Finnegan's Wake

[Nightscape]

realise that she is not out to dizzledazzle with a graith
uncouthrement of postmantuam glasseries from the lapins and the grigs.
Nuttings on her wilelife! Grabar gooden grandy for old
almeanium adamologists like Dariaumaurius and
Zovotrimaserovmeravmerouvian; (dmzn!); she feel plain plate one flat fact thing
and if, lastways firdstwise, a man alones sine anyon anyons
utharas has no rates to done a kik at with anyon anakars about
tutus milking fores and the rereres on the outerrand asikin the
tutus to be forrarder.
Thingcrooklyexineverypasturesixdixlikencehimaroundhersthemaggerbykinkinkankanwithdownmindlookingate d. Mesdaims, Marmouselles, Mescerfs! Silvapais! All
schwants (schwrites) ischt tell the cock's trootabout him.
Kapak kapuk. No minzies matter. He had to see life foully the
plak and the smut, (schwrites). There were three men in him
(schwrites). Dancings (schwrites) was his only ttoo feebles.
With apple harlottes. And a little mollvogels. Spissially (schwrites)
when they peaches. Honeys wore camelia paints. Yours very
truthful. Add dapple inn. Yet is it but an old story, the tale of
a Treestone with one Ysold, of a Mons held by tentpegs and his
pal whatholoosed on the run, what Cadman could but Badman
wouldn't, any Genoaman against any Venis, and why Kate takes
charge of the waxworks.
Let us now, weather, health, dangers, public orders and other
circumstances permitting, of perfectly convenient, if you police,
after you, policepolice, pardoning mein, ich beam so fresch, bey?
drop this jiggerypokery and talk straight turkey meet to mate, for
while the ear, be we mikealls or nicholists, may sometimes be
inclined to believe others the eye, whether browned or nolensed,
find it devilish hard now and again even to believe itself. Habes
aures et num videbis? Habes oculos ac mannepalpabuat? Tip !
Drawing nearer to take our slant at it (since after all it has met with
misfortune while all underground), let us see all there may remain
to be seen.
I am a worker, a tombstone mason, anxious to pleace
averyburies and jully glad when Christmas comes his once ayear. You
are a poorjoist, unctuous to polise nopebobbies and tunnibelly

[ted]

It's ages since I read The Wake. You've reminded me how good it is; I must start it again. One of my closest friends was a Dubliner. We read it together and he explained all the Irish references. Most people find it "a stinksome inkenstink, quite puzzonal to the wrottel" but I love it. You don't have to read it sequentially; many of the chapters stand alone as short stories.

[Nightscape]

Yeah, it is a really strange book.  Sometimes I think I know what it's talking about, but other times it feels like reading nonsense. 

[Floristan]

That's "Finnegans Wake" -- no apostrophe.  Joyce was very particular about that, I believe.  A very amusing book.  Haven't read it since graduate school.

[Daevren]

Which of his boos is the best, in your opinion. I want to read some Joyce, but FW seems a bit too senseless.

[Lance Morrison]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the greatest "standard novel" i have ever read. It absolutely floored me when I picked it up last year.

As for Ulysses....it seems to me to be more than just a novel. I have read chapters 1-13 all more than once, and have enjoyed it immensely. But once I got to infamous chapter 14, "Oxen of the Sun", I couldn't proceed any further. I feel like such a failure for that. Someday I will pick the book up again 

Yet...needless to say....Ulysses is the greatest thing I have ever read. If you want to read Joyce, pick up Portrait.

[kilini]

I gave up Ulysses after some pages. But I will start it again. 

Meanwhile, I'll stick to Kafka.

P.S: Oh. My. God. Finnegans Wake is scary.

[ted]

I have a recorded interview with Aldous Huxley in which he was asked his opinion of Joyce's works. He replied that central to all of Joyce's writing is the key notion that words are omnipotent. That is to say ideas are created from the manipulation of words, rather than words being used to express and transmit existing ideas. Clearly Huxley did not really like this inverted approach himself but his comment was shrewd and perceptive, as indeed was everything he wrote.

