Penguin Classics Finnegans Wake [Paperback]

 

 

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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!

True, Joyce's many masterpieced work of profound interjectional superiority has at last brought the final jigsaw piece to this unChristianly magnifique port-en-tois ouevre...

But that's why it's sooooooo good?!

Hello, my name is Rajish. I am an 8th rank student from The Calcutta Institute of Fine Literary Works. Tonight, we will take a journey of unprecedented backwardness and desolution. When I was 4 years old, my friend and I went to the local book shop to buy our first copies of Finnegan's Wake (FW as we affectionately called it). When we came home we read our copy of FW with the greatest of zeal and devoured the conduit imagery and allusion in this densely conceived and lightly told work. The effect, of one who studies it as my friend and I do, is of entrancement and utmost vermisiltude. By the end, we feel so lost and alone, so dissapointed by literature and its pseudo-world of false authoritarianism, we vow to never read again. Except for Eddy Said that is. Please read this book and join us postcolonially. Peace.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Nice story
You will probably consider this novel to be difficult. I agree with anybody who thinks so. It is very difficult. Read more

Published on Jan 26 2005 by John Egbe

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguiing
You will probably consider this novel to be difficult. I agree with anybody who thinks so. It is very difficult. Read more

Published on Jan 21 2005 by Mike

5.0 out of 5 stars the novel that wasn't
Hep the noodle went the proprietor, laugh, crafting laughing, spinning face on touchtop of oats and wheat in the grange. Read more

Published on Jun 15 2004 by Steve Thulen

5.0 out of 5 stars The Wrath of the Understanding
The phrase that I've used to entitle this review is from Hegel, "Wut des Verstehens." It refers to the human drive to want to understand everything---and the irritation... Read more

Published on May 19 2004

1.0 out of 5 stars art house intellectuals
I could take in a dump in a fancy looking box and some of you people would probably label it as "The greatest singularization of Drama, Vision, Madness and Awe ever conceived... Read more

Published on April 2 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars this is the book that never ends.
"This is the book that never ends it goes on and on my friends. Some people started reading it not knowing what it was and they will continue reading it because this is the... Read more

Published on Mar 23 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars The philological scourge of our language
"Finnegans Wake" is a novel for people who are tired of reading novels. The chapter summaries in the table of contents, and not the body of the novel itself, give... Read more

Published on Mar 23 2004 by A.J.

1.0 out of 5 stars Meaningless gibberish
There is nothing worse than an illiterate writer.

Published on Mar 13 2004 by David Gulbraa

5.0 out of 5 stars Circle within circles...
What can actually be said about Finnegan's Wake that would be coherent? Well, not much unless one is willing to spend a great deal of time atempting to decipher speakers from... Read more

Published on Feb 25 2004 by Jean

5.0 out of 5 stars "...jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity"
Fun words aplenty
Give meaning to.
Eagerly awaiting movie.

Published on Jan 25 2004 by Blazes Boylan

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