We'll be heading north later in the afternoon, probably to break our fast, for the final time this year, on the road. Doing so has always had a very special quality. I think this Far Place will be a step beyond for a few days until we return on Monday as I can't see myself fighting for computer rights in Melaka somehow, so a quick Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri to all.
And just a few words on that most epic of all journeymen, the illustrious Odysseus, or rather the more down to earth version as manifested in Joyce's Ulysses. The Hierophant rightly notes in a recent comment that there are various ways of reading the novel (he mentions two good'uns) and that it presents problems of comprehension. The incomprehensibility of the text at certain (indeed, frequent) points I regard as one of its great joys. A mania for understanding everything pervades modern ways of reading and I blame the study of English for it. There's a place in reading for not getting the point and just going with the flow. I suspect there are more than a few bits of Ulysses that even Joyce would not be too sure of. But it sounds great!
But the real key to enjoying the novel is making sure you get to know the characters. Behind all that verbal magic are perfectly 'real' characters, in the sense that realism as a literary genre would see them as such. In fact, Joyce pushes that realism to an remarkable degree. We get to know Stephen and Bloom and Molly in the kind of detail we'd be seriously worried about if anyone were to find out that stuff about ourselves. And more than the detail, the depths we plumb with them, it's the fact they move us that makes the novel worth reading. In fact, that's why it lives so vividly for so many readers today - and I'm not talking about readers in academies. There's a kind of critical cliché that goes something like the real hero of the novel is language. Nonsense. Idiocy. Joyce knew that people counted far more than the words they make or that make them.
3 comments:
With a text like Ulysses, incomprehension & going with the flow is the best bet for anyone who wants to make it to the end of the book at all...
You're right, though. Despite having not understood much of it, I did feel a distinct sense of pleasure just reading the stuff in the first place, sans comprehension.
Maybe it was the sense of "Haha! No one else in the level has read this before!" (a mildly dubious claim), but there was something else, and you've explained it admirably -- the characters are so real, despite and because of the writing.
Hi Mr. Connor!
A belated Happy Hari Raya, and on a more random note, I had the most vivid dream of you last night. I woke up feeling quite disconcerted :D
Hi Sheela,
Many thanks, much appreciated. But a bit sinister dreaming of ex-teachers, don't you think? Disconcerting is the word.
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