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A review by casparb
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
5.0
Ulysses was the most significant novel of the 20th century - at least in English. It's also the literary work that had the greatest impact upon me when I read it a few years ago. People rave and overstate its difficulty, but I seem to recall an interview with Nabokov from the 50s, where he argues that the world had grown accustomed to Ulysses, and that the 20s hysteria about it had been overcome. Finnegans Wake? Something altogether different. As Beckett says - the Wake is 'not about something; it is that something itself.'
A pun book, a language machine. Chaosmos (p.118). Agglaggagglomeratively asaspenking (186). We are quite safely beyond 'Daunty, Gouty, and Shopkeeper' (539) (Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare). It's difficult to avoid seeing it as a tremendous epoch-defining shag of the English language. This is the one book that I could see irrevocably changing the way in which anybody fundamentally perceives words. I love it, but I don't have any firm handle on it yet. How on earth did the mad bastard outdo Ulysses!?
It's difficult. The most difficult work of fiction I know of. It's also terribly funny and there's a real joy to understanding Joyce when he is at his most obscure. Some very cheeky swipes at Eliot. The final chapter is possibly my favourite, save ALP. The Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter (chap.8) is probably the most beautiful piece I've encountered from Joyce, and it makes sense that it has recently been published as a standalone book by Faber.
There are around 40-60 languages used here, and I was stretched in every one that I have even a smattering of. My pisspoor Norwegian came in extraordinarily useful, as Denmark/Dublin become a real recurring theme (Joyce puns with 'dinmurk', which seems to me an extraordinarily fitting descriptor of the book itself: uproarious and foggy. We also get 'daneygaul'). So it's good to have a vague handle on any sort of North Germanic language going in. Also a major Egyptian theme running about, so that and Hebrew were more tricky. But we play with Estonian and Sanskrit and Esperanto and modern and ancient Greek and god knows how much Irish.
So how does it work? I believe that every sentence of this book has the potential to spawn a critical essay. Puns are within puns and meanings endlessly collide. Taking the title - 'Finnegans Wake'. Finnegan's Wake is a popular Irish ballad, with which the plot of the novel seems to occasionally coincide. Note the apostrophe - Joyce excised this in order to universalise the Wake: we are all Finnegans. But look closer. This is the 'book of the night' (whereas Ulysses is the day), and yet we Wake. We hold a wake for dear dead Finnegan or HCE, and so one entertains this notion of life-in-death, consciousness in unconsciousness. Look again. Finn - this seems to work with the numerous Scandilogical notions JJ plays with. Indeed, the section in Finnish (perhaps imperfectly) is quite something to stumble upon. Again: Fin, again, that is, 'fin', the French for 'end' paired with English 'again' endings never end. The entire cyclical structure of the novel is gestured toward here. 'fame would come to you twixt a sleep and a wake' (192). 'all the fun I had in that fanagan's week' (351). 'Qith the tou loulous and the gryffgryffgryffs at Fenegans Wick, the Wildemanns' (358). 'You'll have loss of fame from Wimmegame's fake' (375). 'I have it here to my fingall's ends' and 'Quis est qui non novit quinnigan and Qui qaue quot at Quinnigan's Quake!'. Worth pointing out that we also have 'Fingal', the Irish county, and 'Fanagans', a long-time funeral company in Dublin. I've not mentioned every time it comes up, and 'Finnegans Wake' is not by any means the most complicated or layered of Joyce's terms. There is something equally or more complicated on just about every page.
It's upsetting when Joyce roams into territory that I thought I was being original with. He takes the delicious Norwegian/Danish word 'unnskyld' and renders it 'unschoold'. The bastard even took my 'Himmal' pun on mountains and heavens. Delightful to see a few appearances of the word 'googling' in here - I almost want to believe the anachronism as the temporality of the Wake is gorgeously skewed. We have everything from Hammurabi to Tintin.
Anyway, I see that there are people dropping a one-star review and complaining that they couldn't get past the first page. It's quite normal to fail at the first page - I've been wary of this book for a long time for that exact reason. But don't make a spiteful little review about a book you haven't read past page one! There are over 600 more pages! Who knows what could happen. Do the traditional thing with this book and accept defeat for a good long while. Then look into acquiring a guide for it. I recommend Tindall.
