Now, I like James Joyce's writing, I like it a lot. But his last project, Finnegan's Wake is the only work of his that I can honestly say I don't like. Why don't I like it? Well, I don't understand it! At all. I can never work out what is even going on. The words, too, seem to have this way of rubbing against my mind, and then moving on without entering, and I can never seem to take anything in. Here is the book online: http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-3.htm Am I an idiot? I just do not understand this at all. What is everyone else's experience with this book?
I'll read it tonight and let you know...lol. I did buy a guide to Finnegan's Wake, I'll check that out maybe it offers some insight.
Finnegan's Wake is the literary equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting, though it's far easier to understand what's going on in a Pollock painting.
Never got around to finish it... Or to make it past the few first pages. It's mind boggling, and I just had to give up as it felt like a waste of time.
No shame in that, I honestly do not think it is worth the effort. Unlike Ulysses it doesn't have an entryway, there is no key to the lock of The Wake.
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I went through my guide to Finnegan's Wake - it's not all that illuminating but it does explain what the story is about. I tried reading some of it with that in mind and it helped but still... I was lost. But just when a passage got interesting and the language was lovely and wild, he'd heap on more and more puns. It was the worse kind of stream of conscious. Nabokov hated this book ( though he liked Ulysses ) and called it Pun(n?)igans Wake. Pretty apt title.
Finnegans Wake reminds me of the spambots that keep popping up on this forum. There is just enough syntactical structure to make you feel like you are reading a sentence, but after reading so many words, you feel like the sentence morphed into another sentence without warning.
I agree but he was very harsh. I've read several of his interviews, I think they have one in the Paris Review online. He doesn't have a lot of favorites but it would be hard if you loved language and puzzles to find a lot of authors that you could like.
Nabokov had amazing taste when it came to literature. Anyway, here's a relevant snippet from an interview he did for the Paris Review:
