Quote:
Originally Posted by
odoreater 
My philosophy of reading was always that I would read to see what I would get out of the text. I wouldn't even read any introduction or forward to a book because I felt that it wasn't the way an author meant for a book to be read (because if it was, he would have written it).
That's how I approach most literature, but the 20th century modernists forced me to do otherwise. I couldn't deny the brilliance of Faulkner, for example, but how to begin to understand
The Sound and the Fury? Regarding Joyce, specifically, I suggested the Ellmann because your attitude toward
Ulysses suggested a certain annoyance that I, too, felt when I first approached that novel. Reading more about his life and his artistic choices helped me to stretch beyond my previous expectations. Joyce certainly wrote that book and the next novel with the intent that they would be studied and decoded, not merely read. My relationship with literature has always involved challenging and stretching myself to go outside of my comfort/knowledge zone. So, that's my frame of reference when suggesting other reading. I certainly don't mean to impose, only to be helpful as well as I know how.
(I would have added Forster to my list except that I have to give him a pass for that terrible Maurice.)
