Modern Classics Finnegans Wake [Paperback]

i haven't yet finished my first read through of this book, but even now i think it's fair to say that this is an amazing piece of work. i just want to reiterate what a couple of people have said. firstly this is not literature, as such, it shares far more with music than it does with literature, and secondly, it should be read as you would listen to music, letting it wash over you, not trying to control any of it, not trying to realize what is happening. you should realize that after a while things will make sense, and even if the book never makes sense to you entirely it doesn't matter. to view this book as beautiful nonsense does no disservice to it, i think, because it is definitely the ultimate in beautiful nonsense if that's the way you want to see it.

and really, if you're going to write this off as gibberish, realize the man spent 17 years of his life perfecting this book. he went blind while writing it. his daughter was put into a mental asylum and europe was in the begining throes of world war II and still he wrote this book. more work has been lovingly poured into these pages than most writers put into their entire career. if you don't like it, fine, but calling this book gibberish is doing a huge disservice to the author and only making yourself look stupid. just say you don't like it, that's all you need to say.

I just finished reading FW last night after almost six weeks of thorough plowing-ahead through it. I don't know where to begin in my review of it. I would start by summing it up in the word amazing. This book reinvents language. All through school, we're taught grammar, spelling, punctuation, the format for writing essays, letters, etc., but Joyce rejects that education, says the hell with it and does his own thing. What interpretation of a word is right? Is there a correct interpretation to be conceived? Is there any possible way to wrestle the magnitude of this book to the ground and pin it down to really understand what's going on?? Who knows. Joyce has the reader in the palm of his hand, and it's frightening what FW can do to one's mind. I'm sure that now everything else I read will make me think of Joyce in one way or another. I probably don't know 2% of the amount of foreign languages, literary, geographical, historical and mythological allusions and references which are crammed into the book, but the parts that I CAN decipher are very clever. It's not an interesting "story", but it's captivating simply because it's such an enigma of a book.
There is not so much a story here as there is a SERIES of stories or vignettes parodying various myths, historical events, etc. But several patterns occur and reoccur. Variations of the initials H C E and A L P (What does Joyce achieve with FW? Why, He Confuses Everyone! All Living Persons!), rearrangements of the name of Finn MacCool, the mythological Irish hero, and the predominant Vicoian theme of history repeating itself. H C E is born and reborn as Adam, as Humpty Dumpty, as Finn MacCool himself.. ad infinitum. Joyce deliberately left the whole thing open-ended so that every word can be interpreted in any way, depending on the individual readers personal knowledge. The more you learn, the more meanings will apply themselves to FW. Tip.
And those of you who call this book a piece of garbage have to admit one thing- at least it's original and unique. There's no other book quite like it. Joyce didn't write for other people to understand him. He didn't write to appeal to the literary elite. Joyce wrote for Joyce, and if the reader can be in on the joke, it can produce great results. If you don't get it and call it a pretentious collection of random phrases, then darn it, it's your loss. And don't criticize people for saying they like it. And no, I'm NOT "pretending" to like it- I LIKE IT! Certainly it has some dull spots, but it's 90% great!
It Awnly tuck me sicksweex to reed the hole booke, anned I enjoid it vary moch. Tip. To you extramely pretentious revousers who say that knowbody has ever red it all the weigh thru (whaat maycs you so dammed shore of it in the fursed plays?!), then increase the number of people of all time who have read it all the way through from "zero" to ONE. That one being me. Not only did I read every last word, but I ENJOYED it, and very much so. So stack that in yore piep und smoe kit!
On to bigger and better(?) things! I'm starting Ulysses tonight!

I firmly believe that most who have read -- or so they say -- "Finnegans Wake" extoll its virtues because, to coin a phrase, its reputation precludes it. I am only aware of one detractor: Vladimir Nabokov, who, while considering "Ulysses" one of the four greatest works of the 20th century (a view which I don't share, incidentally), described labelled "FW" only a blot on his memory. (Note: not offered as a proof.) What is "FW", what is it really? Ultimately, I declaim it a failure -- not because I don't like it (an understatement!), but a failure on its OWN terms; and these, after all, are the only terms which any given work of art is obligated to fulfill. I offer one example of this failure -- an example which, however, is crucial to the entire structure of the book. "FW" is, within the story (such as it is) of one man, one family, supposed to represent the history of all of humankind. The history, of course, is relatively easy to represent, with its contextual Vico-ian circularity &c.; but the humankind is a foundering point (no pun intended). Joyce portrays this omnium gatherum of humanity through the meduim of what is commonly referred to as "dream consciousness," the collective unconscious of history, and he exemplifies this through a gallimaufry of languanges: all people, all languages. Fine, makes sense. And it also makes sense that there is a predominant language: English (alright: a very broguish Irish-English), because Finnegan/Humphrey/et al. is/are Irish. But we've glossed over the problem: all people, NOT all languages. Joyce, while being a brilliant linguist, didn't remotely have even snippets -- or even a good percentage -- of all of the languages extant (never mind those of antiquity); and while I'm perfectly willing to accept that NO ONE could have the languages to pull off this idea properly, that does nothing to the fact that Joyce fails to successfully complete his endeavor (on this front). I don't care if Michael Johnson is (currently, at least) the world's fastest 200 meter runner: if he promises a 15-sec. performance and runs it in 19, he's failed to deliver, period! Joyce's idea here IS possible: since there are certainly a finite number of languages, it would be quite possible to represent them all within one book, even if not humanly possible. What Joyce does, though, is make a helluva LOT of languages stand in for ALL languages. Weak, very.

There's a lot more wrong with "FW", too. For example, in a great many of his neojoylogisms, Joyce conveniently ignores the possible readings of his recombinations -- and subsequently asks the reader to do so. Joyce, the control freak, is not in complete control, his words come back to haunt him. (I don't say this is all the time, but . . .)

And I haven't even gotten to my tag line: the ultimate one-trick pony. (Okay: a couple of tricks.) "FW" is nothing more than a collection of erstwhile fables and puns, served up with the aforementioned linguistic salad (vide supra for the implicative failures of the latter). There's nothing to probe beneath this rococo surface, only the unscrambling and decoding. Recirculation of history? That can be probed in a paragrpah or two, perhaps a pair of pages. What else? Does Joyce score points of originality? Of course! Ambition? O my! But how long before different manifestations of HCE gets old? Just because Joyce's allegories are bigger must we pretend he came up with the idea? Ad rem ad nauseum.

If you love Joyce's writing (and I never much do) here, fine. Perhaps you'll find his puns amusing, his tales compelling. Certainly his workmanship is impressive -- I don't care how short it ultimately measures up. To me, "FW" is a crucible of Joyce's elementary particles, his three flavors of quark -- patience, knowledge, and ego. But I suspect that this book is little above what could be produced by a later series of HAL if you fed it enough information and a rather simple list of specifications. No computer could approach "Lolita", "Crime and Punishment", or "Arcadia" -- or "Ulysses", for that matter; but "FW" does so few things (instead simply doing them over and over and over and over (okay, perhaps that's somewhat fitting), changing the players but never the play) that it seems little more than the work of a machine, so contained is the arc of creativity which subsumes the various recombinatives. Madelbrot sets produce something similar, although with infinite (as far as we know) variety. I give it a 6: one above average for all that hard work. O Jamesy!