I was really into Joyce five or six years ago. It was at the height of my pseudo-literary pretensions. A lot of the material for my pretentious affectations/notions came straight outta Joyce. I think I was more into the notion of Joyce the recondite genius, bewildering everybody with the complexity and obscurity of his art - the pride, the lack of compromise, the sheer dedication... all things I lack, really. Above all else perhaps was his self-interest, which was overwhelming, and which I could identify with. At least, that's how I saw it back then, I think. If not self-interest, than at least self-belief.
I mean, I only ever read 'Dubliners', 'A Portrait...' and the first 30 pages of 'Ulysses'. Also Richard Ellman's biography of Joyce (which is wonderful, by the way). So clearly I liked the idea of his experiments more than having to actually read through and confront them. The prospect of reading 'Ulysses' is daunting - apart from anything else it seems you need to know quite a lot about the history of literature to understand large parts of it (the brothel scene, with its parodies and allusive hallucinations). But then, you really also need to know almost as much about Joyce's life as he did in order to 'get' it. Martin Amis wrote a good little thing about Joyce (can't stand Amis's fiction for the most part but his lit-crit is fun) where he said something like 'Joyce was, famously, a writers' writer. Perhaps its more accurate to say he was a writer's writer'.
Anyway, I'm not trying to slate him, I'm really slating myself, aged 18ish, wading through books like 'A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man' and 'The Trial' without understanding most of what I was reading, simply in order to feel clever. As it happens, though, I really love some of the Joyce I've read, and that certainly includes those first 30 odd pages of 'Ulysses'. Like I said, I don't think I understood 'A Portrait' at all when I read it, but there are certainly passages of immense (though delicate, subtly drawn) beauty which anybody can understand or feel simply by reading them. 'Dubliners' is very good too, particularly ''The Dead'' which is one of the best things I've ever read (especially having analysed it more deeply for an English Language essay at Uni). 'Dubliners' is often compared to Chekhov's short stories and I think there are certainly similarities (and I LOVE Chekhov's short stories more than almost anything else). I'm probably placing too much emphasis on 'understanding' his work, and being uncharitable to my 18 year old self (at least HE read books)...
I really doubt I'll ever read ''Finnegan's Wake''. If I read ''Ulysses'' before I die I'll consider myself vindicated for my former crimes.
