Can't a fellow read ULYSSES just for the enjoyment, I plaintively ask?
Segur, a most learned person about things Joycean, gently points out in his comments the errors of my ways and assumptions in my previous posts.
Still, I’d like to plaintively ask, is it possible to read ULYSSES these days just for the enjoyment of it, without needing a commentary to understand it?
I guess that depends on what I mean by “enjoy.” Me, that means being able to follow the text and the story without any undue labor. The parts of the writing that aren't accessible to me are piling up. I admit I’m biased both by reading habit and I guess some genetics – growing up in Bali most of my reading were whatever novels tourists and travelers left behind. Vacation stuff. Don’t get me wrong, by reading great literature I am growing into an appreciation of great literature, but so far, upon page 18, ULYSSES isn’t growing on me.
Consider this passage: Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
Reading that snippet aloud, I enjoy the rhythm and cadence, but damned if I can understand it. If that makes me a literary philistine, then philistine I am.
But still, I do like Buck Mulligan, fluttering his hands at his side like a cherub and reciting The Ballad of Joking Jesus. If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine/He’ll get no free drinks when I’m making the wine
On, on! I shall not fail!
Still, I’d like to plaintively ask, is it possible to read ULYSSES these days just for the enjoyment of it, without needing a commentary to understand it?
I guess that depends on what I mean by “enjoy.” Me, that means being able to follow the text and the story without any undue labor. The parts of the writing that aren't accessible to me are piling up. I admit I’m biased both by reading habit and I guess some genetics – growing up in Bali most of my reading were whatever novels tourists and travelers left behind. Vacation stuff. Don’t get me wrong, by reading great literature I am growing into an appreciation of great literature, but so far, upon page 18, ULYSSES isn’t growing on me.
Consider this passage: Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
Reading that snippet aloud, I enjoy the rhythm and cadence, but damned if I can understand it. If that makes me a literary philistine, then philistine I am.
But still, I do like Buck Mulligan, fluttering his hands at his side like a cherub and reciting The Ballad of Joking Jesus. If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine/He’ll get no free drinks when I’m making the wine
On, on! I shall not fail!
posted by Richard Lewis at 1:00 PM
2 Comments:
I did appreciate that, Segur. Apologies if I sound flippant -- that's the trouble with seeing only the text and not the person. While I can't help my humor, and enjoy it when others are humorous in their writings, I am in fact taking this seriously. By the time I finish this book, I hope to know something about literature (and maybe even the writing of it) I didn't know before.
Good question why the blog. I'll have to think on that instead of giving you a quick answer that risks sounding flippant.
Oh, when I wrote "commentary" (as in needing a commentary to understand the novel) I was thinking very specifically of my father's shelves of Bible commentaries (which are in fact needed to understand the historical and cultural context of the Biblical text).
I wasn't at all making slight of your explanatory comment on blood and wounds, Segur. But nonetheless, the question I ask I reckon is a valid one: can (should?) the average reader, the Stephen King with maybe some Coetzee or Updike thrown in type of reader, be able to read ULYSSES and enjoy it? Or is this a matter of personality and reader's taste as well as past exposure/education to literature?
Post a Comment
<< Home