Ulysses (1922)
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luka
Well-known member
I think I was a reasonably good speller as a child but if at some point your self identity stops being rolled up with a particular trait, you lose it. people drop out of the clever race at different times too don't they, say, I don't need that any more, or I can't compete, and you drop out. I dropped out of the academic competition aged 7.
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shiels
_
I dropped out around puberty in secondary school maybe 12/13. Because I couldn’t be the smartest anymore, i'd have to do work, and I encountered the real nerds, the real deal ones you see on university challenge, you can see it in their face that they're on a different plane, and I couldnt beat those freaks! plus there was more interesting stuff happening
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
True.
I've tried to read diaries I wrote when I was a student and it's absolutely unbearable because I'm obviously on a diet of 19th century fiction and literary criticism. Combined with massive insecurity, lonely misery and the pretensions of youth it all adds up to a cocktail of cunt.
I've tried to read diaries I wrote when I was a student and it's absolutely unbearable because I'm obviously on a diet of 19th century fiction and literary criticism. Combined with massive insecurity, lonely misery and the pretensions of youth it all adds up to a cocktail of cunt.
luka
Well-known member
I suspect this is because it tends to be working just phrase to phrase without any wider energetic or rhythmic arc
luka
Well-known member
You're not getting these swells and and lulls and crescendos. One notable exception being the most famous passage in the book
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.
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.
version
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DeLillo does that on purpose. He's said from The Names onward, he started to write by the sentence and pay more attention to how each word looked on the page, how they sat next to each other.
When I was working on The Names I devised a new method—new to me, anyway. When I finished a paragraph, even a three-line paragraph, I automatically went to a fresh page to start the new paragraph. No crowded pages. This enabled me to see a given set of sentences more clearly. It made rewriting easier and more effective. The white space on the page helped me concentrate more deeply on what I’d written. And with this book I tried to find a deeper level of seriousness as well. The Names is the book that marks the beginning of a new dedication. I needed the invigoration of unfamiliar languages and new landscapes, and I worked to find a clarity of prose that might serve as an equivalent to the clear light of those Aegean islands. The Greeks made an art of the alphabet, a visual art, and I studied the shapes of letters carved on stones all over Athens. This gave me fresh energy and forced me to think more deeply about what I was putting on the page. Some of the work I did in the 1970s was off-the-cuff, not powerfully motivated. I think I forced my way into a couple of books that weren’t begging to be written, or maybe I was writing too fast. Since then I’ve tried to be patient, to wait for a subject to take me over, become part of my life beyond the desk and typewriter. Libra was a great experience that continues to resonate in my mind because of the fascinating and tragic lives that were part of the story. And The Names keeps resonating because of the languages I heard and read and touched and tried to speak and spoke a little and because of the sunlight and the elemental landscapes that I tried to blend into the book’s sentences and paragraphs.
(That quote isn't the one I'm thinking of, but he talks about it a little there.)
version
Well-known member
This is partly what I was getting at re: Joyce mentioning lots of mundane things alongside the cosmic. It feels stable despite the scope, complexity and experimentation. Deleuze's "piece of fresh land". Nothing's solid in what came after. Once you get to Burroughs, Pynchon etc, it's all in pieces.