Virginia Woolf's Diary entry on James Joyce: August 16, 1922.
amused, stimulated, charmed interested by the first 2 or 3 chapters-to the
end of the Cemetery scene;& then puzzled, bored, irritated,& disillusioned
as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples...I may revise this
later...I plant a stick in the ground to mark page 200.For my own part, I
am laboriously dredging my mind for Mrs. Dalloway.
She does revise her views later, and in her notebook on Modern Novels, says that she appreciates Joyce's attempt "to get thinking into literature," the "undoubted occasional beauty of his phrases" as well as his "desire to be more psychological" and "get more things into fiction." She also wonders what is the connection between Bloom and Stephen.
So, take heart. Like other authors and readers, Woolf is sometimes confused when reading and notes the "indecency" (that led to its being censored in America until the Wolsey case in 1933). But in another place, she praises his openness, frankness and method.
Pick up on anything Woolf said, and write....
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stimulated seems to be one of the best reactions to Joyce's Ulysses because it's written in such a way that every single word he chooses as he writes triggers the mind not necessarily in a positive or negative, but in a way that your mind is constantly searching, wanting, and attempting to fix the fragmented style he uses. Like Woolf I found my mind wrapped up in the incessant stimuli Joyce uses from simple diction to his emphasis of Poldy's sensual tendencies, at moments I became completely tired and bored with the work, while a few pages later I was literally bellowing in laughter because of some of the ridiculous juxtapositions he makes. Even while I write about Woolf's reaction to Joyce I'm scattered while unified like much of his story is...
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