Stephen Fry on Ulysses - James Joyce
Vložit
- čas přidán 2. 07. 2011
- www.whyilovethisbook.com - One Minute Book Review Videos -
“I’ll tell you the book I have chosen as my favorite book. And it may make some people’s heart sink, because it is associated with difficulty, where in fact it should be associated with joy…”
[ Stephen Fry, 53, polymath, trader in words, entertainer, national embarrassment, London & Hollywood. ]
As a Dubliner preparing to read Ulysses, I did, I confess, read the book Dubliners along with the cliff notes, and watched The Dead directed by John Huston, it was worth the trouble. I also went to all the pubs mentioned in the book and got absolutely hammered and that was worth the trouble too.
Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.
hey, so did you read it?
"I also went to all the pubs mentioned in the book and got absolutely hammered.." - nothing to boast about, 100,000s Dubliners have done this!
I found that Ulysses scans better if it is recited out loud, like a poem.
I find it works best when you read the outer dialogue out loud but read the internal dialogues in your head.
I actually read Ulysses when I cared for patients with dementia, and I found that in reading it out loud to the people I was caring for I was able to pick up on a lot more of the wordplay and rhythm of the piece.
That’s what I have heard from many others. It has got something to do in the fact Odyssey was also written to suit the oral reciting form as that’s how stories were told and passed on in Ancient Greek.
It's hard to convey to someone who, for whatever reason of his/her own, is not familiar with this marvelous novel. I have spent my entire adult life with it. Feasting on it, grazing on it, loving it.
No you haven't.
@@DDDD-hv3ub Well, not me personally but a guy I know. Him and Ulysses got. it. on.
Fry hits the nail on the head here. A great introduction, for its brevity, that I imagine would make any reader desire to, as he says, return to it again and again and again.
Ulysses is hilarious; that is what tends to be forgotten.
I read Ulysses in Polish and due to good translation I was stunned by the mastery of... well any aspect of writing I can think about. Joyce possessed unique talent which allowed him to change the style of storytelling, depending on what he needed to express and keep that formally complex book consistent. What I feel is the most outstanding about this book though is that it had all the potential to become a lame academy-oriented piece, instead it's actually the funniest novel ever written.
I tried it in English... and I failed miserably back then. That was many decades ago and I was still a child, at least mentally. I should pick it up, again. The book is certainly true... but I am not sure how much of a joy it is to read unless English is truly your first language and your profession, which, of course, it is for Stephen Fry.
I spent twelve years building up to this novel, reading "easier" literature. Finally got round to it last year. Parts were opaque, other parts were confusing, and some were fucking magical.
"I doubt that I ever read anything to equal it, and I know that I never read anything to surpass it." An early critic on Joyce's completed "Ulysses"....
That's a little bit too much.
@@wlrlel How so? Can you argue for another book that equals or surpasses 'Ulysses'? Honestly, I cannot.
@@37Dionysos Odyssee, Divina Commedia, Faust I + II, À la recherche du temps perdu...
@@wlrlel I guess we'd need a symposium to explore all the rivalries between 'Ulysses' and each/all of those masterpieces. The "greatest ever" judgment would surely come from the criteria for judging that we'd have to create first. Just that imho, none of them revels in their own and other languages quite as 'U' does. It leaves me with a greater sense of the totality of life/full range of human experience than do the others, nor do any of them have 'Ulysses'' core of sheer life-affirming humor in spite of darkness. Joyce's master was Tolstoy and we'd likely agree that he too is a major Joyce rival. Or it's all my Irish half's bias!
Stephen Fry has given a nice sense of why the book is so good without drowning us with sesquipedalian logorrhea: nice touch comparing it with The Great Gatsby. Ulysses is The Great Gatsby of the novel form, which Joyce renewed, bringing to the novel a new form, an invigoration of content, the dying fall of the daily cycle, and a few choice, well chosen characters of Dublin life.
'Ulysses' is the 'Gatsby' of novels? Uh, what?
In Stephen Fry's defense; the last phrase "and yes I said, yes I will, Yes" has the word recurring thrice (much as a brinded cat hath); if one thinks in terms of pitch and rhythm, we can see how the ever-delightful Mister Fry got to that mis-statement....
