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Title: I agree with Virginia Woolf
Review: Woolf was right. Joyce was obsessed with being, hm, obscure. I have read every book he wrote (not that many) and studied him at length. It has not helped. I cannot admire anyone who thinks we should have to work so hard to figure out what he was talking about. Normal people can't enjoy Joyce and I think this is a travesty. For all the hard work I had to do to figure out what he was talking about, I did not get one moment's enjoyment. Down with pretentious male modernists who feel we should all spend our lives "working" to unveil the "true meaning" in their words. For all you Joyceans out there who like to mock the "commoners" for not "getting" Joyce, I am working on a PhD in English--and I "get" him just fine, thank you. And I nonetheless refuse to give in to the pressure to like him. Brilliant as he may have been, he was full of himself. In my mind, these two qualities alone (brilliance and arrogance) should not get anyone's novels on the must-read lists.
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