It's boring and kind of defeats the point of publishing for the masses. This obviously does not apply to all Modernists; Hemingway and Fitzgerald are both very accessible. But Joyce is definitely an author who delights in name dropping and pretentious ramblings. Not my cup of tea. I had to read Finnegans Wake for a Modernist British literature class in undergrad and couldn't finish it. I suppose I'm a lesser English major for criticizing the inimitable James Joyce, but I found this novel pretentious and, frankly, stupid.
As far as I can tell, there's no plot and really no characters. Every word in every sentence is a combination of three or more languages. This may sound interesting, but it's really painful to read and a ridiculous way to address linguistic issues.
If you have something so profound to say, why the hell can't you make your writing accessible? Are you trying to keep it a secret? I learned nothing from this novel other than language itself can be a kind of prison. I think D. Lawrence makes this argument much more powerfully in Lady Chatterly's Lover --anther Modernist novel, yes, but one whose acclaim does not exist just because the author was able to reference every piece of literature written before the Common Era.
I guess I do understand the acclaim this novel receives: it references everything and Joyce DID have to be rather brilliant to know all of these languages. Perhaps that is why I hated it. Moreover, going back to Tolstoy, I think there are political and biased reasons for this novel's godlike status.
There are countless books that attempt to find Wake 's meaning and many a floundering grad student struggling to grasp Joyce's points. The pretentiousness of this novel ensures there will never be a shortage of criticism about it, and, having the ability to make sense of nonsense allows one to appear cultured and genius-like.
This does create a problem when you think about it. Only a few books out of the zillions that have been written are included in the canon, and mostly for their reinforcing our own racial, classist, gendered, and sexual prejudices. Finnegans Wake certainly fits this criteria by being accessible to only, say, 5 people on the planet. This isn't necessarily because of racism or sexism, but because of this idea that the best literature is NOT understood by the lowly masses.
Let them have Joyce! All in all, I can't stand this book. If you want a good post-modern novel, read Kundera or Vonnegut. Finnegans Wake is waste of time and brain power. View all 41 comments. I find review writing difficult because it is superficial; it is only one distilled moment of insight into a novel.
This both 88th book of A glass of whiskey in the pub with me would dislodge all true feelings of literature. I feel as if I must say firstly that, yes, I read this entire novel.
Finnegans Wake is known as being the most difficult book in the Western canon. It is hardly written in English. This language is composed of composite words from some sixty to seventy world languages, combined to form puns, or portmanteau words and phrases intended to convey several layers of meaning at once.
The first page stands as: riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe.
The fall bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk! The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev- linsfirst loved livvy.
The general question that attacks Finnegans Wake is a simple one-word question: Why? It took Joyce seventeen years to write this novel and Why? They compare it, of course, with Ulysses. But the action of Ulysses was chiefly in the daytime, and the action of my new work takes place chiefly at night. It is dark.
You can hardly see. You sense rather. Finnegans Wake must be read aloud; I learnt that. There is nothing for the reader who reads it in their head. The rhythm, the puns, the rhyme and the cadence of this tiny universe come forth when one reads it aloud.
After all, if nothing else, if we can find nothing else in answer to that Why? The answer is probably No. In fact, I never set out to read it. I do believe that Ulysses is a brilliant novel and even with a glass of whiskey in a pub I would say that I think Ulysses is a brilliant novel; the worst bits, the most crude and juvenile bits of that book are handled with great wit and beauty, and for all its flaws it excels.
I also think The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a fantastic book and would say that with a glass of whiskey in a pub too. What did he say about ensuing his immortality by keeping literary critics busy forever. I have saved some of the quotes I gathered from my reading of this and want to keep them alive again, so here is a small selection of things I have underlined in my copy of the novel: Perkodhuskurunbarggruayagokgorlayorgromgremmitghundhurthrumathunaradidillifaititillibumulunukkunun!
Nettled before nibbling, can scarce turn a scale but, grossed after meals, weighs a town himself. Which we all like. When we sleep. But wait until our sleeping. Ni, gnid mig brawly! I bag your burden. I probably stand with Ezra Pound when he gave instructions for reading Finnegans Wake : "Hold the book upside down; drink half a bottle of absinthe before beginning; pay someone else to translate it into readable English while you chug-a-lug that absinthe; skip every second word; invent your own back-story for the characters of Earwicker and Anna Livia, possibly involving futuristic cloning techniques; read something else.
