Uncomfortable Plot Summary: James Joyce trolls the entire literary establishment OR the soundtrack of Hell.
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| An actual photo of James Joyce taken during the writing of Finnegans Wake. |
Year Published: 1939
Pages: 628
First Sentence: riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Rating: 0/3 (burn any copy you encounter)
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| grrrrrr... |
Review:
I've been thinking for a long while now, especially since I stopped reading the romnovs, what a shame it is that none of the books have gotten me very riled up.
And then came Finnegans Wake.
Because Finnegans Wake is absolutely not a novel and I refuse to call it one.
If you haven't heard of Finnegans Wake and you're wondering why I'm so angry about it and why I whined about it on Twitter for two weeks, well! I didn't know anything about it either, until I was reading Kim and decided to see whether the "pocket" James Joyce on my bookshelf (another book that I inherited from an elderly and/or deceased relative) contained the full text of Finnegans Wake so that I wouldn't have to worry about getting it from the library. Alas no, Finnegans Wake is anything but pocket-sized, but in its preface to the selections of Finnegans Wake that it does contain, the pocket James Joyce states
The fact that critics have already arrived at a rough agreement as to its methods and premises, its characters and situations, is a testimonial to the artistic sincerity and intellectual rigor of Joyce's last book. But it would not be worth the trouble of elucidation if it did not offer the immediate satisfactions of humor and poetry. Its texture is so close, its structure so organic, that it cannot yet be considered readable in the sense of an ordinary novel. . . . [Its] circular construction . . . invites us to plunge in almost anywhere. By printing certain fragments in pamphlet form, however, Joyce seems to have recognized that they were especially attractive and instructive for this purpose.
Somehow that didn't worry me. I think my thoughts were somewhere between "Excellent, a novel version of 'The Night Pat Murphy Died'!" and "Well, surely it's no worse than The Ginger Man!"
And then two pages later the pocket James Joyce offered this, under the heading "Here Comes Everybody":
Yet may we not see still the brontoichthyan form outlined aslumbered, even in our own nighttime by the sedge of the troutling stream that Bronto loved and Brunto has a lean on. Hic cubat edilis. Apud liberatinam parvulam. Whatif she be in flags or flitters, reekierags or sundyechosies, with a mint of mines or beggar pinnyweight.
WHAT.
Arrah, sure, we all love little Anny Ruiny, or, we mean to say, lovelittle Anna Rayiny, when unda her brella, mid piddle med puddle, she ninny-nannygoes nancing by. Yoh! Brontolone slaaps, yoh snores.
WHAT.
Upon Benn Heather, in Seeple Isout too. The cranic head on him, caster of his reasons, peer yuthner in yondmist. Whooth?
WHAT?!
And this gibberish goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and six hundred and twenty-eight pages of complete nonsense.
Gentle reader, I almost gave up, and better books (relatively, that is) have beaten me before this one. But I found an audiobook, and that's how I "read" the vast majority of the book. (I'm going to discuss that sort of separately in another post, because I have Thoughts About It, but let's get back to the task at hand.)
Finnegans Wake is pretty much the number one reason why I have this blog in the first place i.e. to see whether the classics of (modern) literature have any relevance for an ordinary reader. And this one, at least, does not. There's no plot or characters that I can tell you about. There isn't even a writing style beyond this sort of breathless free fall of multilingual puns and portmanteaus. Occasionally some sort of structure and possibly even narrative surfaces, only to sink below the surface on the next page. Listening to the audiobook made my head hurt, and I'm absolutely positive that this book is read in an endless loop, booming down through all the circles of Hell to torment the damned even further than the eternal fires ever could.
I think what makes me most angry about this book, though, is that it's obviously a masterpiece. (Just not a fucking novel or at all enjoyable to read, look at, or have in one's home. At best it's a puzzle, at worst an elaborate joke.) This book represents a feat that would be impossible for any other human being to duplicate. But it's not a feat that I can really respect. It was a huge fucking waste of my time to read, and I would've given up on it within five pages if it weren't for my completionist sensibilities and commitment to this blog lol. What boggles my mind even more is the apparently vast machinery of books and websites and normal people who are absolutely dedicated to Finnegans Wake in ways that I don't even understand. Just gonna throw this out there, but if you say that Finnegans Wake is funny (seriously where the fuck does this claim come from?) or, like, worth anybody's time to try to read, I probably will respect you a little bit less, too.
