Yes!

This article by John Barry in the Baltimore City Paper about the dead end of young writers attempting to duplicate the poetic yearning of the final paragraph in James Joyce’s “The Dead” hits close to home. I won’t summarize the message Barry has for young short story writing aspirants—read it! Fantastic. A lot to think about for me, as an aspiring writer and a Joyce fanatic who hits his head against the wall trying to find poetry in words as opposed to capturing something of what’s in the air, what’s being said, what’s happening now, in an actual external as well as internal world. Thanks to HTMLGIANT.

“If you love Beckett, Joyce, Stein, Faulkner, why in the name of god are you publishing Jonathan Franzen????

Haha, that money quote above distills the essence of htmlgiant’s provocative piece on the lack of ballsy writing like Ulysses in this day and age as well as the lack of publishers willing to take a risk on such a work. Very worthwhile post. Minor quibble: people should sub out Stein for Woolf in the towering literary figures group. Woolf is more influential than Stein and has at least three masterpieces to Stein’s…does Stein have a masterpiece? The Making of Americans I guess. Stein fits the daring innovator bill, but she sticks out like a sore thumb with these other three because she isn’t read or imitated like the others. Htmlgiant then built on his first post with this post on 15 Towering Artists Who Are Still Alive.

Modernism Lovers Rejoyce

For an appreciation of The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (first from the left), written by Julian Barnes in the Guardian, look here.

Also check out this interesting 1922 profile and interview of James Joyce (second from left) in Vanity Fair, written by Djuna Barnes.

Finally, there’s a new article on Ezra Pound (third from the left) in the New Yorker written by Louis Menand.