NP - Finnegans Wake

[Henry M]

I've quit reading Finnegans Wake a numb-er of times.  I love Joyce's other
works, but FW is impenetrable for me, and I apparently need to penetrate.

AsB4,
٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
Henry Mu
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20


On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 8:40 AM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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