Meaning that I can't love Anthony Burgess quite so much anymore (what with A Clockwork Orange at least appearing to be very much under the Joycean influence—from a random page of it: "All the time we were sirening off to the rozz-shop, me being wedged between two millicents and being given the odd thump and malenky tolchock by these smecking bullies."), or Mark Z. Danielewski either (random bit of Only Revolutions: "GAS STATION MAN, stiffed by our approach. Unsafe for all HE's stashed and stayed. Withering, calcifying. Splayed. Because everyone we blow by, we blow away.").
These crazy Finnegans Wake apologists tend to talk about the book like it's immensely readable, and while I'll give Stephen Fry's gently effusive praise of Ulysses the benefit of the doubt for now, I've experienced Finnegans Wake and it may or may not have almost killed me, and I absolutely don't think it deserves to be on The List, even as a masterpiece, even as a powerful influence on some writers I like a lot. I can't learn anything from a book that I'm unable to understand. If James Joyce seriously expected me and the rest of his readers to devote our lives to this, then he's kind of a dick, no matter how sad he was about going blind or his daughter's schizophrenia (I had to learn a lot more about this book than I usually do about the books on The List, just to make it bearable and, like, try to understand what was going on).
Anyway, Finnegans Wake is the cinnamon challenge of books. Don't attempt to read it just because you think that it can't be as bad as everyone says it is, and you're smarter than the rest of us, and all that bullshit. You'll save yourself a lot of grief and rage if you just avoid it entirely.
Quotations:
nope
Gentle reader, I almost gave up, and better books (relatively, that is) have beaten me before this one. But I found an audiobook, and that's how I "read" the vast majority of the book. (I'm going to discuss that sort of separately in another post, because I have Thoughts About It, but let's get back to the task at hand.)
Finnegans Wake is pretty much the number one reason why I have this blog in the first place i.e. to see whether the classics of (modern) literature have any relevance for an ordinary reader. And this one, at least, does not. There's no plot or characters that I can tell you about. There isn't even a writing style beyond this sort of breathless free fall of multilingual puns and portmanteaus. Occasionally some sort of structure and possibly even narrative surfaces, only to sink below the surface on the next page. Listening to the audiobook made my head hurt, and I'm absolutely positive that this book is read in an endless loop, booming down through all the circles of Hell to torment the damned even further than the eternal fires ever could.
I think what makes me most angry about this book, though, is that it's obviously a masterpiece. (Just not a fucking novel or at all enjoyable to read, look at, or have in one's home. At best it's a puzzle, at worst an elaborate joke.) This book represents a feat that would be impossible for any other human being to duplicate. But it's not a feat that I can really respect. It was a huge fucking waste of my time to read, and I would've given up on it within five pages if it weren't for my completionist sensibilities and commitment to this blog lol. What boggles my mind even more is the apparently vast machinery of books and websites and normal people who are absolutely dedicated to Finnegans Wake in ways that I don't even understand. Just gonna throw this out there, but if you say that Finnegans Wake is funny (seriously where the fuck does this claim come from?) or, like, worth anybody's time to try to read, I probably will respect you a little bit less, too.
Meaning that I can't love Anthony Burgess quite so much anymore (what with A Clockwork Orange at least appearing to be very much under the Joycean influence—from a random page of it: "All the time we were sirening off to the rozz-shop, me being wedged between two millicents and being given the odd thump and malenky tolchock by these smecking bullies."), or Mark Z. Danielewski either (random bit of Only Revolutions: "GAS STATION MAN, stiffed by our approach. Unsafe for all HE's stashed and stayed. Withering, calcifying. Splayed. Because everyone we blow by, we blow away.").
These crazy Finnegans Wake apologists tend to talk about the book like it's immensely readable, and while I'll give Stephen Fry's gently effusive praise of Ulysses the benefit of the doubt for now, I've experienced Finnegans Wake and it may or may not have almost killed me, and I absolutely don't think it deserves to be on The List, even as a masterpiece, even as a powerful influence on some writers I like a lot. I can't learn anything from a book that I'm unable to understand. If James Joyce seriously expected me and the rest of his readers to devote our lives to this, then he's kind of a dick, no matter how sad he was about going blind or his daughter's schizophrenia (I had to learn a lot more about this book than I usually do about the books on The List, just to make it bearable and, like, try to understand what was going on).
Anyway, Finnegans Wake is the cinnamon challenge of books. Don't attempt to read it just because you think that it can't be as bad as everyone says it is, and you're smarter than the rest of us, and all that bullshit. You'll save yourself a lot of grief and rage if you just avoid it entirely.
Quotations:
nope
