You write for yourself first of all, and if you glory and take pleasure in being clever, then you should try to be as excellently clever as you can be. It may well be that a smaller, more specialized (Firefly-sized) audience is the only ones who are going to get it, but that's the breaks.

IMO, as long as the cleverness serves the story--i.e. drives the plot, characters, mood, and/or setting--you're fine. I only mind clever if I think the only reason the author is doing it is to show off.

Subjective, I know, but you'd probably be able to recognize it if you gave the section a rest before you read it again and come to it fresh.

(ask Teppy about my faux-James Joycean "Rain was general over Sunnydale" some time). I thought it was clever. Not everyone's going to get everything.

The fact that I didn't catch that ref was MY issue, not yours, sweetie.

I drop strange references into stuff all the time (ask Teppy about my faux-James Joycean "Rain was general over Sunnydale" some time).

But hadn't you not actually either read "The Dead" at this point? Or I could be getting my Bitch canon mixed up

I'm provincially pleased at having not actually read any Joyce, though I've seen many references to the man and his works. It's an atavistic (and admittedly silly) reaction to prose (at least in "Ulysses") that goes out of its way to be obscure.

But you go out of *your* way (using a construction that isn't at all or very standard in modern American English) to reference him.

Why?

And, oh, you really ought to read "The Dead". It isn't obscure at all, I don't think. It's a little experimental but only in the most meta and formal stylistic of ways.

And, oh, you really ought to read "The Dead". It isn't obscure at all, I don't think. It's a little experimental but only in the most meta and formal stylistic of ways.

"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" has some interesting stylistic things going on, but isn't exactly what I'd call "opaque," either.

I have the dilletante's knowledge of literature. I'm familiar with the really identifiable lines from a lot of works--plus, I have a lovely dictionary of quotations that lets me look well-read while not making me have to take time from scanning for Xander/Spike slash.

I accept the challenge to actually read something by James Joyce. I need to go back to the library anyway, since I've finished "The Princess Diaries" again. Hey, she likes Buffy, she can't be all bad.

t shakes

It's OK, Lizard, I'll keep my disappointing tastes in popular literature far away.