Finnegan's Wake

[Anonymous No.14591500]

Are you fucking kidding me? I get metaphor, I get the expression of a human experience through abstract writing, but isn't Finnegan's Wake fucking pushing it? What are we supposed to get out of this? Okay, it's elegant, but its raw prose to such a level that it doesn't mean anything. Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous No.14591505]

>>14591500
it comfy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kFqiv8Vww

[Anonymous No.14591523]

>>14591500
Yeah, it's basically a good idea done wrong. Other authors tried to create a similar type of language but at least they crafted something readable.

[Anonymous No.14591542]

>>14591505

>limpopo limp

lmao. i may read ulysses after all.

[Anonymous No.14591591]

>>14591500
Art for art's sake. As long as it is beautiful, that is all that matters. Sure, opinion on what is beautiful is varied but this work wasn't intended for the masses. Yet with the extensive amount of commentaries compiled by scholars, it becomes more accessible to the general public.

[Anonymous No.14591608]

>>14591500
>that doesn't mean anything
Apparently you're missing a lot.

[Anonymous No.14591690]

>>14591500
Joyce referenced pretty much everything he ever touched in his life. For this reason, it's impossible to completely "understand" any of his work because you'd have to be him to have absorbed the exact combination of things he referenced.

Basically, he threw everything against the wall. Your job is to focus on what you /do/ get. There's so much to "get" that it's a waste of time to worry about what you don't get.

Think of each person like a petri dish. Everyone has a different combination of books, films, art, TV shows, etc in their repertoire. Joyce "spoke" very well in the meta-language of his petri dish. It's fascinating.

Have you read his other work already?

[Anonymous No.14591705]

>>14591500
*Finnegans

[Anonymous No.14591764]

>peepee poopoo
>the cow says moo
>fart in me face mommy

What a genius

[Anonymous No.14591781]

>>14591764
Shitposting or hasn't actually read Joyce

[Anonymous No.14591904]

bzzzrt

don't mind me, just AEDing this thread

[Anonymous No.14591921]

>>14591764
>the cow says moo
That's Pynchon and it's "A cow sez moo".

[Anonymous No.14591951]

>>14591500
>isn't Finnegan's Wake fucking pushing it?
Yeah that's the point.

You don't have to like it, I personally think it's a waste of time, but it was definitely intended to "push it".

[Anonymous No.14591969]

>>14591781
>t. baby tuckoo

[Anonymous No.14591991]

>>14591969
The first page of his second book is your source. Ok. You're and idiot.

[Anonymous No.14592194]

>>14591991
that's not a nicens little boy of you

[Anonymous No.14592201]

>>14592194
Go lie in your queer-smelling bed.

[Anonymous No.14592209]

>>14592201

my bed smells disgusting, not queer.
your bed smells queer, because of all the different loads soaked into the sheets.
poof

[Anonymous No.14592219]

Modern "art" in a nutshell.

Give me a break.

[Anonymous No.14592240]

>>14591500
>Finnegan's Wake

[Anonymous No.14592246]

>>14592209
bro clean your room

[Anonymous No.14592288]

>>14592246

my room is fine, it's the sheets and carpet that give me away. more the latter than the former, if i'm being honest.
winter is tolerable but i'm dreading the onset of spring.

[Anonymous No.14592293]

>>14592246

also the bathrobe i'm wearing as we speak, i notice a clump of french mustard on the inside of the lapel, there being no mustard of any sort in the house.
honestly the thing stinks worse than the carpet and gives me a rash & spots but it's so very cold

[Anonymous No.14592297]

>>14591500
Imagine reading this and not enjoying every single second, laughing out loud at the sheer insanity of the experience. Enjoying the Irish dialect of how the text is pronounced when read out loud, trying or not to figure out the portmanteaus.
It's the book that tries to make anyone say "It is OK to enjoy something you didn't understand 100%". Most people, including seasoned literary critics, don't seem to be able to grasp this. It's really sad to be so strict in your ideas of what literature can or cannot be that you can't just honestly enjoy and get at least a chuckle out of Finnegans Wake.

To me this book woke me up to the fact that I was enjoying something about it without being able to explain it in classical literature terms. I was enjoying that someone took the liberty to do this in a text and put it into book form in front of me. I was enjoying not understanding it and still finding it amusing. And then I realized how much work seemed to go into it. Almost 20 years of writing, obscure references and linguistic games in more than 20 languages. Clearly a lot of thought processes went into word choice, even if the words relate to each other randomly (which is not guaranteed).

If we ever put other texts into the same scrutiny, we'd be forced to admit we don't understand them either. We don't know why each author chooses each specific word in a given text. We don't know what they meant. Perhaps even they don't know what they meant. I don't know why I'm choosing exactly each word I'm choosing to write this post. It's this kind of automatic roughly guided process. Yet we lie to ourselves that we do understand the average book perfectly.
Finnegans Wake was the book that made me realize these things and made me able to appreciate art in a whole new way.
"Oh but it's easy to do this with a bot and some random languages". You could try, but even if you succeed to do something as good, Joyce did it by hand, with no automatic tools.
If the text was not fully committed to this absurdity I would not have come to this realization, so I owe a lot to this book in that sense.

[Anonymous No.14592320]

>>14592297
you got it, bro

[Anonymous No.14592370]

>>14592297
why would you read it when you can hear him sob over it in the audiobook?

[Anonymous No.14592387]

>>14591500
It's fun.

[Anonymous No.14592389]

>>14592370
Audiobooks were not a thing when I first read it.

[Anonymous No.14592395]

>>14592389
sorry I thought this was another thread

[Anonymous No.14592601]

>>14592209
why'd you break the reference combo :(

[Anonymous No.14592917]

>>14591500
I just think it's fun. Goofy, secure of itself, flippity floppity. I'll never know what any of it means, but it's not for me. Its for Joyce.

