Finnegans Wake (1939)

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. ( )

The problem with Finn Egan's Splashy Fest-o-the-Dye Inn is muchly how there is to admire and lake, and how much to make and add lyre that nary a chary chance haven't a nanobreadth's posse and abillybongabitty in all of onrushininginfinity to Die Cifre.

It really, really helps if you can read bits of this aloud, and if you don't fuss too much about understanding everything absolutely. If you can find a recording of Joyce reading...it helps even more. This is a book to submerge yourself within. Don't fret about it the first time through. ( )

Well, I've just finished my first reading of Finnegans Wake in 135 days (4.925 pages per day) and a foin
superexuberabundancy plenty it is! It is a remarkable work, but I am not yet convinced that it is a work of literature.

Joyce was being too modest when he wrote 'this is nat language at any sinse of the world.'
This is certainly language, but of what sort?

Joyce's language here reminds me most of Salvatore's effusions from The Name of the Rose: 'Penitenziagite! Watch out for the draco who cometh in futurum to gnaw your anima! Death is super nos! Pray the Santo Pater come to liberar nos a malo and all our sin! Ha ha, you like this negromanzia de Domini Nostri Jesu Christi! Et anco jois m'es dols e plazer m'es dolors... Cave el diabolo! Semper lying in wait for me in some angulum to snap at my heels. But Salvatore is not stupidus! Bonum monasterium, and aqui refectorium and pray to dominum nostrum. And the rest is worth merda. Amen. No?'

Joyce's acquaintances did not report that he was deranged, so this model of FW cannot be literally true. I wonder if FW started as a sort of Sokal Hoax and Joyce found himself trapped and had to continue the work?

I am willing to read FW again after learning more about Joyce, Ireland, and Dublin. I may change my opinion then. ( )