# Joyce's Ulysses....keeping Aspirin in business

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joyces-ulysses-keeping-aspirin-in-business/17395>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [January 16, 2000, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joyces-ulysses-keeping-aspirin-in-business/17395 "2000-01-16T02:15:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Jo3sh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a587f6/32.png) [@Jo3sh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jo3sh)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2000, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joyces-ulysses-keeping-aspirin-in-business/17395/21 "2000-02-05T05:13:00Z")

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I look at it like this:

Many of the very best musicians seem to produce more and more complex work, going from fairly accessible in their early works to “way out there” in the later works. In the truly great musicians, it seems, the later works are _so far_ out there that practically nobody understands all the complexities, and the great majority of the listeners get lost and just go, “Whatever. I couldn’t get into it.” However, even in these extreme cases, there is a really, really strange core of listeners (most of them musicians themselves) who spend rapt hours grooving to the music and talking about things most of the rest of the world has no idea even exists.

James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner seem to be literary versions of the same phenomenon. Practically no “normal” person reads them for enjoyment, yet a certain group of people (like English profs and other literary geeks) really, really dig them.

I have not read _Ulysses_, but I have read some of Joyce’s shorter works, and enjoyed them. The two that come to mind are _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ and “Araby.” “Araby,” in particular, formed such strong images in my mind that I can still recall very specific details about the story more than ten yeaars later, despite the fact that I read it only once.

Maybe Hemingway is the same thing, and I just never had the ability to “get it.”

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A committee is a lifeform with six or more legs and no brain.

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**Author:** ![Jo3sh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a587f6/32.png) [@Jo3sh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jo3sh)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2000, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joyces-ulysses-keeping-aspirin-in-business/17395/22 "2000-02-05T05:32:00Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Originally posted by rackensack:  
> \*\*I will say that the net effect of recorded music, television, and movies in this century has been a decline in the willingness and ability of many readers to construct or perform the text for themselves. \*\*

## \<vehement agreement\> I find it amazing to note the difference between my ability to read and comprehend a reasonably complex sentence and that of my peers. I attribute this directly to the fact that I grew up almost entirely without television, and relied (and still do rely) on the printed word for my entertainment. This causes me no end of dismay when I write documentation for software installs or similar procedures, and find that the users cannot even click “Next” without rereading the directions twice. (Worse yet are the users who rush through without bothering to read the docs.) Just today I revised a document for a five-minute install that doesn’t even require a reboot; it’s now seven pages long. The fact is, the adults of today have mostly never read books for pleasure or information; instead, they watch the instructional video.

A committee is a lifeform with six or more legs and no brain.

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