I am delighted to see this video. Thank you for posting it.
Stephen Fry... He MUST have a photographic memory; he's such a genius. Or maybe his genius lies within being such a lovely human being.
100th anniversary of the publication this year. Yes, yes, yes to Melle Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Co Paris, for taking a giant leap of faith in its publication. Interestingly, when it was first published it was banned in many countries, except for Ireland. The authorities here said that “no one would bother to read it anyway”. Well, they got that one wrong…..
What a joy that he mentioned Dutch as his random example. Am reading the boldly retitled recent Dutch tandem translation "Ulixes" side by side with Joyce's original, even though I could read the English directly and purely -- oh the immortally childish pleasure of blasphemy!
Started reading it last week for the first time, and I love it. I'm just moving on to chapter 2. I like it.
I am currently reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by Joyce, but I might have to read Ulysses now that I know Stephen loves it so much
I read Portrait whilst I was studying Lit at Uni. One of our books was Dubliners and so I dutifully read Portrait next but I was bored I must confess at the time.
Now, much later I re-read it and it was mesmerising.
Take note of how the Jesuit teachers at young Joyce’s school teach and how they maintain discipline - then read how Stephen teaches his class (Chapter 2 -Nestor) in Ulysses; quite interesting.
Well said sir, I'm a Dubliner and proud of it. If I had a problem with it, it was as you said how the style changes per chapter. But yes it was one great read
I’m on page 300 now, and although it is terribly difficult and often illogical I have cried, numerous times, reading about Molly and Milly and the beauty of it all. The sexuality is quite liberating, I find. Also, McKenna and Morrison, as well as Monroe read it! Honestly, this is the most meaningful book ever. 🙂 Oh, and the poetry is so cutting! “Sea of the cunt”! (Excuse my profanities!)
I feel the same 100%. A line that hasn't left me
"They say a nun invented Barbwire"
Really, both are amazing books if only because of the use of the English language. I'm so glad he also spoke about The Great Gatsby... one of my all time favorites... and he's right; Ulysses is a perfect book. If you find yourself getting through both of these books, chances are you will find yourself a lover of words, language, and you just might read them both again and again. :o)
Haven't read Ulyses but he is dead right about Gatsby. Word perfect, inspired.
I kind of get but don’t get Gatsby. I mean it is a good breezy book but I don’t get the hype around it. I mean I have read more relatively more obscure books that are much more interesting and well written than Gatsby.
@@rishabhaniket1952 I found Gatsby incredibly dull. I have studied it in depth as an adult for my course, I have read analyses and reviews, we had group discussions on it. I still find it dull and needlessly obtuse.
Then I discover, when studying the life of Fitzgerald, that he deliberately made it obtuse to sell more copies, to make enough money to marry a woman, Zelda. Then suddenly I realise that the academic world has been taken for fools.
It's not even clever. It's just boring. I read it 3 times over, it's still just boring. Everything is psuedo-intellectual symbolism and upper-class pontification, nothing is pleasantly descriptive, nothing makes me feel sympathy for the characters. It's a cold book.
@@EzioAuditoreDaFirenze99 Yet some people argue that it’s meant to be cold to signify how plastic and emotionally dry those kind of upper class greed driven people were. But then again you can make that certain argument for so many other dull books as well. It seems even back in those times a reputation was built so much on hype and marketing.
A great book dealing with similar themes but much more interesting is What Makes Sammy Run.
@@EzioAuditoreDaFirenze99 People like to throw around this "they did exactly what people (interested in literatured) wanted and so it sold more copies so it's a big fraud!!!!!" but you can see how if take a step back and rephrase it as I did, how silly that sounds.
It's okay to have a taste that excludes classic novels or classic authors, we don't have to objectively denounce them
I always have a gorgonzola sandwich with a glass of Burgundy when I'm in Ireland.
Ulysses transcends the book format. It cannot be contained
Yeah Stevie - but you can read and enjoy Ulysses without knowing any of the classical references and, yes, it is the most remarkable book that seems to offer something new with each successive reading, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Happy Bloomsday! 🎉🎉🎉
Favourite line: A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled.
The only joy I experienced from Ulysses was finishing it
It’s something people revisit more than once in their lives.
The Last line of Ulysses actually reads: 'Trieste-Zurich-Paris, 1914-1921'.
I was like that but if you keep reading it and once you get to the third chapter or episode (where I am now) it becomes rather brilliant. But as I say I'm only a bit through the book and I agree that the first chapter is hard.
I guarantee you will not finish it unless you re maschostistic!
Wholeheartedly agree with the comments of Stephen Fry. Great book.
@edmund184 As Christian Moevs points out in his brilliant book on Dante, a work of art's greatness is measured in how the ideas it expresses can only be measured in the work of art. The exact qualities it has can't be accurately reduced to description without losing essential aspects. Ulysses is simply this: a massive immersion in an alternate reality. The patter of experiences wash over you to the point where it becomes as impossible to take in as life itself and it becomes an escape.
I am grateful to Stephen for this explanation. I had to write about Ulysses for my degree. It was agony for me. I could not understand why anyone would write such a book, let alone read it. Actually I just didn't understand it at all. 30 years later I managed to complete it as an audio book just because I needed to finally grasp the meaning of the key text of modernism before I die. I still don't. It's an flat wall of nothingness to me, I hate it. At least from this video and the comments below I can get a sense why others enjoy and honour it so much.
@Tony Cope
Read it again. Read it out loud. You'll be glad you did.
@@ambskater97 I listened to it on audio book. Still rubbish.
@@ladystardust2008 Read what I wrote carefully. Read it yourself out loud.
@@ambskater97 I honestly don't need to do that.
alright educate me. What insights into life do we get from this masterpiece?
I tried reading it several times and I fall asleep despite my best efforts every time. Oh well.
Read it in the early afternoon
Totally agree with you, Mr Fry.
I seriusly Doubt that Fry read the whole parcel of crap...if he did he may be the only person who did ever!
You deserve a medal, I think it's fair to say.
@katelynna10000 Ulysses is definitely harder than portrait. However it is much deeper and the characters are great. In portrait, I find the only character that matters is Stephen. In Ulysses you can connect with almost every character.
"Dream of Red Chamber" is one of the best literary work (but unknown to the west).
Keep reading, it's worth it. Cheers.
There's a half dozen of Dicken's books that I would place above Ulysses, I can already hear the howls of derision and I am certainly not bothered about that, his masterpiece, Great Expectations is a cut above.
Different century. Different readership. I would also not concur. Drama aside... Dickens is like watching paint dry. OK, maybe Joyce was experimenting with even slower drying paint. I will give you that. ;-)
Agreed. Ulysses is overrated.
Dickens wrote too much.
@@stephensharp3033 he was paid per installment, duh. At least his works are intelligible and not available exclusively to the Literati. Most people who enjoy Ulysses have to have it explained to them or have some type of supplementation with it. He should've made it like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where most of the book is capable of being understood all by itself. Had he done this, I'd consider Ulysses a masterpiece.
Dickens was too much of a cartoonist. I love Great Expectations but he writes too much like a cartoon. He's on the list of great authors but with a big asterisk, and below when you reference the asterisk it reads "Great for a cartoon writer". Don't even get me started on Oliver Twist. What a Disney cartoon man.
the last three words are not "yes yes yes" its "yes i said yes i will Yes."
Need him to talk about “Finnegans Wake”. Just finished “A Shorter Version Of...” edited by Anthony Burgess and I need help...
Yaaay i live a few doors down from where James Joyce was born, i pass his house every day.
I hope you piss on the doorstep!
Yes
I loved The Glass Bead Game
What - in one sentence, if possible - is that about ? Can it be summarised in a sentence ?
Or you can read Lady Don't Fall Backwards.
It would be grand if Fry even seemed to have read the last three words of his favourite book. Maybe it's amnesia. Once you start losing your memory you can forget it.
On a more serious note this quote by Sherlock Holmes on Professor Moriarty sums James Joyce up best:
"Is he not the celebrated author of [], a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it?"
