Opinion of James Joyce

[politicus]

Pervert

But a lovable pervert.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Pervert

For a moment, I thought Al is refeering to BRTD, who's a very readon of this poll.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Judging Joyce solely on Finnegans Wake is like judging the Beatles by Revolution 9. Then again, I'm sure you don't care either because it doesn't fit the bogus narrative you are trying to spin.

I don't even know what Revolution 9 is, but I imagine an analogy that would work would be judging Sunny Day Real Estate on Jeremy Enigk's solo album.

But anyway I understand Ulysses is also pretty dense and unreadable though in a different way. The excerpts of it I've seen certainly are.

His stuff is all public domain now right? So if so link me to something readable of his.

It should be noted that BRTD is judging James Joyce as someone who basically doesn't read books.

That's not true.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

It should be noted that BRTD is judging James Joyce as someone who basically doesn't read books.

That's not true.

Well, you pretty much did admit you didn't read Joyce

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It should be noted that BRTD is judging James Joyce as someone who basically doesn't read books.

That's not true.

Well, you pretty much did admit you didn't read Joyce

Not reading Joyce only translates to not reading books only if Joyce authored literally every single book in existence, which is obviously not the case.

[patrick1]

Portrait of the Artist as a young man, Dubliners and Ulysses are all readable. It would take patience for you to pick up on the Irish slang of time and literary/Greek reference in Ulysses but it is easier for me to follow than say Faulkner.

I personally don't see the value of Finnegans Wake- I'd like to think Joyce is laughing at his piss take being taken so seriously... then again Joyce was an odd dude.

[traininthedistance]

I don't even know what Revolution 9 is

And you expect us to take your opinion of the Beatles seriously.

Seriously?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don't even know what Revolution 9 is

And you expect us to take your opinion of the Beatles seriously.

Seriously?

Not exactly. It'd be like if you for some reason went to one of my music forums and said "Jawbreaker sucks" (as you probably think they do) which is basically about as blasphemous to someone in my subculture as what I said about the Beatles to a diehard Beatles fan. Honestly you'd probably just be written off as a troll who can't be serious, but hey you probably still hold that opinion.

BTW despite the claim I don't read books I actually did just start reading one, I liked The Hunger Games movie so I started reading that as I got the impression there was a bunch in the movie that got left out. Haven't seen the second movie yet but will soon, and might finish the whole trilogy before the third movie comes out.

[traininthedistance]

I don't even know what Revolution 9 is

And you expect us to take your opinion of the Beatles seriously.

Seriously?

Not exactly. It'd be like if you for some reason went to one of my music forums and said "Jawbreaker sucks" (as you probably think they do) which is basically about as blasphemous to someone in my subculture as what I said about the Beatles to a diehard Beatles fan. Honestly you'd probably just be written off as a troll who can't be serious, but hey you probably still hold that opinion.

BTW despite the claim I don't read books I actually did just start reading one, I liked The Hunger Games movie so I started reading that as I got the impression there was a bunch in the movie that got left out. Haven't seen the second movie yet but will soon, and might finish the whole trilogy before the third movie comes out.

I don't know anything about Jawbreaker.  I can guess that they probably suck but why would I go out of my way to slam them or advertise my ignorance?  I know better than to do such a thing.

Besides, it's not equivalent anyway because the Beatles are bigger than Jesus and your Gobstoppers or whatever are a niche of a niche of a niche.  A familiarity with their work would be a prerequisite for talking intelligently about your genre... but a familiarity with the Beatles is a prerequisite for talking intelligently about pretty much the entirety of pop music.  Even if you reject them- which is well within your rights, but if you're gonna reject them from a position of obvious ignorance, well you should be able to anticipate the reactions you're gonna get in the wider world by now.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

His stuff is all public domain now right?

As of 2012 yes, and thank God because his estate were acting like huge dicks about practically any use of his work that they didn't like, even scholarly citations with which they disagreed.

