Dubliners and Portrait are both accessible enough. They're masterpieces and the later had a huge impact on me. I started with that but Dubliners is great since it's a collection of short stories.

I paused Ulysses years back and having gone back yet. It's just so dense and I don't understand most of the references. I'll come back to it eventually, begrudgingly with a companion piece I'm sure to get the most out of it. But the first few hundred pages have left an impression for a very long time. No mystery why it's so revered.

Hearing that Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake need companion pieces kind of got me shook, is the same required of these two books?

@based4life

not at all, the two books i named are pretty straightforward reads. Dubliners is a collection of short stories about people in Dublin, for example.

Word, I'll definitely prioritize reading both books soon, thank you.

Ulysses is my favourite book oat

he really did not give af about non-Irish people not understanding the historical references, slang and turns of phrase and the amount of Dublin locations that are namedropped lol

Did all the references (Irish/historical/etc) make Ulysses difficult for you to read and did you read it with a companion piece?

im actually from ireland so that was all fine lol but i did feel for people from other countries who might be totally lost on those aspects because its already a challenging book without that.

i did read some a***yses / synopses online for some of the chapters towards the end of the book though as the writing styles got more difficult.

theres one chapter where Joyce writes in a series of older forms of English that seems like borderline nonsense to anyone who isnt a linguistics professor. thats why i always describe it to people as my favourite book that at the same time has parts i never want to read again lol. that sounds very weird to anyone who hasnt read it but anyone who has will know exactly what i mean

Do you have any thoughts of the effectiveness/impact of switching writing styles and forms of English?

I've never heard of anything like that before

And thank you for the detailed response

no problem lmao i love talking about this book to anyone who will listen

the variety in the writing styles he uses is one of the main draws to the book. yes it comes with the caveat that there will be parts you can’t wait to be over like the one i just described, but that’s just the tradeoff of something being as kaleidoscopic as Ulysses is. it really feels like an encyclopaedia on everyday life in all its crazy stupidity and beauty. its okay if you dont understand it all because thats the way life is.

i mean the ‘plot’ revolves around 24 hours in the life of an otherwise normal man in Dublin and paralleling it with one of the greatest epics in human history lol. it is actually a seriously funny book, and Joyce really flexes his ability for puns, meta-humour and even going as far to write stuff that is basically him having a laugh at the readers’ expense.

it really is a book like no other and really opened my eyes to whats possible in literature.

Damn, this really makes me want to read the book, thank you

Just trying to imagine how having a whole part in super old English for example could be part of what you're describing but I guess that would be best answered by actually reading the book