Read The New Bloomsday Book along with it to help with the more difficult sections and to understand all of the major references/parallels. About half the book is difficult but just about each chapter is written in a different style so it’s all over the place, and a lot of it is more readable than people seem to think. Unfortunately one of the more difficult stream-of-consciousness chapters is like second or third and that trips a lot of people up. But like a lot of great works of art that get hailed as the “greatest,” I think its reputation does it a disservice to it, because a lot of people go into it expecting this incredibly serious intense book when really a ton of it is meant to be outright comedic. Like you don’t need to really know the parallels to the Odyssey because (1) a lot of them are far more vaguely symbolic than anything else and don’t contribute to the story in a meaningful way, and (2) there is a “serious” point to the parallels, but just as big of a point is more of a joke because the “action” in the book is just an otherwise mundane day for some middle-class schlub of a guy
Yeah you should read Dubliners and Portrait before Ulysses, particularly Portrait because Stephen is a main character in both and is clearly the Joyce stand-in But Ulysses is not nearly as impenetrable as I think many people expect (again, aside from a handful of chapters). Finnegan’s Wake, on the other hand, absolutely is
just to say, not that you were specifically talking to me or that I took it any kind of way, but I agree with this intellectually and did keep this in mind with Passion of GH but I still felt like...idk, it just wasn't the right time. I will definitely go back. Honestly, I just remembered, I was literally getting tired reading anything physically at the time, like my eyelids would get heavy after 3 pages but my brain would still want to keep going. I just didn't like reading something I wanted to really think about in that context
The “best” way to read Infinite Jest is to just limit yourself to about 10pgs per day, and that includes the footnotes bc some stretch on for pages. That helps prevent burnout and lets you invest in other things while you go through it. It takes a few months to get through it that way, but what’s the rush
Oh yeah, fully support putting something down and switching vibes if it’s not “the right time.” Also Lispector reinvents herself with every novel, so it’s alright if that one doesn’t do it for you. It’s one of her darker ones after all.
Probably before because like I said it’s a much more comedic book than people give it credit for and that context helps serve as a reminder to that lol. Lots of sex jokes
It’s ok like Doritos. If the stats come out that most of the country only eats Doritos now it’s ok to be critical and discuss the implications. Large changes in a demographics behaviour are always the result of large and complex changes in their conditions which are outside of any individuals control or decision. People in a discussed demographic are going to feel helpless and targeted and as if the people discussing are trying to control their behaviour. it’s a sensitive dynamic to keep in mind and funny that in the same thread it’s totally fine to specifically call out someone as a freak for their breakfast choice or movie view.
The biggest revelation for me reading is realizing that, while I don’t see myself as actively a “morning person” and will read comics in the evening, I do better with prose in the morning with a cup of coffee. The only downside is I have finite time a lot of mornings in order to be on time for work, lol. But, I don’t have my bestie’s ability to knock out a novel in a day anyways, so that kinda pacing works for me.
Infinite Jest is also more accessible than its reputation suggests. It’s mostly the length, and then the length of the footnotes, and then if you have the patience to read incredibly long footnotes multiple times as they come up and get new contexts from being directed to them at different points in the narrative. All the layers of meaning and the recursive nature and the density and length of sentences are a challenge, but I read it when I was 17, the same summer I gave up on Joyce within two pages. They’re different in a lot of ways but I think I found it easier to understand the writer from midwest United States who was born 30 years before I was than the Irish writer born 130 years or whatever before I was born.
very much a sci-fi/fantasy/horror/thriller guy, but have thought about picking up some classics the last couple of times at B&N because I'm been in a slump and maybe switching it up will help.
The comparison Tetra made to jazz is also interesting, in trying to think of things you can like without really "getting." So much of it is context. Giant Steps might sound like noodling if you don't understand that it was the most complicated harmonic structure anyone had improvised over at that speed, really ever, to that point; and it might sound relatively tame if you've seen a 14 year old on tiktok improvise over it even faster. There was a thread on r/jazz (I know) recently about the box set Miles at the Plugged Nickel. The poster had heard that the band were trying to do the "opposite" of what was expected on standards, but he couldn't really hear it. How could he though, if he hadn't heard the standards played the "regular" way a million times? I love the Plugged Nickel box set, but I have a bad ear for memorizing standards and couldn't necessarily tell you "oh, usually When I Fall in Love will go from balld/half time to regular time in the solos, but the way some of the players resist and keep playing at the regular tempo for several bars is entirely new." I could tell you though, damn those boys are playing really fast and chaotic for a solo portion of a ballad in 1965. So much of great art is referential, messing around with form and style in response to the existing status quo. But the most transcendent art will do that in a way that is also good and fun on its face, without the extra knowledge. Plus a lot of that knowledge seeps into pop culture accidentally so you don't even know what your expectations actually are until the flouting of them makes it clear. idk just yapping also not going to try to integrate this into the post any better but I was thinking the whole time about how many times people would say "subvert expectations" in conversations about Game of Thrones
John Irving's stuff is a great doorway into literary fiction. James Baldwin. Carson McCullers. but if you like speculative fiction, maybe try something literary but within that vein of things. there's plenty out there that feeds into both. you may enjoy Haruki Murakami. also Adolfo Bioy Cesares' The Invention of Morel. phenomenal and quick read.
