Never read it but it sounds like a fever dream lol

Hmmm, do I take the advice of some random reddit person or the thousands that have read it and liked it? I'll take yours into consideration though.

Try in in a thick Irish accent and it makes more sense.

I've always suspected that people who 'enjoy' or 'get' Finnigan's Wake are exactly the type of people the author wished to expose for being twats.

I could be wrong.

> It's like listening to a radio in the mountains with bad reception and constantly changing the channels, you get bits and pieces here and there, a word or phrase here and there...

Love this summary! And if this sounds like tons of fun (it does) then it is worth it and if not, pass for now.

I very much like the idea of reading it aloud and in a group.

I will never find such a group, however.

Never give up. This sounds like a good bucket list goal.

My Irish Literature professor, whom I respected a lot and who taught me to appreciate Joyce’s Ulysses, assured us that Finnegan’s Wake is a work of genius, but he didn’t try to assign it to undergraduates. It seems to be designed for Ph.D. dissertations, but that means it’s quite hard for ordinary readers to understand. Wikipedia has a detailed chapter-by-chapter summary as well as a collection of scholarly opinions about what it all means, if you are interested. But when reading the article you can see that the Wikipedia authors struggled to create a typical synopsis.

Wikipedia quotes Joyce himself comparing the book to a dream, but that doesn’t really clarify much. Yet Joyce insisted that every word had a purpose, if not several purposes, and that there’s a reason it took him so long to write the book. Having studied Ulysses, I believe him, the man was a genius. But I’m this case he was so devious that very few people can fully appreciate his genius.

That said, I feel sure there are now many resources for decoding every line of Finnegan’s Wake on the internet. I’ve always wanted to tackle it by reading and listening to an audio version at the same time, then turning to the internet for enlightenment. But it does seem like a big commitment, and there are always easier books to read.

That's sounds terrible to me

I'm sorry

Sitting in the common room of Happy Vale Nursing Home, the cheery nurse asks me "Do you want to play Bingo or do a jigsaw puzzle?"

"I want to read 'Finnegan's Wake' aloud - in a group."

"If you're going to be like that, Mr. Smith, we'll have to send you back to your room."

Finn = end, egain = again, wake.

That's all I remember from class. It seemed to me that Joyce wrote a book to entertain himself because he had such a live of words and literary gymnastics.

I liked it a lot. I just wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

It is fun to read, but only if you're into that kind of thing.

This was how I felt about "Blood Meridian", but I kept trying to 'get' it myself, then one day it just clicked and I understood. I think "Finnegan's Wake" is probably the same. There's probably more there than I'll ever see without the patience to keep at it.

Edit: lol, people downvoting me for having trouble understanding a books appeal, and sharing my enjoyment in finely connecting the dots with the praise for it.

I had to both read it and write a paper on it in college, and it was probably one of the most difficult assignments I ever had to do.

It was originally published in pieces and I kinda wonder if that's not the better way to read it. Just a chapter here or there over the course of a couple years, rather than sitting down and plodding through the whole thing.

This would make a great short video!

Exactly 100%

No one should ever be forced to read this sort of thing. You need to hear about it, look it to it, possibly train for it, do it, then you have something you can talk about with a small number of similarly minded people who become instant friends.

Where did Blood Meridian click for you? I'm just over half way through and am really enjoying it. Definitely much easier to get into than Finnegans Wake

Bought it some time ago and obviously gonna read it soon. Might enjoy it, who knows...thought it would be a challenge!

a reccuring fever dream it is

Happy Vale or is it Happy Dale with Dr. Witherspoon?

A college assignment? And not an elective? That’s odd.

Hilarious post, thank you for the chuckle.

I have read Finnegan's Wake and find it to be an amazing book, deeply moving and insightful and a real flex of writing accomplishment. It's also very tough and I've heard folks say it takes years to read the books necessary to have the right context to read it. I generally don't like this kind of thing -- read whatever you want when you want! but it's hard to argue that most people who enjoy FW have more context and are able to enjoy the layers more fully than those with less shared literary context.

Finnegan is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake. This is more a collage than a book. More like abstract painting than literature. Read a lot of it and understood very little and skipped to the end. Ulysses is super cool and satisfying to read but yeah agree with OP’s review, as much as one can for a book they didn’t read all of.

