of me fairly regularly.

In fairness, I think the point that the professor was trying to make was, not that you need to understand everything as you go (impossible in any good work of fiction, as we well know ), but that you cannot approach a work like Ulysses in the same way that you would normally read a novel.

I once heard Al Alvarez describe reading light fiction as reading 'diagonally'. Essentially skimming to dialogue that moved the plot on. You can't do this with better fiction because what you skip is essential to the purpose of the novel. In the case of a work like Ulysses even this is not enough (which is why I encourage people to take an unusual approach to it). Personally though, I think it is a mistake to try and encompass the whole of Ulysses in one go, or too quickly. I simply think its too much for most (not all) to digest in one go. What often happens is that people try to do this and fail. which may be one of the factors that leads to the attitude to Ulysses as an 'impossible' and thus a 'useless' or 'elitist' book.

IMO, Ulysses is best enjoyed in small bites (and those bites don't necessarily have to come in the order they are in the book). In Orlion's dissection thread I admitted that even though I started reading the book in 1998 I only read the third section, Proteus, this week. That might seem outrageous in one way, yet, in another, the important thing was that I read it, nearly 15 years after starting the book. And it was still difficult! I know lots about the novel now that I didn't know at the start and still I found this chapter hard going.

It's intellectual, it's allusive, it's literary, it's Stephen Dedalus. Yet because of what I now know it was rewarding and worthwhile. I think that reading it 15 years ago might have had a negative effect on my attitude to the book as a whole. Instead my experience was one of satisfaction and enrichment.

It may be that Ulysses needs to be dealt with flexibly by each person who comes to it, and that a one-size-fits-all approach is not that useful.

u.

ussusimiel wrote: IMO, Ulysses is best enjoyed in small bites (and those bites don't necessarily have to come in the order they are in the book).

To be fair back, that may well have been the prof's. point.
But, in the vein of your comment here...I have no problem with small bites, and chewing thoughtfully. Yet masticating till the mouthful is tasteless mush ruins the bite, and probably makes the rest of the meal unappetizing. And such is a strong tendency in the literary/critical mode [and I don't exempt myself from that...fall into it fairly regularly.

Vraith wrote:Yet masticating till the mouthful is tasteless mush ruins the bite, and probably makes the rest of the meal unappetizing. And such is a strong tendency in the literary/critical mode [and I don't exempt myself from that...fall into it fairly regularly. [/color]

Agreed. I'm no fan of overdone literary theorising even though I'm prone to it as well

To expand on your analogy, Ulysses is like a feast that can be extended over many years, with a multitude of dishes that can be sampled and returned to again and again. Is that too literary

u.

ussusimiel wrote:IMO, Ulysses is best enjoyed in small bites

Similarly with Wagner. An old friend now deceased once told me that to deal with the Ring Cycle it should be taken in half hour segments. "Familiarise yourself with each segment intimately before moving on to the next", he said, "and when one of the four individual opera's is complete, move on to the next." Only then he believed, would you be ready to begin work on the Ring Cycle as a whole. A momentous task but boy, I bet the rewards are great!