James Joyce

[abcdefz]

....well, I don't get it.

Any James Joyce gfans out there who can give me a little insight into why he's got such a great reputation?

I've tried reading Ulysses several times and it always fails to hold my interest. It's been many years since I tried reading Portrait of an Artist... and ditto. Now I have tried The Dubliners collection, and the first story is... meh.

What am I failing to see? My breadth of appreciation for many major and minor figures in the pantheon is pretty wide; Joyce, I just don't get. I don't even think he writes particularly well, let alone tells a decent story.

[Nuzzolese]

Not that I'm a huge fan or anything, but I was under the impression he articulated a lot of what other Irish people were feeling regarding their generation's restricting ties to their nationalism and religion, and wanting to be liberated from them or at least be able to express the individual independent of them. I always thought he was also significant in the long line of the young man's awakening...you know, coming of age and rebellion and identity search. He's important from a literary historical perspective because of how his style defied conventional storytelling and he was part of a new wave of modernism. So maybe it's partly that he was in the right place at the right time and is used as an example of a time, more than just to have his writing stand on its own.

[abcdefz]

That would make sense. But it's just not involving in any way (to me), which is kind of a shame.

[Otis Driftwood]

I should a started w Ulysses, 200 pages of nothing but single(?) words is much easier to (*sarcasm on*)"comprehend" (*sarcasm off*) than the made up words of Finnegans Wake. Might be cool if you get it, but I sure didn't.