The consolations of great literature parallels our personal experience and you build on literature with clarity and perspective. As a Catholic young woman attending a Jesuit university Joyce gave me much to consider. For our side of the aisle there is Edna O'Brien.
The Country Girls Trilogy. She was quite influenced By Joyce. At a Jesuit university a whole course devoted to Joyce but Edna O'Brien, for a female reader, is somewhat impassioned and together the two halves of Catholic Ireland.
This caught my attention likely because I read Ulysses as a teenager far from either of my parents while in a school populated with teachers who were dissatisfied writers slumming in Greece and more or less grudgingly teaching at a private school for kids they largely resented. My freshman English teacher - who like the others had his doctorate and was always hung over, had (he said) once gone drinking with Dylan Thomas. I liked him. Another worshipped Faulkner (which I endorsed), another was a snarly biblical scholar coming to terms with his bisexuality (who i admittedly had a crush on). He drove an MG. But I digress.
Bottom line several worshipped Joyce. Hence my older sister gifted me the book. Hence me determinedly plowing through it, expecting an epiphany, the presence of a boy named teddy in my grade who perpetually had his hand in his pants probably reduced any shock I may have had over Blooms behavior. (I did enjoy D.H. Lawrence, who is in my opinion a greater writer, and not because of the often tedious Lady Chatterly. His societal observations were more worthy to me than Blooms frustration over his marriage.)
But I revisited Ulysses in my thirties - willing to look again, and can definitely say (out of my ignorance of greater themes perhaps) it gave me a headache.
I’m someone who still has my unabridged copy of Moby Dick filled with my 13 year old scribbling - that my children used when they were assigned it in high school. Melville’s Barnaby still holds my heart.
I concluded what we all suspect: Some ‘great’ literature isn’t. And I’m sharing that epiphany, not as a scholar but as a reader. Ulysses to me stands as an exercise driven by Joyce’s large ego, purposely obscure and often tedious because Joyce was insufferable.
So that’s my Ted talk. (And I mean that weird kid I knew in high school)
The consolations of great literature parallels our personal experience and you build on literature with clarity and perspective. As a Catholic young woman attending a Jesuit university Joyce gave me much to consider. For our side of the aisle there is Edna O'Brien.
Ah, been meaning to read her for a few years! Any place you'd recommend starting?
The Country Girls Trilogy. She was quite influenced By Joyce. At a Jesuit university a whole course devoted to Joyce but Edna O'Brien, for a female reader, is somewhat impassioned and together the two halves of Catholic Ireland.
This caught my attention likely because I read Ulysses as a teenager far from either of my parents while in a school populated with teachers who were dissatisfied writers slumming in Greece and more or less grudgingly teaching at a private school for kids they largely resented. My freshman English teacher - who like the others had his doctorate and was always hung over, had (he said) once gone drinking with Dylan Thomas. I liked him. Another worshipped Faulkner (which I endorsed), another was a snarly biblical scholar coming to terms with his bisexuality (who i admittedly had a crush on). He drove an MG. But I digress.
Bottom line several worshipped Joyce. Hence my older sister gifted me the book. Hence me determinedly plowing through it, expecting an epiphany, the presence of a boy named teddy in my grade who perpetually had his hand in his pants probably reduced any shock I may have had over Blooms behavior. (I did enjoy D.H. Lawrence, who is in my opinion a greater writer, and not because of the often tedious Lady Chatterly. His societal observations were more worthy to me than Blooms frustration over his marriage.)
But I revisited Ulysses in my thirties - willing to look again, and can definitely say (out of my ignorance of greater themes perhaps) it gave me a headache.
I’m someone who still has my unabridged copy of Moby Dick filled with my 13 year old scribbling - that my children used when they were assigned it in high school. Melville’s Barnaby still holds my heart.
I concluded what we all suspect: Some ‘great’ literature isn’t. And I’m sharing that epiphany, not as a scholar but as a reader. Ulysses to me stands as an exercise driven by Joyce’s large ego, purposely obscure and often tedious because Joyce was insufferable.
So that’s my Ted talk. (And I mean that weird kid I knew in high school)