Yesterday's radical literature is often today's major boring shit. Joyce is Exhibit A.

lol one time i told my friend to do his graduate thesis on finnegan’s wake. i thought it was hilarious he actually tried to read the book. he ended up doing his thesis on the short story the dead

About my fourth attempt. The rhythm and prose just hit me right. I don't normally stick to a book if I don't like it, but something about Blood Meridian wouldn't let me give up. I loved "The Road" by the same author, I love westerns, I love bleak settings, but the writing style never clicked, until it did. Once I noticed the way paragraph structure was used and how sentences were supposed to flow, it brought the book to another level.

I have this discussion all the time on reddit about audiobooks vs reading. You get a different experience actually looking at the words on the paper than having them read to you, and blood meridian is the perfect example of this.

I tried Finnegan Wake, I don't think I'll ever pick it up again. It's just not for me, but I'm sure there are people out there that get it.

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Nah, some guy on the internet read it and upon finishing said they didn't understand it and it's not worth reading. That's good enough for me.

I was an English Lit major... forget which specific course it was, but it was definitely 3 or 400 level something.

Your noble sacrifice is duly noted and greatly appreciated.

Dang - that's why "Happy Vale" popped into my head! I saw Arsenic & Old Lace just a few months ago.

That’s still a tough assignment for an undergrad. When I studied Ulysses it was part of a double course in Irish literature and history. I needed to know Irish history to understand Joyce, and I also needed my background in the Western classics like Homer and Shakespeare. And even so, I’m sure I missed a lot.

I have read Joyce's other work and have been curious about Finnegan's Wake. I don't think I'm ready to read it yet but if I have a smaller TBR and more free time, then one day maybe I will. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. :)

I read the first three pages. Yeah, not for me, haha. I'm all for "challenging" books, but dear lord it was like reading the ramblings of someone that has been up on PCP for a week straight... maybe that's the point.

I had a similar experience with "Ulysses." Forced myself to start it, continued to read it, finished it, had about 30% comprehension. Sheesh, it was humiliating, especially because it's supposedly a great book.

[Fun fact: When I was about 12, I heard it had been on trial for obscenity. So I went down to the library, found a copy, and started looking for the dirty parts, seeking titillation. Imagine how well that worked out...]

I've decided, after reading a book about what James Joyce did to his daughter, that I would never read any of his work. Thank you for validating that stance!

Another one bites the dust.

"I didn't understand it..." "It was hard to read..." Shouldn't a competent author strive for clarity, rather than obfuscation?

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I enjoyed it. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I only managed to read 1 chapter and the only thing I liked was the string of gibberish Joyce used as the sound effect for the giant falling.

There’s also a passage that says “Twitter litter” , bet he coined a lot of things coincidentally because he was creating every possible twist on English words

I made a post at /r/jamesjoyce after finishing the book, and I can agree with you that I would NOT recommend the Wake to other people. I only got through it because I’m obsessed with Joyce.

Still, I would not say it was a waste of time. Some parts of it was better than Ulysses. And now that I’m listening to the audiobook, it’s a lot of fun.

> he used the word Hogwarts. and also said " he googled" and this was way before we knew those words.

He also used “bussing”, which is a word I see young people use a lot these days. He also used “simp”. There are a lot of “unexpectedly modern” words in the book.

Oh, I can assure you that reading Finnegans Wake aloud is genuinely a lot of fun. But it takes some practice because Joyce’s neologisms will trip you up.

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I have a faint feeling Joyce’s trolling us with this book …

I believe there is a kind of art that attempts to be obscure and opaque just so that those who manage to make sense of it can claim to be superior. Yet in reality, no one has made any sense of it because it's nonsense. It's like the modern works of art where the artist splashes paint on a wall and critics and pretentious people praise its deep metaphorical meaning. Or have you ever known the kind of person who just throws out french phrases just to impress people?

I acknowledge that I could be completely wrong. Maybe if I got a Ph.D. in literature and spent a few years studying Joyce that my eyes would be opened to how brilliant Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are.

"Simplicity of language is not only reputable but perhaps even sacred." -- Kurt Vonnegut

I can honestly believe it. Reading about him, he seems like he would be mischievous enough to do this.

that's literally anything. "Is this book fun?" "Yeah, if you're into it"

literally how likes and dislikes work. Entirely subjective

Unless the author publishes a detailed paper on what they wanted to communicate in their work, you never really "get" a book.

