And I don’t mean to deride King from some highbrow perspective and imply he’s pulpy and lowbrow and, gasp, not literary. Like, nothing makes me feel a heavier, crushing sadness and despair more than when I see people pretend like they like Ulysses by James Joyce.
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¯_(ツ)_/¯ I enjoyed it. Read it twice. Fuck Finnegans Wake, though.
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I never got beyond the moo cows in Portrait of an Artist
There’s a scene in that book where the protagonist is being picked on at school. One of the other boys asks him “Do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?” and he says that he doesn’t. The boy announces to everyone else that here’s a fellow who doesn’t kiss his mother before he goes to bed! Confused and embarrassed at the raucous reaction, he then insists that no, he actually does kiss his mother before he goes to bed, and receives the same response.
The annotations to the edition I read described this scene as ‘cryptic’ or something like that. Apparently no earthly notion of what the joke was. So I mean, there’s people out there writing Joycean annotations who may as well never have gotten past the moo cows. Don’t feel bad.
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I think there’s a Lolita edition that explains all the jokes and wordplay and I’m so going to get it eventually. Fuck figuring this shit out on your own. Finnegan’s Wake is like a Jackson Pollock painting, like in the more direct sense that I take it as random splashing and dripping of ink on a page.
Nah, I have read little snippets here and there, and based on those I’ll cheerfully accept it as a giant cryptic crossword I have no interest in ever trying to solve. I do consider anyone who’s not Irish or heavily steeped in Irish culture and history to be at a massive disadvantage reading Joyce, though.
I was like, “Goddamit Allinflynn just posted above me and he’s an Irishman. This Joyce jab is not gonna go over well.” But I stuck to my guns.
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You well-read types will appreciate this, one of my favorite things ever:
James Joyce
Thusly and thricely slaked he uptrod the spiral staircase and fancied for himself only a briny frieze.
— Give out, Jesuit, or forever in peace may you lie.
Sardonic, sardonic was the smile then adopted. It can twist forever ( if the vicars will allow, if the oxen pull the plow ).
— Dearly beloved, he quipped through shut mouth, did not Rapunzel cry from on high?
She skipped with a slow whistle to the first stone slab. As at Young Colin’s, on the eve of Fata Morgana, all rose quietly. How could it be remiss?
Thanatopsis. Requiescat In Pace .
Prediction: Unclear
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My sister had to school me that the writer was probably thinking of Charlotte Bronte and not Jane Austen but the idea still resonated:
Jane Austen
Hyacinth and amethyst adorned the landscape of her heart, betrothed to fragrant oakmoss and blazing scarlet within the amorous lovestrokes of an incandescent horizon. In the shade of the gray branches, she put pen to paper. “I love you, Tom Brady,” it began. “Though others call you wicked.”
Prediction: Handsome Tom 46, Stern Aunt Louisa 9
Sooner rather than later, machine learning of author’s styles = death of human literature, discuss
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Novels?? This is what you pick out as doomed because of machine learning?
It’s the last creative frontier not already obviously doomed?
painting/visual art = basically doomed, music = basically doomed, games = basically doomed, passionate love making = basically doomed
Machines still kinda suck at dancing, but writing a 2nd rate horror novel that borrows some stylistic flourishes from other authors, seems very possible to me.
Figurative language probably safe for now, although I’d be curious what would happen if you tried training them with thousands of simple metaphors and see if the learning systems eventually figure out how they work.
I forget if I’ve seen this site linked here, but it’s fun to play around with even if you’re not worried about AI eventually ruining literature. It’s a little hit or miss, but sometimes it’s pretty impressive. Basically, it takes a passage of writing and tries to extend it in the same style. I listened to a podcast with a published author who actually said she liked giving it some of her writing and seeing if it gave her any plot ideas, lol.
Here’s a short passage of allinflynn’s post from above, followed by the machines’s first attempt (in italics).
Nah, I have read little snippets here and there, and based on those I’ll cheerfully accept it as a giant cryptic crossword I have no interest in ever trying to solve. I do consider anyone who’s not Irish or heavily steeped in Irish culture and history to be at a massive disadvantage reading Joyce, though. In the end, I think you will agree that there is much more to Joyce’s work than simply the story itself. It is the work that Joyce wrote, the thoughts, the references, the words, the ideas, the history, the ideas. It is what Joyce wrote, not the story.
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Obviously may as well see if it can improve the lad himself (bold was the prompt):
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
“My friend, come and see this, and tell me your judgment. For I believe, though you have heard no tales, that you too, at some future time, will understand that what I have spoken to you is not a tale but the truth, and what I have taught you will be wisdom. For I am a stranger to all this. What I know about you, and about the country, I got at first from your own lips.”
The lather he poured into Mulligan’s bowl was an excellent mixture of lather, but the water was not sufficient to bring out the scent of the flower and the fruit of the plant.
Seems to have not realised that Mulligan is the bloke with the bowl, but then maybe that’s just me not getting it like I didn’t get the actual Ulysses.
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lol.
Isn’t Ulysses just a day in the life of an irish dude? Literally, just one dude’s stream of consciousness as he goes about his day. Not my jam, but I didn’t think it was terrible either
Nah, it starts with Stephen Dedalus, then switches over to/between him and Leopold Bloom, there’s some stuff that’s objective third-person, some that’s not readily identifiable, at least one bit typed out like a play as I recall, and at the end, it (famously) switches to stream-of-consciousness first-person narration of Bloom’s wife, Molly.
Don’t care what anyone says, this is one of the finest pieces of writing in the Western canon. There’s a reason you’ve seen a lot of shitty imitations:
and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Well as well him as another is just… devastating. Formative, as a fifteen-year-old.
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I, smrkresias, am more of a “Hardly aware of her departed lover” kind of guy
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Joyceans and Eliotians agree: Bitches be tripping.
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Finished fault lines, it was great especially the stuff from start to 2000 since I was born in 86.