NP - Finnegans Wake

[Johnny Marr]

Congratulations, 7 months was less time than I took.

In complete contrast, I found it easier to read in long stretches (only
when I was mentally relaxed and attuned to readin), as only then can you
enter the stream of consciousness and the myriad tributaries that Joyce
explores. It's a confusing thicket of words, where the reader has to
acknowledge that they will never be able to fully grasp hold of the work,
any more than they could grasp hold of a waterfall. It's also a very
personal reading experience as, amongst the torrent of trivia and
miscellany you become drawn to your own areas of interest and expertise
whenever they flash up - as such it reveals quite a lot to you about what
you're really interested in (personally, sections on Irish mythology
and nineteenth century cricketers flashed up like passages of slanted
English amidst the Babelstorm).

My first impression upon finishing it was that I'd scrambled through a work
of genius, but not a great work. It's too unaccompanying, too
ostentatiously difficult - Joyce has set a puzzle he knows the reader can't
solve so that we are left humbled by his intellectual and
literary superiority. It's been written to leave the scholars foraging for
the remainder of time.

Yet, on further reflection, it's as extradordinary  and as sui generis a
book as I've ever read, even if I'm not able to acknowledge or aprecciate
even a hundredth of it. It's beyond categorisation and editorship - and
(ironically for such a widely encompassing creation) so personal a work
that it defies all but the broadest criticism. It's cussed and
cantankerous, and contains page after page of the bewlidering, the archaic
and the downright ugly - all of which can be forgiven for the pearls of
sheer beauty it intermittently provides.

FW is the ultimate writer's indulgence (although such a complete vision
that you couldn't possible edit it). Fortunately for Joyce, he's one of the
handful of writers with the sheer talent to merit such indulgence.

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 1:07 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> Self-promo time, I suppose.   I just finished FW  yesterday.  It took me 7
> months with about 10 weeks off for a vacation.  I read a very little bit at
> a time - maybe 1 or 2 pages -  two or three times a day -  it became like a
> little meditational for me.  It's so disjointed that this method worked and
> I can't really think of any other book which is so language oriented you
> honestly don't have to follow along with any idea, theme or  plot.  Maybe
> the Bible. ?
>
> I enjoyed it muchly.  It's very rich in it's own way but it sounds like a
> bunch of gobbeldy gook at first.  For me it was like a very thick Irish
> brogue with an abundance of word-play and phonetic spellings from a
> narrator who is sleeping and maybe half drunk to boot.   The narrative
> clears up and then fogs over again like the narrator/protagonist is going
> into deeper sleep and then coming back out of it and so on with his
> language just flowing on like a river - stream of SUBconsciousness.
> Here's a clip of how it does that (page 409/Penguin):
>
> Goodbye now, Shaun replied, with a voice pure as a church-mode, in
> echo rightdainty, with a good catlick tug at his coco-moss candylock,
> a foretaste in time of his cabbageous brain's curlyflower. Athiacaro!
> Comb his tar odd gee sing your mower.  O meeow? Greet thee Good? How
> are them columbuses! Lard have mustard on them! Fatiguing, very
> fatiguing. Hobos horn-knees and the corveeture of my spine. Poumeerme!
> My heaviest crux and dairy lot it is, with a bed as hard as the
> thinkamuddles of the Greeks and a board as bare as a Roman altar.
>
> Bekah
> http://beckylindroos.wordpress.com/
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