The siss of the whisp of the sigh of the softzing at the stir of the ver grose O arundo of a long one in midias reeds: and shades began to glidder along the banks, greepsing, greepsing, duusk unto duusk, and it was glooming as gloaming could be in the waste of all peaceable worlds. Metamnisia was allsoonome coloroform brune; citherior spiane an eaulande, innemorous and unnumerose.
p.158
A pun book, a language machine. Chaosmos (p.118). Agglaggagglomeratively asaspenking (186). We are quite safely beyond 'Daunty, Gouty, and Shopkeeper' (539) (Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare). It's difficult to avoid seeing it as a tremendous epoch-defining shag of the English language. This is the one book that I could see irrevocably changing the way in which anybody fundamentally perceives words. I love it, but I don't have any firm handle on it yet. How on earth did the mad bastard outdo Ulysses!?
It's difficult. The most difficult work of fiction I know of. It's also terribly funny and there's a real joy to understanding Joyce when he is at his most obscure. Some very cheeky swipes at Eliot. The final chapter is possibly my favourite, save ALP. The Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter (chap.8) is probably the most beautiful piece I've encountered from Joyce, and it makes sense that it has recently been published as a standalone book by Faber.
There are around 40-60 languages used here, and I was stretched in every one that I have even a smattering of. My pisspoor Norwegian came in extraordinarily useful, as Denmark/Dublin become a real recurring theme (Joyce puns with 'dinmurk', which seems to me an extraordinarily fitting descriptor of the book itself: uproarious and foggy. We also get 'daneygaul'). So it's good to have a vague handle on any sort of North Germanic language going in. Also a major Egyptian theme running about, so that and Hebrew were more tricky. But we play with Estonian and Sanskrit and Esperanto and modern and ancient Greek and god knows how much Irish.
So how does it work? I believe that every sentence of this book has the potential to spawn a critical essay. Puns are within puns and meanings endlessly collide. Taking the title - 'Finnegans Wake'. Finnegan's Wake is a popular Irish ballad, with which the plot of the novel seems to occasionally coincide. Note the apostrophe - Joyce excised this in order to universalise the Wake: we are all Finnegans. But look closer. This is the 'book of the night' (whereas Ulysses is the day), and yet we Wake. We hold a wake for dear dead Finnegan or HCE, and so one entertains this notion of life-in-death, consciousness in unconsciousness. Look again. Finn - this seems to work with the numerous Scandilogical notions JJ plays with. Indeed, the section in Finnish (perhaps imperfectly) is quite something to stumble upon. Again: Fin, again, that is, 'fin', the French for 'end' paired with English 'again' endings never end. The entire cyclical structure of the novel is gestured toward here. 'fame would come to you twixt a sleep and a wake' (192). 'all the fun I had in that fanagan's week' (351). 'Qith the tou loulous and the gryffgryffgryffs at Fenegans Wick, the Wildemanns' (358). 'You'll have loss of fame from Wimmegame's fake' (375). 'I have it here to my fingall's ends' and 'Quis est qui non novit quinnigan and Qui qaue quot at Quinnigan's Quake!'. Worth pointing out that we also have 'Fingal', the Irish county, and 'Fanagans', a long-time funeral company in Dublin. I've not mentioned every time it comes up, and 'Finnegans Wake' is not by any means the most complicated or layered of Joyce's terms. There is something equally or more complicated on just about every page.
It's upsetting when Joyce roams into territory that I thought I was being original with. He takes the delicious Norwegian/Danish word 'unnskyld' and renders it 'unschoold'. The bastard even took my 'Himmal' pun on mountains and heavens. Delightful to see a few appearances of the word 'googling' in here - I almost want to believe the anachronism as the temporality of the Wake is gorgeously skewed. We have everything from Hammurabi to Tintin.
Anyway, I see that there are people dropping a one-star review and complaining that they couldn't get past the first page. It's quite normal to fail at the first page - I've been wary of this book for a long time for that exact reason. But don't make a spiteful little review about a book you haven't read past page one! There are over 600 more pages! Who knows what could happen. Do the traditional thing with this book and accept defeat for a good long while. Then look into acquiring a guide for it. I recommend Tindall.
The siss of the whisp of the sigh of the softzing at the stir of the ver grose O arundo of a long one in midias reeds: and shades began to glidder along the banks, greepsing, greepsing, duusk unto duusk, and it was glooming as gloaming could be in the waste of all peaceable worlds. Metamnisia was allsoonome coloroform brune; citherior spiane an eaulande, innemorous and unnumerose.
p.158