I think if you bear this in mind the Wake will make sense. As Anthony Burgess says, everything in the Wake makes sense, at least in the personal way, sooner or later. The difference is that two or more levels of interpretation are going on at once. There is, of course, the level of Irish history and mythology. Although this is nice to know I have never found it essential to get enjoyment from the book. There is the level of etymology and references to other literature - Joyce must have been a walking encyclopaedia. Again, this adds much to the reading experience for somebody who is very well read.

However, it can be enjoyed on yet another level, possibly more exciting in its own way - the level of the personal unconscious. Allow the abstract words to interact with your own mind, forming their own valid associations for you. In this sense, The Wake is close to music, an analogy Joyce himself relished. There is no "right" listening interpretation of a piece of music after all; we are at liberty to form our own pictures. Approach Joyce in this way and you will get a lot out of it. And don't forget humour - Joyce enjoyed all sorts of jokes, especially bawdy ones. We have ample evidence of this - J.B Priestley writes, I think in his autobiography, about being surprised at how utterly "normal" Joyce was in person. 


With Ulysses, my own view is that to treat it as solely analogous with Greek legend and go about finding parallels is missing the point entirely. The precious insight of the book to me is that it rightfully elevates and glorifies the ordinary and the mundane. Joyce uses his fabulous command of language to take the dross of everyday life and mould it into something infinitely greater. Bloom and his wife, ordinary man, ordinary woman, become universal man and woman, just as we all are if we had the eyes to see it.

[Floristan]

With Ulysses, my own view is that to treat it as solely analogous with Greek legend and go about finding parallels is missing the point entirely. The precious insight of the book to me is that it rightfully elevates and glorifies the ordinary and the mundane. Joyce uses his fabulous command of language to take the dross of everyday life and mould it into something infinitely greater. Bloom and his wife, ordinary man, ordinary woman, become universal man and woman, just as we all are if we had the eyes to see it.

Yes, when Joseph Campbell published "Hero With a Thousand Faces." Joyce was one of the main sources he sited as an example of the enduring truth of the heroic quest myth -- that it is one of those myths that seem to spring from our collective unconscious and so is a pattern many of us see in our lives.  Joyce neither elevates Leopold Bloom nor demeans Odysseus by using the Odyssey of Homer as the basic structure for his novel.  Nor do I think Joyce was making a merely ironic comment on modern life, that we have no more heroes (though after World War I such irony was appropriate).  Rather he is saying we all lead mythic lives, whether we perceive it or not.  His collection of short stories, "Dubliners," is about epiphenies in everyday life.  His characters rarely think, "Wow, that was a major insight!" because life rarely happens that way.  We sometimes don't recognize until after the fact that we have been changed fundamentally by some series of events; sometimes we never realize it consciously even though the change to our being has happened.

Leopold Bloom just goes through his day, transformed into an often comic hero by Joyce's incredible use of our beautiful English language.  Bloom's self-awareness is minimal, his insights few.  He doesn't know he is a hero on a quest.  The validation of that quest comes from his wife Molly, the Penelope of the story, who has the major epipheny of the novel, recognizing in essence that Bloom, for all his ordinariness and character flaws, is indeed her hero, and her last thought as she drifts off to sleep is of the moment when she first accepted him on that intuitive, unconscious, mythic level where we really "know,"  where a particular man and woman become, for a moment Man and Woman, the great yin/yang of our being.

Sorry to get off topic.  "Ulysses" is probably my favorite novel! 

[Skeptopotamus]

arf.  i read ulysses, dubliners AND wake, and wake is EVIL.

stay away from it!!!!!!  Finnegan's Wake is the craziest book i have ever read, and i read alot.  but ulysses is better anyways so go for that.