My closing sentiment is read what inspires you to read. View all 20 comments. All the world loves a big gleaming jelly What does that above line mean? I have know idea which is my entire experience with this book. This is without a doubt the hardest book I've ever read. For the first pages I wanted to DNF it so badly that I did on goodreads on a couple of occasions.
But my little brother begged me not to give up. He has a persistent personality and giving up on anything hurts him so I gave this book another chance and I'm glad I did.
Thank you, baby brother! Rating thi All the world loves a big gleaming jelly What does that above line mean? Rating this book was hard because for novels I have a certain criteria for 5 star books.
I have to love every character. The plot must move at a steady pace and never get boring. And the story has to emotionally move me in some way. It either has to make me laugh or make me cry which is an automatic 5 star rating from me. But this book was different. I can't call it a novel, more like an exercise in endurance with tons of puns and portmanteau words. A pengeneepy for your warcheekeepy. Gag his tubes yourself. A byebye bingbang boys!
See you Nutcracker Sunday. Couch cortege ringbarrow dungcairn I read all pages of this and I can't tell you at all what it means or what it's about. There are characters though, I just can't remember them and how they relate to one another in this "story".
I can't tell you how relieved I am to be finished with this but I would someday like to pick it up again hence the 4 star rating. I personally think Ulysses is Joyce's masterpiece and gift to the world but I enjoyed this book for what it was.
But I have no idea what the hell it is. I read this one. I pick up the Wake at odd moments invisibly lapsing between other moments, and flip to random pages, and one would be surprised how detailed one's recollections can be of specific passages within this vortext.
This thing only grows and expands and whirls about its own gyre, creating itself always while I look away, for weeks at a time it sits there generating itself sil Did I finish reading The Restored Finnegans Wake? This thing only grows and expands and whirls about its own gyre, creating itself always while I look away, for weeks at a time it sits there generating itself silently on my bookshelf, some kind of bound chrysalis that never breaks open and frees itself- it waits for me to peel back the cottony veil of its covers.
It sings in my dreams, don't doubt that. Often I feel I am living my days within its covers, among its script-labyrinths- that the instant I started reading Finnegans Wake was the instant I left the World and since then I've been like Echo, its winding streams entrapping me on isles of many-tongued birds and spectral flora, I follow stags deep into rainlighted forests calling "Who's there?
Who's there? I believe this is the fate of all those who have fallen in love with a God View all 26 comments. I came, I saw, I conquered!
I huffed, I puffed, I quit. How I even managed to get to pages I will never know. Might treat myself to a cream horn or two just for getting that far! View all 6 comments. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Sir Francis Bacon - Fifth time through! The date is set to the date I read the final word "the". This was in a "slow read" book club. This is my favorite book of all time. Admittedly it is challenging, but what it does is simply unique in all o Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Admittedly it is challenging, but what it does is simply unique in all of literature, beautiful, silly, inexhaustible and, perhaps, exhausting. I don't want to say that you should read this book, unless it calls to you. It is not for every one. Let me give of some hints. This is a book that can overwhelm you unless you read it slowly and patiently, too rich in overlapping symbols to digest in large pieces.
And yes this is really true even for really sophisticated readers. Even hah! If you've read this far, you may actually decide to read this book. So first of all courage! Definitely recommend reading alongside commentary, as this is often considered the most opaque "novel" ever written. The best study of Wake is Joyce's Book of the Dark. The Bishop book on the Wake is good, but it is a thematic overview. I tend to agree that whether or not you agree the dream is real, at no point in the book is it supposed to represent normal waking consciousness.
It tends to do an excellent job of the connections of the sleeper-consciousness to the Book of the Dead and to the Viconan ideal history language as a layered representation of the historical evolution of human consciousness.
John Gordon's plot summary is very speculative, and he tends to want to answer "what is really happening" as if the events are real, but it is a good book, and provides some very useful insights. There is a sense in which the surroundings of the dreamer show up in the dream, and he has a lot of source material on that.