You only get your subjective perception of the book. Now, I'm not saying that the author can't communicate a message to the reader, but not all authors try to do that.

Some authors just want to write a a bunch of characters and events and stories and don't really care if the reader understands the point or meaning. Some works of art don't have a true meaning.

Just because a book doesn't have an understandable meaning, however, doesn't mean that it's bad or unenjoyable. Goodness and enjoyability are just subjective to the reader.

This sounds unbearable.

Give me literature that MEANS something.

Sure

It's not about anything. The point of the text is to push the boundaries of what one can do using language.

It was never meant to be read. It was an experiment. If he was writing a paragraph and somebody came into his room and started talking to him, he wrote that down in the middle of the paragraph. It was pure experimental fiction. No one really understands why it’s considered a classic other than the fact that people want to seem intellectual. By Joyce’s own words, it is not understandable by anybody but him. to me the analogy is Lou reeds metal machine music. I’m at her how her to try, there’s no melodies there, just like there’s no plot here.

That last quote is funny, though, because Vonnegut liked Joyce. Hell, he even praises Joyce in the very same essay that this quote comes from.

It took me like 3 times to read Ulysses, but when I did, I genuinely loved it. That has nothing to do with feeling superior. I loved it enough that I ended up writing my undergrad thesis about it.

Finnegan’s Wake, though, I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I gave up after a couple dozen pages. That doesn’t make it nonsense. But it also didn’t pull me in in a way that made it seem worth the effort. Nobody I’ve ever spoken to has made it seem worth the effort.

thank you for the heads up.

Plenty of people have made sense of it. It's not literature in the traditional sense, it's meant to have shifting meanings. It's not a traditional narrative. You're supposed to 'read' by getting impressions of the words, because their amalgamations of other words, it's like a psychedelic trip or a fever-dream. It's like a fractal, in that you can dive into single 'words' or phrases and find varieties of ideas and meanings in several languages and eras.

You supposed to lose track of characters, settings, events. That's all deliberate. There's a method to the madness. If you don't like it, that's perfectly legitimate. But it's not nonsense. It's a work of art, a brilliant one, but Joyce is like a comedian with an extremely specific and absurd sense of humour who doesn't care if anyone else gets the joke.

Twitter was already a word before the site, it's a way to describe bird sounds.

As long as you can define what the it that you are into is.

For Finnegan's Wake, the it is not novels.

Yes, I've always thought this since I struggled my way through it one summer back in college.

Sooo audiobook then

>It's a work of art, a brilliant one, but Joyce is like a comedian with an extremely specific and absurd sense of humour who doesn't care if anyone else gets the joke.

I like that, that tracks with my take on him. He's certainly a genius, but quite possibly mad as well. Reminds me of Danielewski's House of Leaves in the scope and innovativeness, but also in it's convolution and opacity.

I wouldn't deny anyone the enjoyment of slogging through any of these books if that's your thing, but I don't personally enjoy struggling that much with a leisure activity. I mostly read for fun.

There’s a “Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake” by Joseph Campbell

no. some things will he very generally fun and good because they touch on general things that apply to everyone. fun if you're into it describes only things that are good, but not through their own value, but in the context of a niche. it's just like how many reviewers will consider anything between a 6 and 7.5 as 'good for the fans of this specific genre' or 'good for fans of the topic the story is based on'.

People who like Joyce get a huge amount of fun from reading him, but the Wake in particular is like learning a new language-- or, more accurately, it's like regressing to a more primitive form of language, where words and sounds intuitively invoke feelings and images.

You can "snap into" the language of the Wake, and you find that you're "getting it", getting the meanings that Joyce was intending, without "reading" the words like you normally would. It's emphatically not some kind of high-brow intellectual thing, like reading Continental philosophy, Hegel or Kant or whatever. It's more like a those "magic eye" pictures that were big in the 90s. If you cross your eyes the right way, the image snaps into focus-- until you look away for a second and then it's all a fuzzy mess again.

It's really an amazing achievement in writing, but it's so weird and impenetrable that many people can't make heads or tails of it, and it just seems like nonsense. That's not because the reader is less intelligent or clever. There's just a perceptual 'trick' to it.

