As someone with a literature degree who read Ulysses (and you really, genuinely, have no idea what it is about, based on your description; like you are simply describing a book that doesn't exist) and also reads science fiction, popular fiction, crime novels, and modernist writers, all for pleasure, I have to disagree with you entire pre…
As someone with a literature degree who read Ulysses (and you really, genuinely, have no idea what it is about, based on your description; like you are simply describing a book that doesn't exist) and also reads science fiction, popular fiction, crime novels, and modernist writers, all for pleasure, I have to disagree with you entire premise, even if I can understand why and how you might feel that way. Modernists certainly took themselves very seriously, and the culture of the time encouraged them to, but the USA Trilogy is also dynamic and fun, and Faulkner's prose a gorgeous drawling cadence that inhabits an entire region and way of life. Etc.
For me, one book that had the effect you mention was Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick. Another was Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans, a work of high modernism and glorious tactile pleasure to read. A third was Andre Breton's Nadja and Mad Love (two books but on similar and related themes that are in dialogue with each other). A fourth was Dune, a fifth I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison, and a sixth Muriel Spark's the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
The gatekeepers are in your mind, and the barriers are all internalized. Read. Write. Fuck 'em.
As someone with a literature degree who read Ulysses (and you really, genuinely, have no idea what it is about, based on your description; like you are simply describing a book that doesn't exist) and also reads science fiction, popular fiction, crime novels, and modernist writers, all for pleasure, I have to disagree with you entire premise, even if I can understand why and how you might feel that way. Modernists certainly took themselves very seriously, and the culture of the time encouraged them to, but the USA Trilogy is also dynamic and fun, and Faulkner's prose a gorgeous drawling cadence that inhabits an entire region and way of life. Etc.
For me, one book that had the effect you mention was Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick. Another was Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans, a work of high modernism and glorious tactile pleasure to read. A third was Andre Breton's Nadja and Mad Love (two books but on similar and related themes that are in dialogue with each other). A fourth was Dune, a fifth I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison, and a sixth Muriel Spark's the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
The gatekeepers are in your mind, and the barriers are all internalized. Read. Write. Fuck 'em.