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Bloomsday
Posted by Kevin

I have always thought that Joyce was overrated a bit (yeah, yeah, I know, Joyce is a genius, what have I ever written, etc, etc, etc. Sorry, but the kinds of stylistic games he played did not work as consistently as the majority of critics seem to think they did. At least for me, they too often swamped the story and the characters and seemed to be there for the sake of being there) but there is a rather interesting discussion on Joyce, Modernism and Modernisms place in literature over at Slate.

June 16th, 2004 Writing | 5 comments

5 Comments

  1. Kevin T. Keith writes:

    One good Bloomsday thing is the annual celebrity reading at Symphony Space (a Manhattan performance venue). It’s going on now (I’m not there - maybe someday) and will continue past midnight. Why do I tell you? Because it’s being simulcast on WBAI FM 99.5, which you can get streamed from their Web site.

    Take a listen tonight (June 16, for those of you who forget what “Bloomsday” is - the date immortalized by Joyce, the events of whose sweeping Ulysses take place in a single day) after midnight, when the magnificent Fionnula Flanagan will finish the performance by reading the entire text of Molly’s soliloquy, which ends the book.

    Comment 6/16/2004

  2. Barbara writes:

    Me too. Except that “The Dead” and other stories really are outstanding works, when I read it for the second time I was even more impressed than the first, and I intend to read it again.

    Apropos of your comment here is what E.B. White said about Joyce (probably paraphrased):

    “It takes more than genius to keep me reading a book.”

    Unconstrained brillinace is rarely legible or comprehensible, though you can still appreciate the brilliance. That’s how I feel about James Joyce. And when you have the lack of restraint without the brilliance . . . well then, you have a pretty fair summary of alot of literature written in the latter half of the 20th century.

    I started reading Ulysses at least four times, and never made it past Chapter 4. And then I realized that it wasn’t necessary, and the author would not have cared. I then read random pages until the end, and then put it away forever.

    Comment 6/16/2004

  3. Tom writes:

    I see your point, but I gotta say I love the games he played with language.In particular A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

    Strangely enough I read Faulkner largely for the same reason, Ireally dig the language.

    Comment 6/17/2004

  4. Brutal Hugs writes:

    Joyce is a Genius. So what?
    Kevein over at Lean Left thinks Joyce is overrated. I agree and put Joyce in the same box as Faulkner and Woolf– self-indulgent writers who seek less to communicate than to show off their ability to play with words. Yeah, yeah, I know. I only say that…

    Trackback 6/17/2004

  5. Anonymous writes:

    ponder this
    if we stick with america the worst we get is big mac burger king kfc, if we stick with the islamists we get beheading, the veil, cutting of of hands, total religious zealots, could saddam have known this?

    Comment 6/26/2004

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