Joyce intended it to be an amalgamation of the whole history of European society and literature, but the chronology and the logical/narrative structure is blended, stretched, fractaled, and loops back on itself. It has "the logic of a dream". Look at something, it's one thing. Look away for a second and look back, it's another. You slip through the layers of history, of words/ideas/events/people without any sign-posts or a stable point of view. One character, or object, or event bleeds back into others of the same kind-- or of their opposites.

This is why people find it so frustrating. You can't stop and regain your bearings, you either slip into the stream of consciousness and flow with it, or you're just spun around into you're dizzy and you catch nothing of it.

People who like Joyce get a huge amount of fun from reading him, but the Wake in particular is like learning a new language-- or, more accurately, it's like regressing to a more primitive form of language, where words and sounds intuitively invoke feelings and images.

You can "snap into" the language of the Wake, and you find that you're "getting it", getting the meanings that Joyce was intending, without "reading" the words like you normally would. It's emphatically not some kind of high-brow intellectual thing, like reading Continental philosophy, Hegel or Kant or whatever. It's more like a those "magic eye" pictures that were big in the 90s. If you cross your eyes the right way, the image snaps into focus-- until you look away for a second and then it's all a fuzzy mess again.

It's really an amazing achievement in writing, but it's so weird and impenetrable that many people can't make heads or tails of it, and it just seems like nonsense. That's not because the reader is less intelligent or clever. There's just a perceptual 'trick' to it.

Joyce intended it to be an amalgamation of the whole history of European society and literature, but the chronology and the logical/narrative structure is blended, stretched, fractaled, and loops back on itself. It has "the logic of a dream". Look at something, it's one thing. Look away for a second and look back, it's another. You slip through the layers of history, of words/ideas/events/people without any sign-posts or a stable point of view. One character or object or event bleeds back into others of the same kind, of their opposites.

This is why people either love or hate it. If you can slip into Joyce's stream of consciousness, you get a wild and wonderful trip. If you can't, you just get spun around until you're sick with dizziness and you don't catch any of it.

The first question about the book raised in OP is about the story. I think this is the failing, if you read books for the story you wouldn't get James Joyce. You'll have more fun reading a Wikipedia article summarizing the book. In fact if you're looking for just the story in general, you are better off reading summaries. James Joyce's books are puzzles that the reader is supposed to unravel. If you can't unravel them then they bring the same frustration that failing a tough puzzle brings: the feeling that it is nonsensical or the creator is just flaunting over you.

There are books of different kinds, some are plot driven (like those dry Three Body Problems books), some are character driven. Then there are James Joyce's books, which are language driven. Not every book is for everyone.

Also, a review which boils down to "I didn't get it, therefore it's a waste of time" is foolish gibberish. You could have simply looked up existing reviews/analysis of the book and exposed yourself to second opinions. If you then still have disagreement, you could have found some people to discuss to, which is kind of the point of these internet forums.

Reminds me of this joke from On Writing, by Stephen King:

A friend came to visit James Joyce one day and found the great man sprawled across his writing desk in a posture of utter despair.

James, what’s wrong?' the friend asked. 'Is it the work?'

Joyce indicated assent without even raising his head to look at his friend. Of course it was the work; isn’t it always?

How many words did you get today?' the friend pursued.

Joyce (still in despair, still sprawled facedown on his desk): 'Seven.'

Seven? But James… that’s good, at least for you.'

Yes,' Joyce said, finally looking up. 'I suppose it is… but I don’t know what order they go in!

It took two years for me to force myself all the way through it. You have the patience of a saint. I salute you.

I tried to read it, but thought it was above my head. Did you ever notice that every quote you ever hear from that book, such as , iirc, "nattering nabobs of nepotism" or negativity or whatever it was, comes from the first three pages. Nobody (except op) gets past those first few pages.

https://spotify.link/KPjRg3Zgsyb

Could always enjoy the song instead!

Did you read it with the guide?

I've never read it. Although as an UG I read Ulysses, and even then I felt that a degree in theology is essential just to begin to understand it. Although religion is only part of it all. Joyce wrote deliberately for people to study his works for ever and ever, amen.

But FW was a favourite of Robert Anton Wilson, who studied it for decades, and he believed it to be, IIRC, the greatest ever work of literature. And Wilson was smart, if a little eccentric. He's worth listening to on FW, if you can find the recordings of his speeches.

