f4f3: (Default)
f4f3 ([personal profile] f4f3) wrote2010-07-13 07:12 pm

To be sure, to be sure, to be sure


I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


[identity profile] indyhat.livejournal.com 2010-07-13 09:04 pm (UTC)(link)
The Wikipedia page on Joyce was actually kind of useless for telling me what characterises Joyce's writing (thematically or stylistically). Any chance you could summarise?

[identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com 2010-07-13 09:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Scary challenge!
His early stuff is fairly traditional, much what you'd expect from a young Irishman with his eyes open.
The later books, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, are characterised byword play - invented words, puns, stream of consciousness, portmanteau words. It's a very dense style, and I love it to bits, but some folk (well, most folk) find it hard to unpack.

[identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com 2010-07-13 09:43 pm (UTC)(link)
And as a taster, the opening of Ulysses:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

--_Introibo ad altare Dei_.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:

--Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

[identity profile] indyhat.livejournal.com 2010-07-13 10:15 pm (UTC)(link)
'Strewth. It's like eating Marmite by the tablespoonful. XP