[Anonymous No.14592926]

Joyce sucks ass and anyone who disagrees is a brainlet. He's peak fucking reddit quirky bullshit.

[Anonymous No.14593284]

I have a question for anons ITT. I am on 2/4 of the Joyce canon and so far Stephen Dedalus is the main character in what I've read, once as a schoolboy and another time as a young man. Just out of curiosity, is Wake and Dubliners a continuation of his obsession over Eileen or do the other two have different characters? Because the concept of such immaculate prose being woven into a setting so cotidian to the author and characters so immediate and invariable is fascinating, if that's what it is.

[Anonymous No.14593800]

>>14591690
I read Portrait but really should have gone into Ulysses first before Finnegan's Wake

[Anonymous No.14593848]

>>14593284
Stephen isn't in Dubliners or FW. Some Dubliners characters are minor characters in Ulysses though.

[Anonymous No.14593904]

>>14592246
that's a shoop right

[Anonymous No.14593921]

>>14592297
Anytime I try to read or listen to it I end up hysterically laughing and put it down
I just think
>the absolute madman
Every time I read it lmao

[Anonymous No.14593978]

>>14591500
Shit tier book. Joyce peaked with Ulysses and went off the deep end trying to be Lewis Carroll

[Anonymous No.14594009]

I wont claim by any means that its really that enjoyable to read, compared to more conventional literature. But i am very very glad that it exists.
Finnegan's Wake, to me, represents the depths of complexity and mastery of language that goes so deep and over the top that even seasoned experts struggle with it. The level of esoterica leaves me with a sense of happiness to admit that there is still some mystery in the world, and that we still might have decades left of study on it before we get anywhere at all.
The fact that Joyce was able to create such a densely woven work is to me one of the most amazing feats in literature, and perhaps art as a whole.
I'd love to see someone tackle a similar project in the current era, but instead of using references to Dublin and ireland, make reference to the deep depths of internet lore that we have built up over the past two decades, or something to that effect. Create yet again a masterpiece of obscurity, but now with references and metaphors that we might be able to understand and relate to, just as a Dubliner might be able to relate and understand much more of FW than anyone else.

[Anonymous No.14594036]

Book is an absolute goddamned riot. I've never finished it, but I've read the first 100 pages or so about a dozen times and random pages beyond that point. If you don't get some sort of kick out of Joyce's complete surrender to the absurdity of quale then you're already dead and should just stop being /lit/

[Anonymous No.14594059]

>>14591500
OP is Branolette; never ganna make it

[Anonymous No.14594062]

>>14594009
loling at PhD students combing through 4chan archives in a century to analyze such a book
>Many theories circulate on the exact identity of Der Coomer, referenced in the third act of the novel. A paper published by Princeton University suggests he is, in fact, a meta reflection of the reader themselves

[Anonymous No.14594069]

>>14594062
exactly my thoughts, but to native internet tards it might actually be comprehensible or at least enjoyable
I'd actually attempt it if i was a competent enough writer and had the time and attention span

[Anonymous No.14594091]

>>14593284
FW has its own set of characters but one might argue just about anything about them being references to other books.

[Anonymous No.14594125]

>>14594062
it's time anons. A race to see who will be remembered.

[Anonymous No.14594136]

>>14594125
May our shit posts never die.

[Anonymous No.14594166]

>>14591500
Filtered. To be fair, you need an extremely high IQ to understand Finnegans Wake.

[Anonymous No.14594451]

>>14593800
Goes without saying, but you really should tackle Ulysses first. It's amazing and helps prepare for FW.

[Anonymous No.14594484]

>>14594036

[Anonymous No.14594499]

>>14591921
Not him but that was a reference to the first line of Portrait.

[white male No.14594506]

it's about love, what's not to get?

[white male No.14594517]

>>14594166
you have to be in love to understand finnegans wake

[Anonymous No.14594833]

>>14594009
Makes me wish Joyce lived to see hypertext. Imagine a 90s/early 2k style website designed by Joyce.

[Anonymous No.14594854]

>>14594499
The first line of Portrait is "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road". It's closer to the Pynch.

[Anonymous No.14594942]

>>14594833
It would be beautiful. I'm considering trying to make something like that myself, but it'll be a very slow process and probably won't be able to live up to the idea.

[Anonymous No.14595226]

>>14594499
Illiterate.

[Anonymous No.14595431]

So I put it on my TBR list last night because I watched a few videos of people saying how elegant it is. Is there like some guide to read along with or is it just best to not understanding anything and try and imagine what's happening yourself?

[Anonymous No.14595439]

>>14591705
Shut the fuck up unlovable bastard

[Anonymous No.14595463]

>>14592601
He didn't read past the first page so he ran out of material to reference.

[Anonymous No.14595471]

>>14595439
pleb post

[Anonymous No.14595744]

>>14595431
>Is there like some guide to read along with
There's multiple.
The "Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake" is the standard guide.

this website has some annotations:
http://finwake.com/desktop.htm
(note all the chapters are there: "chapter 21" means "part 2 chapter 1")

"Joyce's Book of the Dark" is something to look into as well.

[Anonymous No.14595753]

>>14595431
oh also there's no right way to read it. If you want to just go with the flow and not worry about understanding, the Oxford World's Classics edition of FW is good to pick up because it has a guide to the "plot" in the introduction that can help you figure out the broad strokes of what's going on. Only the very broad strokes, sometimes there's only one summarizing sentence for ten or more pages.

I'm reading it this way now, I haven't used any of the guides in >>14595744 besides a bit of finwake.com