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Here's 'The Dead', which a lot of people consider the best short story written in English (although it's long enough that it could also qualify as a novella by some standards). Short and easy enough to read in one or two sittings, and emotionally moving. Before you ask, the misuse of 'literally' in the first sentence is intentional since Joyce wrote this in a style of third-person that acts like first-person and is imitating the character's understanding of the meaning of the word.

If you want to cut your teeth on something a little shorter, very short indeed, here's 'Araby' and here's 'A Painful Case'. All of these stories are from Dubliners.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don't even know what Revolution 9 is

And you expect us to take your opinion of the Beatles seriously.

Seriously?

Not exactly. It'd be like if you for some reason went to one of my music forums and said "Jawbreaker sucks" (as you probably think they do) which is basically about as blasphemous to someone in my subculture as what I said about the Beatles to a diehard Beatles fan. Honestly you'd probably just be written off as a troll who can't be serious, but hey you probably still hold that opinion.

BTW despite the claim I don't read books I actually did just start reading one, I liked The Hunger Games movie so I started reading that as I got the impression there was a bunch in the movie that got left out. Haven't seen the second movie yet but will soon, and might finish the whole trilogy before the third movie comes out.

I don't know anything about Jawbreaker.  I can guess that they probably suck but why would I go out of my way to slam them or advertise my ignorance?  I know better than to do such a thing.

Well here's their signature song, most die hard fans would argue it's not their best, but it's the most well known, most quoted, and has been covered about a million times. It's also how I found out about Jack Kerouac.

This is commonly cited as their best song (I disagree, but I also think their best songs are also ones that aren't rather accessible, while this one is.)

Besides, it's not equivalent anyway because the Beatles are bigger than Jesus and your Gobstoppers or whatever are a niche of a niche of a niche.  A familiarity with their work would be a prerequisite for talking intelligently about your genre... but a familiarity with the Beatles is a prerequisite for talking intelligently about pretty much the entirety of pop music.  Even if you reject them- which is well within your rights, but if you're gonna reject them from a position of obvious ignorance, well you should be able to anticipate the reactions you're gonna get by now.

No Jawbreaker is one of those bands that's far more influential than they are known, pretty much every punk band since the mid-90s is heavily influenced by them, and actually are pretty well known in non-mainstream circles too, the AV Club even had one of their songs covered by the Mountain Goats as part of their series before for f[inks] sake (the one above Boxcar. As I said, covered a million times) and I've had people tell me "nice shirt" or "I love your shirt" when wearing my Jawbreaker shirt at places like the grocery store, Target and church, not exactly scene places.

Besides all I said was their best songs are in the later works and their earlier stuff is too polished.

[Хahar 🤔]

Wait, wasn't the whole deal with Jawbreaker that their later stuff was way too polished and all their fans hated it?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Wait, wasn't the whole deal with Jawbreaker that their later stuff was way too polished and all their fans hated it?

It's kind of complicated. What initially occurred is before their last album Dear You they signed to a major label, which obviously provoked lots of sellout accusations, and in addition to having more polished production Blake had throat surgery before the album was recorded, so his vocal style was a lot less raspy than before. So it was their most mainstream and accessible album, got a poor reception, flopped, the band broke up shortly later and it went out of print. However then as new people started to discover it on early internet piracy sites and Napster got a better reception as you'll probably like it much better if you listen to it after listening to all the bands influenced by Jawbreaker rather than their earlier stuff first, you're not likely to be disappointment. So it ended up being kind of a historically vindicated classic that received a re-release with bonus tracks in 2004.

Of course you'll still find people who call it their worst album and hate it, but they're definitely a minority amongst people who got into Jawbreaker after Jawbreaker broke up, aka almost all their fans today.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

For the record I do think Dear You is a tad overrated. Not because it's too polished or mainstream sounding, but because it has more than a couple filler tracks that are kind of boring. But if you were compiling a Best of compilation of Jawbreaker, you can't ignore it for Accident Prone, Million and of course, Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault.