She Said He Said About Ulysses

"Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of the deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness".
~ D.H. Lawrence

What comedy, dear D.H., poo-poo'ing Ulysses for its "old fags" and "dirty-mindedness," when his novels are repressively replete with both, the naughty (perhaps unconsciously) hippo critter extraordinaire!

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"A dead end."
~ H.G. Wells 

From the Sci-fi Guy that created one of the earliest and most thoroughly dead end scenarios in the speculative history of human civilization, War of the Worlds!

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"An illiterate, underbred book . . . the book of a self-taught working man."
~ Virginia Woolf

So he was an autodidactic man with callouses on his hands from so much ... so much working, Virginia.  At least the book wasn't overbred like Dickey's Deliverance.

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"An absence of meaning, an emptiness of philosophic content, a poverty of new and disturbing observation."
~ Wyndham Lewis


"Disturbing observation," Wyndham?  Well, if that ain't the kettle calling the you-know-what what!  And what would you call your all-too-public and pathetic Nazi sympathizing shenanigans that emptied you completely of your career and reputation, Dude? -- A poverty of meaningful common sense?

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"A heap of dung, crawling with worms."
~ Karl Radek (Soviet literary critic)

Remember the Soviets?  If they didn't like something, it usually meant it was really good.

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For more reactions, check out 50 Writers Talk About James Joyce at the 3Monkeys site.