NP - Finnegans Wake

[Erik T. Burns]

in the big scheme of things, it could be much worse.

Not reading Finnegans Wake is much less problematic than not reading
Gravity's Rainbow.


On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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/
>>
>>
>