>I actually enjoyed it, it was a puzzle, and it made me think and see things differently. I became more creative with my words.

How do you reconcile this with your claim that you get nothing out of reading it?

The only thing is that Joyce spent 17 years on the book and alienated many of his supporters by continuing to work on it (and, in their estimation, waste his talent on what seems like gibberish).

It’s certainly been suggested that the book is a joke, but it’s doubtful that he would devote so much time and energy to a joke.

Finnegans Wake is a remarkable book and artistic achievement. I run a blog on it (a work in progress), and I’ll link to my essay on how to approach the book: https://thesuspendedsentence.com/how-to-read-finnegans-wake/

As well as my partial explication of the first page: https://thesuspendedsentence.com/2022/08/07/the-first-page/

Nope.

I got something out of it. I said "you get nothing out of it" because that will be true for 99% of people who try to read it.

I haven't read Ulysses yet because I want to get a good amount of the references. It also helps that I'm Irish so I can understand a lot already but I can imagine that Finegan's is like Legal Chinese without a guide.

Also, “three quarks for Muster Mark”. Finnegans Wake will live (in infamy perhaps) as long as there’s physics. Personally I love the Wake. I read some out loud at a party once after my friends expressed their disbelief that it was worth the paper it was printed on, and almost immediately everyone was laughing hysterically. 600 pages of multilingual puns might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it made as much sense as the John Ashbery I’ve been reading lately.

Just listen to the song, it makes more sense.

I've read quite a bit of Joyce's work including his private letters and "exposing types of people for being twats" especially in the context of books didn't really seem like something he was really into or about, in general. I'm curious how you got that impression.

Like do you really think he spent seventeen years writing a novel just to make a rather petty comment that could have just as easily been done with a pamphlet?

>No one should ever be forced to read this sort of thing.

Has this ever actually happened? Is there some danger of it happening? I know that Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is occasionally taught in high schools but I don't think FW is likely to show up as required reading anywhere.

>Fuck if I know. I didn't understand it. I understood parts, and many of the words, and even whole sentences, but I had no idea what was happening. There isn't a story, or a plot, it's just...lots of words. a guy goes to a museum, Finnegan dies from falling off a ladder, a guy gets arrested or beaten up in a park by soldiers, there's a battle, lots of nautical and ships on sea stuff, there's a story of a grasshopper and an ant, there's a question and answer type play.....these are some of the things i "understood." It's like listening to a radio in the mountains with bad reception and constantly changing the channels, you get bits and pieces here and there, a word or phrase here and there, but nothing overall coherent.

That's EXACTLY what it felt like reading Ulysses, or rather half of it until I gave up.

The funny thing is that there were parts in the book that were very clever, like a scene in a newspaper (iirc) presented in articles or some wonderful prose, that was classic in quality.

And then the rest of the book is just ...stuff to test how annoyed you can get but keep on reading.

>I believe him, the man was a genius. But I’m this case he was so devious that very few people can fully appreciate his genius.

The thing is that a genius writing a book to let the world know how much of a genius he is doesn't do much good to anyone other than their ego.

Hugo, Dickens, Twain, the russians, they were all geniuses.

I really don’t think that was Joyce’s motivation. He was just having fun. And in fact Finnegan’s Wake did not initially earn good reviews, even from critics who loved Ulysses.

FUN FACT 2: He also coined the word 'Quarks' in the novel.

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I've read Ulysses and said I would never read Joyce again. This time I mean it.

It is a work of genius, but it’s one that’s completely inaccessible to most people. A lot of its words and phrases are puns that span several languages, or allusions to the Bible and other literature. That means to get the best possible understanding without the help of cliff notes, you need to understand multiple languages and have an ocean of knowledge of other literature to draw on.

So this is just a litsnob dunk post?

"Google" was a popular word with little kids in the 1900's - 1960s.

Goo-goo ad gah-gah was how we described "baby language". Saying, "he goo-gooed" or "he googled" was to say he was using baby language.

The name Google was derived from Googol, which is a word for a very large number (10^100). According to Wikipedia, The word googol was coined in 1920 by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta (1911–1981), nephew of U.S. mathematician Edward Kasner. He may have been inspired by the contemporary comic strip character Barney Google.

So, yes, we knew that word. Similarly with hogwarts, describing the "warts" from warthogs.

Thank you. I came here to say this.