Someone who's put the work into understanding Joyce's text might disagree. Someone who's put the work into understanding what various Modern (and more likely post-Modern) artists are doing might disagree. They might in fact be baffled by--or belittle--the nerd weeping in his seat while "Once in a Lifetime" is playing ...
Which just proves the snobs are wrong in a whole new way.
Yup. My point is that looking down on the people who are similarly moved by Ulysses or anything by Mark Rothko is being wrong in that exact same way.
Not really, no. That’s like saying standing up to bullies is bullying.
No, it's not. Reverse-snobbery is still snobbery.
You know, Elrond could have just bum-rushed Isildur and knocked him into the lava with the ring, saving everybody a whole lot of trouble. Instead he just let him walk away??
As a former graduate student in English literature, this is how I approached both, so it at least worked for me. That said, I finished Ulysses in the hospital jacked up on painkillers after surgery and didn't make it past page 6 of Finnegan's Wake. I was a Victorianist and not a modernist, though, so Joyce was somewhat outside my wheelhouse.
