I would strongly recommend anyone who has a second-hand impression of Joyce based on articles like this just go and read Dubliners. Seriously. It’s an amazing set of short stories that are wonderfully-written, at times funny, moving, sad, haunting etc. It’s just incredible. It’s not a hard read at all and will enrich your life. I recommend it to basically everyone and several people have talked to me years later about stories in it. It’s fantastic.
Then maybe read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A really great semi-autobiographical work.
At that point you’ve probably made your mind up one way or the other about whether you like Joyce, so then if you feel like it, go read Ulysses and/or Finnegan’s Wake if you want to. But don’t do it because you think it will impress anyone or anything like that. Just read it if you want to. Before you read Ulysses, I would personally recommend reading a good modern version of Homer[1] because that’s just a great experience anyway and plenty of people don’t know the original story and so don’t understand the relevance of the title and are kind of lost before they even get started.
[1] eg I’ve heard very good things about the Mendelsohn translation https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo243090... . I heard some excerpts from Seamus Heaney’s version read out and they were amazing and lyrical as you might expect but probably more “poetic” than most people might care for if they’re not already Heaney fans. I read an older translation but I can’t dig it out right now.
Then maybe read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A really great semi-autobiographical work.
At that point you’ve probably made your mind up one way or the other about whether you like Joyce, so then if you feel like it, go read Ulysses and/or Finnegan’s Wake if you want to. But don’t do it because you think it will impress anyone or anything like that. Just read it if you want to. Before you read Ulysses, I would personally recommend reading a good modern version of Homer[1] because that’s just a great experience anyway and plenty of people don’t know the original story and so don’t understand the relevance of the title and are kind of lost before they even get started.
[1] eg I’ve heard very good things about the Mendelsohn translation https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo243090... . I heard some excerpts from Seamus Heaney’s version read out and they were amazing and lyrical as you might expect but probably more “poetic” than most people might care for if they’re not already Heaney fans. I read an older translation but I can’t dig it out right now.