I still think the Campbell and Robinson's Skeleton Key is the best general guide. Definitely read the book aloud. I have done this with a lot of passages before and it seemed to help, but this time, I followed the discipline of reading the entire book aloud.
Also strongly recommend reading only a little--even just two or three pages--per day, but every day. I find 6 to 10 is the maximum I can manage--seriously. Aloud is best. And don't get discouraged, the first part you read will only begin to make sense after you are well into it--that is normal: the imagery is deliberately overdetermined as Joyce know you would miss much of it.
In terms of "breaking through" Wake, it really takes some patience in that you may read a hundred pages or more before it starts to "kick in". This is because the book is composed in such a way that every part references every other part, including some that have not yet been read. Also it is truly deliberately a night book, with the level of consciousness descending and becoming more and more obscure towards the middle, and then renewing clarity towards the end; the sense is suggested in such passages by overlays of themes, and sound sense--it is effectively a different way of reading.
A reading schedule really helps so that every day some of the images and rhythms start feeding into your brain. It is a very difficult book and nobody should worry about getting their egos bruised if they get stuck from time to time. In fact, despite the fact that I usually don't like to oversprinkle my reading with lots of reading of the critical literature, in the case of Wake it is absolutely essential to use a reader's guide. A warning though, there is a lot of the critical literature that makes cheap use of Joyce's polysemy, to crank out possibly connected but highly misleading interpretations.
The good news is that Joyce has deliberately overdetermined his imagery, because he expects his reader to miss parts. Therefore, do not drive yourself crazy if you miss something--you will. But you will encounter echoes of anything Joyce considers important over and over again. The other tip I'd give is that despite the fact that the language has many many focii at once, there is always a focus or main subject or two where in any passage where all other references are subsidiary.
I hasten to add that as seriously complex as the book is it is also seriously silly. Part II The start of my adventure reading it the fourth time Well OK, I am starting the second part of this review, as I have started re-reading this book again. Humorously, I think of it as an act of solidarity with one of my Goodreads friends who is currently bogged down in Ulysses.
I do confess to being a bit of a Joyce nut, in that I have read Ulysses though 4 times, and Portrait 3. I picked up a copy when I got a new copy of Portrait, it said "take me take me" although I am sure it was in some kind of pun language. Anyway, this edition is the one with the forward by John Bishop, which is an excellent introduction, as far as a few pages can prepare you.
It also has the plot summaries in the table of contents. I don't remember the other edition, the red white and blue Viking paperback having the chapter titles my enstuck Goodreads friend is complaining loudly that there are no titles in Ulysses. With Wake, I am more than willing to baby myself, so every bit helps. I found that this time I was able to read the first chapter without getting completely confused without any outside help; I do admit, that is is part with which I am most familiar, so it maybe doesn't fully count.
I am now doing a slow read with a group, which I guess is my fifth time. The problem is that it isn't written in ordinary language, and so folks find themselves slipping into Joycean pun language to explain Finnegans Wake because it isn't about "one thing" exactly, and it is about everything, but, some things more than others. This makes a kind of sense, in that in a way, the Wake is the only full explanation of itself, but this is hardly helpful. I will try to avoid this for the most part and try to convey by suggestion and analogy.
This is extremely difficult, because literary criticism or just talking about books in general is more or less done in the language that the books are written in, but this case, in which the thing is written in a highly mutated form of English, perhaps you could call it Jabberworkish, the problem is more like writing about music or painting, where the domains are very different.
So I will tell it through my own eyes. In many cases I was influenced by other authors who have analyzed the book, they get full credit, I am just synthesizing my reaction. Finnegans Wake is about consciousness. Specifically, it is about all awakenings to full consciousness. A major philosophical source for Finnegans Wake is Vico. Most commentators, focus on Vico's concept of historical cycles, and certainly the book's structure has a basis in Vico's ages.
But that interpretation is pretty trivial. An actual exchange between Joyce and a critic. What actually is of interest in Vico is he Viconian idea of the unconscious, what Vico called "ignorance", and how the primitive consciousness comes into awareness, and how the enlightenment of full consciousness is reflected in language!
