Finnegans Wake (1939)

Confessional: I was doomed right from the start. I have been calling this book Finnegan's Wake. That should tell you something...when I can't even get the title right. I have read a lot of reviews of Finnegans Wake. Lots of advice on how to even read the thing. When you have more reviews suggesting how to read a book rather than what the book was actually about, that should tell you something. In all honesty, I have no clue what it was about. But, I'm not alone. Tons of other people have been scratching their heads, too. But, that's not to say they aren't without advice: I tried reading it aloud, as many suggested. I tried not taking it seriously, as others promised would help. I tried drinking with each chapter and even that didn't make the going any easier. It's much like the lyrics to Phish. I don't understand a jiboo so I don't care for the song. End of story.

A book to swim in and to read aloud in the bath. There are some good jokes; a fair bit of bawdy. It comes out of the mud of sleep. If you read it in the hope of setting down the meaning of it in a box in your skull you may as well not begin. ( )

Introduced by David Greetham
Illustrated by John Vernon Lord

This should really be in my Abandoned collection. It's the only book in the Modern Library 100 Best list I didn't finish. No book should need a roadmap to read. I can understand having to research parts of a book (e.g. Dom Casmurro, where I wasn't familiar with the culture and consequently missed a lot on my first reading). But this book is unintelligible. ( )

I'd love to say it's unreadable, but that would only mean that I couldn't read it. I'd like to say it's worthless, but that would only mean that I find no worth in it. There are many who have found it very worthwhile, who have painstakingly read and devoured its many secrets, following each clue, reading each scholarly commentary on each line, and experienced the joy of unraveling a tiny piece of the great puzzle Joyce left behind.

I am not one of those people, and have come to realize that I never will be.

Most authors enter into a contract of sorts with their readers, unspoken yet nearly always there. "I will meet you halfway," says the author. "I will spend effort to communicate to you, and you will spend effort to understand that which I have communicated." Because after all, it is the arrogance of authorship to assume that anyone will ever want to expend that effort simply to understand what you have to impart. (And yes, I'm fully aware that this applies equally well to this review!) When the message is of high value, or the language that communicates it of surpassing beauty, the author can require more of the reader, because the reader will want to expend more effort.

And therein lies my dislike of Finnegan's Wake. Of Joyce in generally, actually, but most sharply of Finnegan's Wake. So far from expending effort to communicate, Joyce has expended hideous force to cloak his meaning, to bury it under layers of twisted, tortured prose. If I thought that what lay within were important, or that the journey itself was an attractive one, perhaps I would supply the effort to dig it up. But I don't. To me, it stands for everything that is wrong with literary fiction--or rather, it is an unwelcome stain on literary fiction that ought to be removed.

But that's just me. Your mileage may vary. ( )