[.ca] Finnegans Wake (ISBN 9626341637)

not yet finished.:
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.

Nice story:
You will probably consider this novel to be difficult. I agree with anybody who thinks so. It is very difficult. It certainly is hard to grasp, but once you get into it, that is it. James Joyce stretched the language and brought the book to a far higher form of writing that is uncommon around. Uncommon in the sense that you have to get into it to love it. For easier, compelling reads, I recommend the works of Janvier Tisi. Also recommended: Disciples of Fortune, Parsifial Mosaic

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 that human beings feel when something slips from their intellectual grasp. FINNEGANS WAKE is a ceaseless flow of language... It has neither beginning nor end... It is without sentences... Perhaps it doesn't even enfold words... Give up the attempt to understand FINNEGANS WAKE. Glide along its multitudinous surfaces. Bask in its language. Read it silently. Read it aloud. Read without trying to understand any of it. The reviews that surround this one may be used by a future scholar who would like to track down the misreception of FINNEGANS WAKE in the United States in the early twenty-first century. Again and again, Joyce is lambasted for not common-parlying. The apostles of commonsense want to hear only what they think that they already know. When a writer comes along and says something in a new way, they balk and coil. This is not a book to be understood. It is a book of darkness, of ciphers, of dreams. I will leave you with a brief excerpt from FINNEGANS WAKE, Part III. It is a description of hellos: "...after their howareyous at all with those of their dollybegs (and where's Agatha's lamb? and how are Bernadetta's columbillas? and Juliennaw's tubberbunnies?..."

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. But for the crosshatch eyebrow, then sanctify, in barrels, who glossface knows no nose. Whepped, whipped, on a turnip stitch, when she smiled and flung her hair back, wet; drip; drip; drip, and a breeze cool and encumbered with hopefake. The stigmata of her hands, blood drain. If he takes her by the hair hair hair, stands - doesn't the cistern fill with wet, circumspect? - and he sets aloft the dregs of her, to douse with cleanse, polyandry from the morn and the eve. And doesn't this fit the swellick twofold or more? It is felicitous to devour julienne upon petit four, more, and he told her with pettifoggery to her cool laughter. Not eat; twain, grelch, grolsh. Into the phaeton, all singsong, all along, wretches and fables, choking on guilt and profane, and she was away. Back to hideabinds he skulks. Over.

Intriguiing:
You will probably consider this novel to be difficult. I agree with anybody who thinks so. It is very difficult. It certainly is hard to grasp, but once you get into it, that is it. James Joyce stretched the language and brought the book to a far higher form of writing that is uncommon around. Uncommon in the sense that you have to get into it to love it. For easier, compelling reads, (...)