In sleep, one is not fully cognizant of where one is, or who one is, so it is impossible to determine who is dreaming the Wake , or even if the dreamer is real. He appears to be a tavern keeper, possibly named Porter which, as is inevitable in Wake, is a pun--on the drink and in the dream language appears as Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, but he is more or less Here Comes Everybody, as his persona is infinitely elastic.
As dreamer he lies insensate like Space itself, spread under a green patchwork quilt which is Ireland itself. Yet he is a restless sleeper. As a fat wheezy and somewhat inebriated old man, he likely physiologically suffering from sleep apnea and clearly, psychologically from guilt and fear of exposure. As Joyce puts it: "Lack breath must leap no more. A large comic character, red nosed, fat, with a waist overcinched by his belt, and outsticking ears, farting and snoring, pompous and giving himself airs as a minor community leader, his dream mind is always falling into dissociative panics of disgrace and guilt, he is troubled by echoes of a possibly more romantic and handsome youth, and possibly a far more disreputable past.
He fears toppling from his position, he has Scandinavian ancestry; he is Protestant, in a Catholic community; his wife, is, and his children are raised as Catholics. And if the community rises agains him--in the form of hsi customers, is he oppressor, or scapegoat? Will he fall? His name Humphrey is associated with, and dream morphed into that of Humpy Dumpty. The topping, fear of falling, like Ibsen's master builder reminds us of the book's central image of falling Tim Finnegan, of the comic Irish ballad--more on him in a minute.
The other main characters of the book come from what appear to be his family. The other primary and most defined persona, is his female counterpart, Anna Livia Plurabelle, who, if real, though wife and mother, is in this altered world, the river Liffey, nicknamed by Dubliners, Anna Liffey, wending through and personifying the language itself.
Flowing though the circulatory system of this dreamlike state, in the chapter that celebrates her alone, two gossipy crone washerwomen dish the dirt and slap the clothes forming the lubdub of her riparian circulation. One of the greatest of all chapters in literature, it is filled to the brim with pun references to the rivers of the world.
Whereas H. Her initials, A. E's, also infect passages when her presence is being felt. She fell for him when she was a young girl her initials are the same as Alice Pleasance Liddell, of Wonderland fame and he was a handsome dashing piratical young man with a gleam in his eye, perhaps up to a a bit of "skandaknavery". She as his own literal life blood, water of life, has given the "key to her heart" to him, she has received a green dressinggown as a golden anniversary present, she is green mother nature, "leafy" and the continuous flow of everlasting Time.
Now there are three children of H. E and A. When H. However in reality, the patriarchal world order is one in which the male principle is, by its very drama of domination inherently unstable, so therefore incapable of the ideal inheritance, and Hump breaks apart in his Finnegan-fall into two polar opposites, represented by his sons. Where Shaun is pastor-Shem is sinner; where bourgeoisie--proletarian; where England--Ireland; God--Lucifer; food--drink; flesh--spirit note how the two meanings of spirit combine ; lawman--outlaw; master--slave; superego--id; worker--artist; ant--grasshopper; postman delivers literature --writer delivers himself up to literature ; sword--pen body--soul; lightness--darkness; space--time and so forth.
He projects the view of himself as he wants to be seen onto Shaun. Shem is somewhat modeled on Joyce himself, but with an acid and ironical self-deprecation, that hides how essential Shem is to the whole kaboodle. For Shem is A. Shaun in his postal rounds is merely a hollow booze barrel bobbing on the Liffey--the spirits Shem are missing.
In addition to the two sons, there is Issy, the daughter. She is a continuity in multiplicity of A. E's fundamental discontinuity. She is reflecting and quicksilver droplets to A. She is leaping, and dazzling, fickle and trickle: her splatter and splash represent the renewal and cycling back of the muddy mother river. Pennyfair caps on pinnyfore frocks and a ring on her fomefang finger. And they leap so looply, looply as they link to light.