Just replace [] with one of Joyce's books, replace "mathematics" with "literature", and remove "scientific" and you get James Joyce
If all the comments from Wikipedia were collected and rewritten in stream-of-consciousness manner, it'd be blast!
The problem with Ulysses is that because of it's reputation as the "greatest work of literature ever," you gointo it primed for something serious and intellectual, whereas the book doesn't take itself seriously at all. When it shows you something that doesn't make sense, you're inclined to feel like you don't understand the joke when the joke is how incomprehensible it is.
So I'm just reading it for the prose and pay no mind to the supposed plot because there isn't one. Or rather, I'm not missing much by ignoring it.
You're thinking of Finnegan's Wake, which to this day people debate whether or not there is a plot in that book, and the people that agree there is a plot in it still argue about what the plot actually is. There's no debate whatsoever about whether Ulysses has a plot. It has a plot, lmao. Come back in 10 years when you're up for it you'll understand
Fantastique. On doit rire, on reste intéressé, et voilà, ne peut pas traduire. Absolument Ulysses par Joyce est bien le plus Covid19 suitable..
I love you Stephen Fry. You would recognize my tattoo.
They put glass in the Turkish Delight.
Im Back bitches
On the lash with Tim Finnegan again were ya?
I agree with his first statement so much. This idea of Ulysses as some sort of endurance test is so stupid and unfair.
@guitaoist the last three words are "I will yes." lol
Your comment made me proud to be Irish.
I love Gatsby
love ulysses ! Tip tip
I watched brother where art thou. Does that count?…
This isn't meant to be a race of any sort but just a good read, I must admit I've never heard of "Dream of Red Chamber". Tell me more
There's not a chance that Fry understands all of the obscure Irish references, both in gaelic and in reference to obscure parts of Dublin.
Ulysses wasn't searching for his son, Ulysses' son was searching for Ulysses.
President Sunday well he was searching for a way home to his son.
I prefer my booky wook by Russel Brand
+stephen EEJIT
As far as them being the most perfectly written works: not being able to add or subtract a single word to benefit either. More so the case with Gatsby than Ulysses; though Ulysses is pretty close to being pristine
When a book critic chooses this book as the best thats kinda like a movie critic saying Citizen Kane or The Godfather is the best movie.
Ulysses is an awesome book, Captin Mungbean.
Being intelligent isn't the same as being pretentious. Unintelligent people and bitterly middling mediocrities often get the two qualities confused.
Pretentious means feigning: to pretend. Fry's love of the book is obviously genuine.
Try to read it again....
WE ALL LOVE ULYSSES !
lol ill be a sport and give you that. we dont know how deep the rabbit hole gos with James do we?
its a good story...quit fightin
Tried to read this...at a loss.Read chaeucer,shakespeare.Coloquial gaelic, and latin references to homer!any tips anyone.Didnt really like Great Gatsby.
Don't criticise what you can't understand.
Well you know that is very condescending! I would rather read a challanging novel that at some point I could understand. It is total mock erudition. Toatal crap. The worst novel ever in my mind Loius Lamour would be better!
Ulysses when thoroughly engaged loans its decoders intellectual justification through a patience of admiring another human beings senses limited to thought in instability.
This comment is indecipherable.
I love Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but HATE Ulysses. The content of the plot is great but it's way too difficult to read. I wish Joyce had written it differently.
Squeeee this was filmed on the same day I met him *geek*
What!? The Great Gatsby blows hard!!
How can I read it with any shred of respect to bestow after reading Joyce’s letters to his wife?
Try reading his wife's letters to Jimmy
But why would you read his letters before his masterpiece?
How would the letters in any way diminish your respect for him or his work?
@@CriticalDispatches have you read them? No shame. It’s just when you read someone’s work and that is your foundational understanding of the author it’s hard to read other works produced by that person without having that preconceived understanding shrouding what you take from the work. Especially when the two works are so different in tone, context and essence
@@direktorpresident wait. Where can I find those?
I have most definitely never heard anyone sell any book this well.
I guess I'll have to read it, then?
Gusranteed you will not get halfway through!
