Apology to Mr. Joyce . . . a little

James Joyce may not suck as much as I like to say he does.

The first thing I ever read of his was Ulysses. That book is a pretentious piece of crap. The man wrote the book just to show his superiority to others and to confuse his readers. He actually admitted that. However, I later read his short story The Dead. I enjoyed it, but not enough to lessen my extreme hate towards him.

I recently finished his book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I did not fall in-love with this book. I did not enjoy any of the characters in the book (probably because Stephen is an alter-ego of Joyce). It focused a lot on how guilty all Catholics are, which can be a little amusing. I did enjoy the overall look at a boy forsaking an overbearing and incorrect religion. The book is riddle with allusion to all kinds of intellectual and religious works like Dante, Greek Mythology, Catholic saints and martyrs, etc which is something I always enjoy. Speaking from a literary point-of-view, the book does do many intriguing things and focuses on an extremely titchy topic.

So, all-in-all, James Joyce does not suck as much as I have always claimed. I still hate him as a person and will never lightly thumb through his work, but I think both of those things would bring him joy. I officially call a truce between James and I. I will continue to hate and bad mouth Ulysses, but will not be so horrible to him and his other bodies of work. Maybe Finnigan's Wake from everything I have heard about it, but not the rest.