Finnegan appears in an Irish comic ballad Finnegan's Wake with an apostrophe. He works construction and falls to his death. At his wake, a riot ensues, someone splashes whiskey on him and he wakes up. Saying "Whittle your whiskey around like blazes, t'underin' Jaysus, do ye think I'm dead? Finnegans Wake is the wake of all dead Finnegans and the awakening of all Finnegans. His fall is accompanied by a hundred letter thunderword, the sound that startles the primitive to to worship and utterance in Vico's myth.
The time of year of Finnegans Wake if it has any season at all is the Spring of renewal. The day is blustery, in the night, a bit of wind, a few showers and a patch of thunder. The tree branches keep knocking at the window. Tip is a term for a dump or rubbish heap, and also a clue. The hen is digging up the letter. Mother nature is calling. I leave the final words to Joyce. The keys to the heart of Nature herself.
Sorrowful surrender and joyous embrace. The final passage of the book: view spoiler [ So. My leaves have drifted from me. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. So soft this morning, ours. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup.
Yes, tid. There's where. We pass through grass behush the bush to. A gull. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thous endsthee.
The keys to. A way a lone a last a loved a long the hide spoiler ] View all 18 comments. Ay Hell[p]-full Qwroat from Jamesy "[A]nyone who reads the history of the three centuries that precede the coming of the English must have a strong stomach, because the internecine strife, and the conflicts with the Danes and the Norwegians, the black foreigners and the white foreigners, as they were called, follow each other so continuously and ferociously that they make this entire era a veritable slaughterhouse.
The danes occupied all the principal ports on the east coast of the island and established a kingdom at Dublin, now the capital of Ireland, which has been a great city for about twenty centuries. Then the native kings killed each other off, taking well-earned rests from time to time in games of chess. Published Date min to max Option: Enter a published year range to help narrow your results. Condition Any. Binding Any. Attributes First Edition.
Dust Jacket. The book is a kind of terminal moraine in which lie buried all the myths, programmes, slogans, hopes, prayers, tools, educational theories, and theological bric-a-brac of the past millenium. And here, too, we will find the love that reanimates this debris Through notes that finally become tuneable to our ears, we hear James Joyce uttering his resilient, all-enjoying, all-animating 'Yes', the Yes of things to come, a Yes from beyond every zone of disillusionment, such as few have had the heart to utter.
The Finnegan Wakes Film Project. In this case you might eventually have to start using the back jacket cover. Look these words up later ideally in the OED to increase both your vocabulary and your understanding of Joyce. Some of these words will probably be Joycean neologisms. I encourage you to steal them, shamelessly.
Yet another general tip with a practical particularity to it regarding this novel is, if you are having trouble getting along with the prose, try reading it aloud. The alliteration, assonance, rhyme both internal and otherwise, use of plosives and use of slang come to life when spoken. Joyce was known as an excellent tenor and had an exacting interest in speech, song and turns of phrase. He was also, however, scandalously bad at playing the guitar.
You could also listen to it! Again, for a student this may not be entirely practicable, but this is a funny novel, and you can tell that, despite the travails Joyce went through to get it completed and in print, he did have fun writing it and he wanted his readers to have fun reading it.
For example, the serious style that is often employed when Stephen is around, or to portray his mind, is supposed to be so utterly pretentious that you both feel slightly sorry for him, and laugh along as the narrator gently mocks him.
A lot of the novel takes place in pubs and a lot of the talk and action is fuelled by drink. It is a representation of life, and that is what life is like. One more thing. Just call it research. Reblogged this on decadentdaughter and commented: So incredibly helpful. Joyce himself approved this one!!!!!!!!!! I got mine from Edward R. Hamilton booksellers……..
I adore them both. Very helpful and encouraging guide. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Enter your email address to get spammed every time my brain blagh's something out or I am advertising something.
Email Address:. Create a free website or blog at WordPress. You must be logged in to post a comment. So, You Want to Read Ulysses? Sounds intimidating right? James Joyce — Richard Ellmann The definitive biography of Joyce and one of the best literary biographies ever written.
Other Useful Material Vladimir Nabokov — Lectures on Literature This collection of lectures, each focussing on a different work, includes a lecture on Ulysses in which Nabokov, similarly to Gilbert, breaks the novel down chapter by chapter. Editions of Ulysses There has, and mostly likely will never be, an entirely accurate edition of Ulysses.
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