Posted by vpRockstar at pool0031.cvx4-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net on April 02, 2000 at 20:47:24:
In Reply to: Just because.... posted by MickCollins. on April 02, 2000 at 20:19:05:
: Just because you have the reading skills of a third grader who got his head caught in a bucket of cattle placentas, does'nt mean writers you don't understand suck. When the critics rated the top 100 writers of the century, Jimmy JJ Joyce wiped the floors with those pussies like Hemingway.
I can understand that James Joyce is so painfully esoteric that I don't enjoy reading his books. Actually, I should say that I didn't enjoy reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or "Araby" because I haven't read anything else by Joyce. Granted his style is a bit confusing (anyone who says that they understood every word, symbol, or event in any book of his on the first reading would be lying), the recurring allusions to the myth of Icarus and Daedelus in Portrait were interesting.
Think back to the origin of the debate though - comic books. James Joyce's stream of consciousness style, symbolist imagery, usual themes of growing up, and his advanced and sometimes arbitrarily fabricated language would not make for a decent comic book.
Personally, I understand Joyce and I still think that he is a shit-eater who writes only for himself. A real wordsmith, in my eye, is somebody like Joseph Heller (Rest in Peace) who can write brilliant, humorous, and tragic books that express his own beliefs in a clear, non-condescending manner. And for the record: Hemingway does suck and was, indeed, a pussy.