James Joyce help?

[Coffeebookscarbs]

Can anyone help me get more into Joyce's books?

I'm fairly used to heavy reads (Tolstoy/Dostoevsky etc) but I reallllly want to read Joyce but so far neither Finnegan's Wake or Dubliners has really struck a chord with me.

I have an annotated copy of Ulysses but I'm not even attempting that (yet?)

Is anyone here a Joyce superfan or has any versions to recommend (maybe with a helpful preface?) I'm in a bookclub but no-one there is into his books.

Tia x

Ulysses gave me PTSD, hth 😅

We had to read Dubliners for A level English Lit and it was sooo dull (and my mum used to say I'd read the phone book for entertainment). It was so laden with symbolism he forgot to put actual stories in. The last page of "The Dead" was good, I suppose, but that's it.
I've opened Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses and shut them again. Joyce is either not my bag or massively overrated. Sorry it's not what you asked, but why are you trying to make yourself like his writing? Isn't it a bit like trying to make yourself enjoy olives or yoga?
If you don't happen to get any more useful advice , I would say either just plough through Ulysses any old how, just so you can say to yourself that you've read it, because it's the famous one, then punt it into the bin. Or just save time and punt it into the bin now.

If I could live my life again, I wouldn’t bother trying to get into the works of James Joyce.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was pretty good as I recall, but I read it a long time ago and I’ve never revisited it. It had a proper narrative to it.

I’d give that a go, and if it doesn’t work then Joyce will never be for you and that’s fine, you’ll have a lot more time on your hands to read people who are more interesting or who at least wrote better stories.

But I love olives and yoga 🫠

it's just on my book bucket list (also im not well at the moment and need a challenge to keep me busy)

There was a helpful thread on this board about reading James Joyce a few months ago. It might come up if you search under key words. There was mention of a podcast that sounded good. * *

Listen to the audiobooks and pat yourself on the back for a job well done would be my advice. I had to read a Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man in Uni and that’s what I did. What made it even better was that the audiobook was narrated by the author that played Bishop Brennan in Father Ted

Jim Norton. He was brilliant and so was Marcella Rioardan who reads Molly Bloom's soliloquy towards the end. I loved the audiobook and it made me more likely to want to read a text version - the reason I haven't yet is because it's too much of an undertaking while I have a PhD to finish off. But I will.

Definitely listen to the audio books so you hear the musicality of the prose. Dubliners and Portrait are my favourites. DS adores Ulysses, but I just don’t have the stamina.

I am a philistine and have never read any James Joyce but I implore you to read this Twitter thread through to the end. I promise it’s worth it. (Really hope hope I linked it correctly)
https://x.com/Jabaluck/status/1866584397333369136

I think I did Portrait of The Artist for GCSE rather than A level, which suggests tjose setting the texts thought it was widely manageable. So I'd probably say start there. My recollection is it was vaguely interesting in style and characters but not so much in storyline.

Ulysses is lovely, and far more likeable than doomy Dubliners or angst-ridden Portrait — not that these aren’t brilliant. If you’d like a short Joyce text to start with, why not try ‘The Dead’, which is a long short story/novella from the end of Dubliners, but a more generous-spirited and gentle affair (with an old John JpHuston film adaptation which is almost certain on YouTube)?

There’s a good ‘guide’ to Ulysses called The Bloomsday Book by Harry Blamires which summarises each episode in plain prose, which lets you relax and enjoy the fizz and experiment of the language. (Almost certainly lots of resources available online, too, but I couldn’t point you to any I would recommend as particularly good. Lots of fairly cursory ‘cheat sheet Sparknotes crap.) If you’re struggling with glum, hairsplitting Stephen Dedalus as your POV character in the first three episodes, I’d suggest starting with the fourth, which is when we first meet Leopold Bloom, pottering around feeding the cat, (he’s the other POV character), and circling back once you’ve got your bearings.

OP try reading www.thejoyceproject.com as the hyperlinks give you info on all the references & contextual info. I found this v helpful when I was starting out.

I loved Dubliners & Portrait but Ulysses is one of the greatest loves of my life.

I hope you read it & love it!

I think the trick to Ulysses is to just sort of let it was over you and sink into it, rather than trying to analyse it all as you go

(I'm probably not articulating that well, but you sort of have to get in a certain 'zone')

Good luck!