Language as Comfort or Weapon

• Dickens wraps language around the reader like a blanket. His prose is designed to soothe, to connect, to remind the reader that goodness might yet prevail.
• Joyce breaks language open; he pours acid over grammar and lets it reform into chaotic beauty.
• To read Dickens is to re-enter the breast; to read Joyce is to wrestle with the father. These are not just styles; they are psychological landscapes. In one, language is nourishment; in the other, it is territory.

If you find one easier than the other, you're not revealing a taste; you're revealing your imprint.