T-minus how many seconds til Fry uses words like "Delightful", "Splendid", "Indeed" and "Rather..".
unheeded he kept by them as they came to drier sands, a rag of wolf's tongue red panting by his jaw
*theres
well, if you want to be technical, molly's last "sentence" is over 12,000 words. You can't fit that in a short book review.
Good ol' Mr. Fry...always down for a decent trolling. 😂
If Ulysees had been set in Manchester would it be thought a great book?
But the overall plot is pretty serious...
The language is beautiful but for me the book was almost entirely incomprehensible. Gravity's Rainbow is simple by comparison.
Couldn't disagree more... But, one man's garbage (rubish) is another man's treasure, right..And so it goes..................
whoot Nederland
ofcourse i talk of it in my vids:)
Lapwing you are!
the details in a book like Ulysses matter.... but the constant reference that Leopold is a "Jewish man" misses the whole point of why Joyce built him the way he did... to be truly Jewish, one has to be born of a Jewish woman, having a Jewish father is not enough... on the other hand, in Europe at that time, anyone with even ¼ or less Jewish was seen as a Jew by many and untrustworthy ... The fact that Joyce made Leopold a sort of mis-fit among Jews as well as Gentiles is a major part of the character and his isolation in society.
Rather than saying something like "Thanks for pointing out something that everybody knows", I propose you a different take on mr. Fry's speech: what if we consider how the last Ulysses' chapter is an example of stream of consciousness, thus not constrained by strict temporary order? "Yes, yes, yes" and "I said I will" are two different phrases merged during sexual climax, so they are both synchronized and not. In this sense, there are THREE different sets of "last words" in Ulysses. :)
Ulysses was written by Joyce as a book his non educated wife could understand and enjoy. It is to listened to. It was never meant to be a supreme book to be analysed by scholars. In fact it is full of spelling mistakes upon which scholars have written dissertations. I used to play tapes of it in my car, my pre teen kids laughed about it esp the naughty bits.
Lol, she only read 27 pages (that's including the title) and Joyce himself said I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of ensuring one's immortality.
One just has to see his notes to see the nonsense of your comment
Are you a scholard sir?
@@internetuser969 One does.....muppet.
@@2009ELTEXDid my use of the word one upset you or something else?
What the fuck are you talking about?
Also it's not a retelling of Homer's Odyssey. It's actually VERY loosely based on Odyssey.
008Invisibleman could you take a look at the video series I am making un Ulysses?
It takes over the structure and refers to Homer's Odyssee in many ways, yet at the same time makes alot of fun over heroes that are described in epic poetry like the ones Homer wrote. It's one of the many reasons James Joyce is considered to be a pioneer of postmodern literature.
I've always thought this book is over-rated since my schooldays. It's okayish, but nothing really that special and does drone on so. Joyce was a very plain man with a strong sexual drive, which is why he was probably so fascinated by beautiful women . He couldn't get them, hence his visits to brothels. I'm now writing like Joyce, telling the harsh truth!
It's teeming with life, beautiful and hilarious.
James Joyce was a lot of things, but a very plain man was most certainly not one of them.
yeah james isnt the type of over analytical writer who actually cared if his audience was true to his words. its one thing to chill out and have a sense of humour, its another to completely get an analysis wrong because you dont know the material you're analysizing.
He is so overly analytical that he makes NO sense whatsoever to a normal reader. Are you saying he has a magical, mystical truth we poor peons cannot understand or is it total crap? Most likely the latter!
Joyce was a lower middle class socialist, cursed or blessed by his drive and genius. He was never an 'etonian' writer, ie a totem of the class elite, reflecting their values. Eliot, perhaps, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Waugh, obviously & lots of others but Joyce? Never. Ulysses is about the beauty of life uncontained and all the people in it, from whichever class or race. It's a profoundly socialistic and humanistic book. The opposite of elitist (apart from its refusing to be in any way dumb).
You dear old thing.
Jesus Christ, I'm so sick of the word "pretentious"! It seems it's most often spouted out by ignorant people who feel intellectually inferior to people and, rather than learning from them, relish in this insolent dismissal of any intelligence greater than theirs. It's a great word when it's used properly but often results in hypocrisy of arrogance, a quality they're supposedly attacking.
00:47 spoiler alert!!!