/lit/ - Literature

was he on drugs when he wrote this

Hardest book you've ever read. Go.

Rip english

Is there a book that isn't written in any existant language, but sort of phonetically, sacrificing meaning for musicality? Pic related does come close but it is still based on English and definitely "means something" at some points.

Holy fuck, this book is fucking stupid.
Its like the modern art exhibits where someone took a shit in a sliced orange and put it in an aquarium, to make a commentary on the american veterans from the Iraq war or whatever.
Is there any value here, or have people just agreed to pretend its good?

>(Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, what curios of sings (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since We and Thou had it out already) its world?

A bit rude.

Currently I'm trying to read finnegans wake. English isn't my mother tongue and I have problems to determine whether I understood enough. Most things I read about the book itself were going on about that there's no genuine plot and that a full comprehension isn't possible. I can't decide at which degree of understanding I should move on to the next page. Has anyone dealt with this problem and can give me some advice?

Which edition of Finnegans Wake should I get?

and why has it not been published by Everyman's Library???

Has anybody here read Joyce's final novel Finnegans Wake?

It's 600 pages long, published when he was 57, and I really can't believe what kind of literary environment must have existed for this kind of thing to be deemed worthy of publication. The first 600 pages or so focuses on I have no fucking clue, when a riverrun past bend of bay and swerve of shore, and then goes on to stream of consciousness rambling for 90 pages. Then Joyce references some obscure cave painting that 3 people in the world have seen. Each chapter is around 3 / 4 pages long and largely consists of nonsense.

>>7471078

if any of you guys seriously like reading and haven't tried finnegans wake i highly recommend it

why does nobody ever talk about how much fun this book is

Why do you say this is the BBEG of literature? It is nothing special or complicated to read.

It was alright for YA, I guess.

Nobody can read this shit, so it's smart.

>self publishing

Holy shit. How do I comprehend this book? How do I even begin to appreciate and understand the subtle meanings wrapped within some of this silly wordplay? I must admit, I enjoy what I've read so far. It's fucking nonsense to me, and a lot of the alliteration and glueing of words coupled with misspellings and re-spellings has me in fits of laughter. Is this the only way to really read this book? I've read that Finnegans Wake is what you take from it, and people to this day still debate what the fuck it means. Am I off to a good start or should I quit while I'm ahead? Must I be a literary scholar in order to truly know what I'm reading? Either way, this book and its silly sounding prose and utter disregard for the "rules of grammar" is making me fall in love with it.