/lit/ - Literature

It is not worth your effort if you are:

a) a casual
b) someone who reads books and then tells his friends about how great/complex it was
c) a pseudointellectual
d) tao lin

You should only read this if you have an inherent interest in all forms of writing and already have a great deal of literary knowledge prior to entry. This book cannot be "overvalued", because there is no person who has ever understood it fully, save Joyce and Anthony Burgess.

>>2012944
Whatever you do, OP, don't listen to this faggot tripfag. As usual, he's boring, unsightful and posts in every single thread.

As far as understanding the work goes, or even reading it, I'd say it's best done in bite-size pieces. Read it aloud, read it high but don't spend that much time trying to dissect it's meaning. If you want to, by all means do so, but the fact that you're doubtful and need to make a thread about it means that you're not ready to.

I'd recommend instead you read his short story The Dead and Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist.

Its not worth understanding, no. It is however worth reading. The wordshape, sound, and image are what's important. Don't worry about understanding. its basically prose poetry.

>>2012987
>Read it aloud
Oh boy please don't do this, bad advice.

>>2012944
This.

Books like Finnegans Wake separate the men from the faggots. There are plenty of college sophomores out there who say they love books and are literature snobs, and they go around quoting Salinger and Emerson.

They just follow the trend. They pick up what's easily accessible and mimic vague insight. They're fake.

If you want a genuine appreciation for literature, the words "is it even worth it" should never cross your mind. Pick it up yourself, read a bit of it, and see if it's something you like. Come back and ask us what we think of it, but if you're already weighing it in terms of worth, then you've already got the wrong attitude.

>>2012944
Don't be stupid. No one can understand any work fully, not even the author.

>>2013002
>decry those who read Salinger
>call someone fake
>mfw

>Joseph Campbell tried to understand it
>Joseph Campbell thought it contained the key to all mythologies
>Joseph Campbell published Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake
>Joseph Campbell went on to write his own key to all mythologies
>Joseph Campbell wrote Hero With A Thousand Faces
>George Lucas bought a copy of Joseph Campbell
>Star Wars franchise has made $4.41 bn to date.
>It was all directly inspired by Finnegans Wake

So yes, it can make you a lot of money in the world of light entertainment.

>>2012993
Why bad? It helped me. Of course, the second piece of advice would be 'with an Irish accent', my fake one served rather well. To each their own, I guess, but it's not that bad an advice.

>>2013002
Going to out-and-out disagree with this one. Sometimes it takes quite a while to start appreciating the value of an immense tome, and there is always the risk of wasting your time on something long AND shitty, so asking around seems like a very prudent thing to do. Life is short, nigga.

>implying Joyce wasn't just trolling people with that.

>>2013041
>when James Joyce was writing Finnegans Wake, he rubbed his hands together and chuckled, “This'll keep the professors busy for the next 100 years.
Nah, couldn't be

>>2013031
Going to kind-of-sorta agree with this one. I agree, life is way too short, and even if you devoted every waking minute of every day for 80 years, you still wouldn't be able to read EVERY critically-acclaimed book, let alone shitty ones. That's why I suggested he pick it up and read a bit of it. An author's tone and writing style won't dramatically change through the book, unless s/he's a bad author, or it's post-modern. So the first 20 pages or so should be able to give you a good taste. If you aren't hooked, then put it down. Books aren't supposed to be work, despite what habits we picked up in middle school.

Secondly, the point I was trying to make was that if he wanted to get an idea of the book, he should ask us what we thought of it, not if it's worth it. By asking for us to gauge its worth, he's showing his subconscious arbitrary value system on literature. Case in point: if you think of your path with literature as something you can look upon and quantify, then you're doing it wrong.

Read this first, its worth it by itself and it really helped me to get through some of the denser stuff.
http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LiteratureEnglish/WorldLiterature/Irish/?view=usa&a
mp;ci=9780195321029

>>2013280
Fair enough, though I will say that a lot of people have struggled to get into Catch-22, myself, to a degree, included. It's very chaotic and borderline incoherent for the first 50 pages, where everything is being told out of context and without any sense of chronology. Then, it starts to transform into one of the funniest and most touching things you might ever read. If I wasn't aware of its immense reputation, I might (big emphasis on might) have put it down, so I'm wont to argue that it can sometimes take quite a while before a book picks up, sometimes WAY more than 20 pages.

Also, "is it worth it" could certainly be a lazy way of asking "did you really enjoy it," which seems like best question to ask in this sort of scenario.

>>2013002
Tell that to Borges. Tell that to Nabokov.

And there's nothing wrong with reading it aloud. Again, you shouldn't read a lot of it at a time. This has been my experience with it.

I appreciate it aesthetically. I don't care what Joyce meant, I don't care about what scholars say about it, I just read it and realize that I probably have an equal hand as Joyce in creating the language of Finnegans Wake.

I read somewhere that Joyce's daughter, Lucia, was schizophrenic and her and Joyce had this weird private language they would communicate in and that no one else understood and this was the inspiration for the style of FW. I really like this thought and that's what made me give it a shot. Again, I'm nowhere need finished the book but I'm not reading it traditionally.

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU78NdeKFtA

Literature is about the reading and enjoying of books. Whether that means you read Harry Potter and enjoy it or whether that means you read Plato and enjoy it. Shit man, check it out from the library. If you can't get past the first chapter return it, no harm no foul. I've always found that its ALWAYS worth it to TRY to read a book. Remember sometimes books come to us at the wrong time. I remember the first time I tried to read the dune series. It didn't do it for me. Then I went back after a few years and tried again and I loved it. Timing is important too, just don't let others opinions sway you into thinking that something isn't worth your time.

>>2013475
When Carl Jung diagnosed her as schizophrenic, Joyce replyed that she was simply doing the same experiments in language as he was, and Jung replyed "Yes, but you are diving, and she is sinking"

Interesting bit I heard on that.

>>2013475
Now that gives me a new perspective of Finnegans Wake. I'll have to read that book again, thank you.