"No one has read this book. And those who have are either lying or have bored themselves to tears ploughing through incomprehensible rubbish in order to pass their degrees/impress their friends."
"Some of the dullest drivel I've ever read. I sometimes read it aloud to my sisters simply for the comedy value (as kids they expected a good, straightforward narrative!) There's a reason why prior authors did not write rambling first-person accounts of our most trivial thoughts. It was a good reason."
"This book generally tops the lists as best, or worst book in English in the 20th century. Those who say it is the best do so because they have been told by teachers, professors and such; few have read the book in its entirety. In fact I will go as far as to claim that there are two kinds of readers who say they have read Ulysses; fools and liars. Fools because they have waded all through the muck; liars because they have read only parts of the work. I tried to read this first in my 20s and tried again in my 50s."
"It is all a foolery and judges whoever they are and what academic height they have ascended are foolhardy guys to select James Joyce for his aesthetic excellence, in fact artistic claptrap. I had been a wastrel to devote the rarest moments of my life to this arty idiocy. I will henceforth not give any attention to it. I have read a few chapters to waste my time.
I have to rack my brains to read his outlandish words. It is a wordy book and written out of his hubris sophisticating it to the degree getting even scholars or professors of English giddier and giddier.
Why cannot a great piece of art simple and why the panel choose a book them for the highest score. I have some friends pursuing higher academic courses who find the book really disgusting.
...
Most of us are hooked to a certain stylistic vehemence and form and we like Miltonic prose and yet few really enjoy reading them. We are accustomed to applaud a certain piece of literature and we are always admiring the Shakespearean mold or biblical fervor but in actual fact that remains to be limited to the textbook type. We are always told to read some great classics but in actuality do not enjoy them. Great epics have always been subjects of admiration and they cannot engage us when we read them.
In the same vein we tirelessly admire James Joyce but I do no think anyone really can enjoy reading this mass of nonsense.
...
I have tried to read his Ulysses with a dictionary in front of me but I always found it arduous job and I realized I have been a wastrel.
...
Literature was once an art that was written to entertain or instruct a few erudite people and the general public were not included in that herd. But in the course of time literary values got reconsidered and it was co0mmonly agreed that a piece of literature must be all inclusive people from a gamut of social layers must profit from it not just the aristocratic elites. From this perspective even Joyce was within this frame of thinking. He did not write for the mass and he solely write for the few academic class. That is why he is not the one to be selected or prized
...
OK, some of you are fans of this lifeless writer for his boring erudition. A kind of myopic attitude. And running after a style. I loathe this classical stigmatic icon. I choose not to be a wastrel. I do not want to waste even 10 minutes on such rubbishes. What do I look for there? Style? There are other greats style-wise. Content or philosophy? And there is none and some others said better what they wanted to say. A stupid literary committee formed everywhere to list the best books come from a dimwitted academics. They are updated themselves with the goings-on today in literatures, reading culture, people's interests, beliefs and most importantly the stream of modernity.
I am a voracious reader and I read all sorts of books but when it comes to making an analogy of such writers and their overrated statuses I find the very basis of judge repelling
I disliked the way he incessantly overrated shadowing some of the greater writers by some literary judges and that is why I raised this issue to read the views of the rest of readers. There are some blind supporters and they are simply an devoutly idolizing him. It is also interesting to read their fanatical ideas too.
...
James Joyce and his Ulysses. It has stirred up lots of sensations. An Idol of a legion of literary fools. With his hogwash he fooled all. I find it unworthy of even ten minutes' read. I simply remain stunned why our readers remain so much obsessed with his rashness to aesthetically lionize him for his terse syntactic structures and unusual words. Today any fools can come up with a cache of long-winded words but he cannot succeed the way James Joyce could. Ulysses had once been highly admired and down the channel of history the rest of judges imported from the early critics
...
As a reader and writer too I have found James full of arrogance and he won though he did not qualify for it. The world is like that. There is no standards"
"I read the first 20 some pages of the book and then skipped around after that for about a total of 50 pages.
The final 20 some pages appear to be rambling comments without even rudimentary punctuation or grammar. Basically, a child older than 12 who does reasonably well in school would write better than this.
The author did not seem interested in trying to communicate anything to the reader. When I checked Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce ) I see that Pound promoted Joyce. I put 2 and 2 together and suspect Joyce is part of the Imagist school and that actually explains why the writing doesn't make sense.
I realize that people will say I should give the book more time, perhaps months, but the book has not kept my interest. That is, it has not offered enough to justify that investment of my life. In time any gibberish can start taking on meaning. The books that I would dedicate months to are of the order of, say, The Bhagavad Gita, not some Imagist experiments.
...
When someone with supposed authority lists a book as one of the best books in English they are implying that everyone who is competent should be reading that book. When the book fails to communicate, fails to deliver on the promise these authorities have made, confusion results.
People who want to write start thinking: 'Maybe I should write drivel too if this is what makes a book great!' So they do. Soon they wonder why no one reads them. They wonder why the academics who praised Joyce so much haven't included their work in the list as well. Even readers wonder if just maybe they are too stupid to enjoy this, too dumb to see the clothes on the Emperor prancing around in his underwear (or less), but unfortunately for the academics who made the list, those doubts don't last long."
No comments:
Post a Comment