been meaning to get to some more McCarthy but wasn't sure how his stream of consciousness writing style would hit in a longer book, but I did enjoy No Country For Old Men
@Tim meant to follow up last night on the comic/graphic novel recs. Some of the stuff I've read/started and enjoyed: 1. Saga 2. Descender 3. Black Science 4. Vagabond (only a couple of volumes in) 5. Vinland Saga (only a few of volumes in) 6. One Piece (only a few volumes in) 7. Monster (only a few volumes in) 8. PLUTO (LOVED it) Very much haven't dug into the DC/Marvel world only because it felt super overwhelming, but I'm realizing it's just a matter of finding an arc that sounds interesting and jumping in, so that's why I grabbed the first 2 volumes of AbsBatman and a couple of classics.
Not to parent brag about my kid thing, and this is mostly thanks to my wife who has been reading chapter books with him, but she's been asking him comprehension questions about what she's reading him (he's been very into the "I Survived" books), or more he asks questions and then she kinda uses her teacher skills to turn it back on him. And they were reading "I Survived....Gettysburg" and the main character is an escaped slave, and it came up in the book that the masters wouldn't let them read. So my son asked why weren't they allowed to read, and i forget how the series of questions went but basically she finally asked him something like "why wouldn't the masters want them to read books then?" and he said "because it could give them ideas and the masters didn't want them having ideas" or something like that. Super proud parent moment and I hope to god other millennial aged parents out there who have the time and means to do it area reading to their kids like that and getting them off the screens. Yeah I feel very "old man yells at cloud" so often these days but I feel like I really cannot express enough how seriously "kids these days" is accurate lol. I've been observing students or subbing since I was...22? 23? years old, and I never felt like kids were all THAT bad until they came back from covid phones permanently attached to their hands. Like I noticed it a little bit in that 2017-2020 window but it absolutely was NOT this bad with their reading abilities and comprehension. Like back then my bigger concern was the vocabulary they were using when writing lol That's the GenPol thread too feels like most of the regulars have been in there since 2010-2012 or so, some regs have moved on and others have joined. THough the comfort level there look more like this: But then after it's all out of our systems we just carry on posting news and/or talking about the next subject lol Idk we've had some MAGA folks pop up here and there haha Not to belabor the point (and i deleted some other quotes since I got to the end of the discussion and saw that most had moved on), but that thread moves so fast you'd never catch if someone was talking about you unless either someone told you or you got really lucky and happened to click on the page it was happening by chance lol I think I read mostly "trash" but not the tiktok smut trash that has gotten popular. My "trash" is more....well I like to read about zombies lol. Which yes has also led me to some YA and I loved the two YA zombies series' I read and I also really liked The Hunger Games. But I think it's completely fair to point out that it's crazy to call The Hunger Games the best book ever and that you can critique the masses' choice of that as a bit disappointing even if yes the collection method for that data isn't exactly scientific and I'm sure there is some selection bias in who is taking that poll or whatever. Doesn't mean you're looking down at anyone....but also at the same time sometimes a little judgement, as long as it isn't mean spirited, can be warranted or even, dare I say, good? lol I don't think I've ever read any of the "literary classics", but I also don't know what "counts" as those. Like I've read To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye and some Shakespeare and etc, do those count? Or is it like some of the ones you guys were just talking about like Ulysses or whatever? Are they in the same category?? Moby Dick? Tale of Two Cities? etc etc....I don't know enough about literature to know how these things are categorized haha. I will thank the booktok trend for giving my wife some reading ideas which went over well in our household (obligatory post from me) "Poetry is on Hospice" would make a pretty sick 2000s/2010s emo song or album title. If anyone wants some zombie 'trash' or YA zombie trash reccs, I have em! Pretty sure I've also posted them before so lol. Also I really liked The Great Santini when I read that as a junior in HS and again as an adult.
I tried to read Ulysses to impress a girl like 15 years ago when I wasn't even an avid reader. I think I got halfway through which looking back was impressive for me at the time. I think I only understood about 1/3 of that half though. The food pun section ruled though. I will finish it before I die.
Also not belabor the point, but the weirdest thing I found in all of this is that people put asterisks in other people's name to talk shit about them. Is that something that happens in other threads or is that another inside joke? I know it's an open thread, but why do that unless you're trying to run some sort of cover for what you're saying?