Finnegan's Wake

[Dan]

I recently tried to read Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce, and the best analogy I have is that it is like trying to solve a crossword puzzle written in the form of a poem that is several hundred pages long. A knowledge of German and French and other languages also helps. Has anybody else gotten through this book or Ulysses? Can you shed some light on what it is about. If you have never even looked at it, I will give you an excerpt to explain why it is so hard to read:

About that original hen. Midwinter (fruur or kuur?) was in the offing and Premver a promise of a pril when, as kischabrigies sang life's old sahatsong, an iceclad shiverer, merest of bantlings observed a cold fowl behaviourising strangely on that fatal midden or chip factory or comicalbottomed copsjute (dump for short) afterwards changed into the orangery when in the course of deeper demolition unexpectedly one bushman's holiday its limon threw up a few spontaneous fragments of orangepeel, the last remains of an outdoor meal by some unknown sunseeker or placehider illico way back in his mistridden past.

 

[ericms]

I've not read either, but have obviously heard of them. That's quite mad really. You've made me put off reading that book even longer now. The most mind-wrenching book I have is probably "Thomas the Obscure" by Maurice Blanchot. He plays with words a lot and any attempt at taking what is said literally is bound to fail. It's constant abstracted analogies you have to juggle with in your mind.

Also, like Dekstar said, it reads a lot like those long spam messages. Hmm, I wonder if all along the spammers were graduate students in literature.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Joyce is a bastard!

I've not read Wake; I'm working my way up to it through Portrait of the Artist and, later, Ulysses.

 

[Dekstar]

Reads like the things spammers put at the end of emails to get around the spam filter.

 

[Solaris]

It looks shit, like he's just writing like that to look clever, when in reallity he has nothing to say.

 

[Dan]

It looks shit, like he's just writing like that to look clever, when in reallity he has nothing to say.

Well, he's acclaimed as one of the greatest authors of the last century. So someone is getting something out of it.