Finnegans Wake Paperback – August 23, 2013

I'd like to address some of these other critical reviews, thought by thought, as most are intelligent people who are asking all the right questions but cannot accept the answers they are coming up with. Your right FW is not "readable", in the normal sense. If you must have a good, solid story, a "page turner", which entertains you and that you finally "get", a story where the meaning is clear: then STOP right now. This book is not any of those things. Its "intention" is to disorient and confuse, to produce an "aesthetic arrest" and to be an epiphany. FW will never be a blockbuster movie, Hollywood will not touch this. Finn again A WAKE is written, kind of, sort of, in english. One reviewer called it a crossword puzzle in novel form, she is partially right. You can read other [negative] comments from the more simple-minded reviews too, but time has and will prove these knuckleheads wrong. Some claim intellectual independence as a smoke screen but they are hiding behind a myopic view of art and they do not want to put in the effort to research the references and push for a bigger picture. Other reviewers say it doesn't mean anything, Isn't poetry or music but there is a personal hatred to their reviews that tells me they are mad at the art work for not revealing itself, clearly, to them. This group is reviewing and revealing their own frustrations at not being able to conceive of or make great art. True critics, I suppose. They want to defend their defination of what art is, for everyone. This group is quite adamant and takes FW personally, like they are on a crusade to inform the world. I suppose, Joyce has worked his Irish magic on them too.. their banner reads:Books, ultimately, are read for the quality of the ideas they express, and the quality of the style used to express them.critics want to define artistic "quality". In any case, the "ideas" of FW have universal essence and are of an epic nature. Unfortunately, some reviewers want the transcendent nature of life to be clear, right in front of them, religion is what other people do and everything is just as it seems. Look, some great works of art do not speak to all, [Picasso's - la guerre] but make no mistake; this book is an incredible work of word art BUT does not reveal itself easily OR to everybody and that is exactly what Joyce wanted, he wanted a few sensitive and intelligent readers to experience an epiphany about the cycles of death, life, myth, history, love, war, hate, sex[lots of sex], "social marketing", male female, brother, sister, mother father- how these patterns of archetype forces affect us, this is another "reality", parallel to ours but in dark matter; [Unconscious and subconscious]. FW is not describing these forces but placing us in them by disorienting us, making the reader become part of a jumbled up night world of myth and universal cycles. How these forces of life affect us is a confusing book during the day [James Joyce's Ulysses] but at night they really go off [Finnegans Wake]. People, It doesn't get any more insightful than that.Another reviewer, a Mr. T.Powerless, who wrote a review of the "FW Skeleton Key", - keeps asking:What you think this book is trying to say in its 600+ pages of indeciperhable ramblings (and some proof would be nice)How he can write a review of a book about the meaning of FW and still keep asking this questions is befuddling. His theory is that it is all just random letters [never mind the puns and historical stuff] and there is no meaning and that all the smart people have been fooled, except him. Finnegans Wake is 95% "deciphered" but something is lost in trying to put this art book in sound bites or one-sentence sayings. Take the phrase "reveiling the night". It is "saying" several things at once, each makes sense but it is also mixed up, obscure and in the mystery of the conjoining of mixed up words, is the art. There are straight forward ideas that can be expressed from FW: one of my favorites- how we should strive for things and concepts that uplift the spirit and these will pull us together, because they inspires us as one people, not on material stuff that separate us, but- really, so what, another "good" idea but silly in a way. Like the "ideas" of Hamlet: often puerile, but with Shakespeare's brilliance take on new life. And, when JJ writes the brilliant connotations are imbued in his art. The art is lost in my translations. Yes, but the critic keeps asking, its not clear and What does it MEAN, - but... what is meaning and is meaning always clear?? The hackneyed haiku: the sound of one hand clapping?- what does it mean? The meaning is a paradox or another question. all those things that do not have a sound when struck, but what does that mean? It is not about the meaning of life it is about the feeling of being alive. If you must have a meaning rather than another perspective, understanding or an epiphany: Warning: stop reading FW before you get mad. Clearly, T.Powerless kept reading, couldn't find what it was saying and became irritated.However, FW, as a bit of a mixed up crossword puzzle, demands an explanation, a guide, patience, translations and a key. The best starting points are John Bishop's book and Joseph Campbell's " A Skeleton Key to FW". In other words, FW MUST ALSO BE STUDIED LIKE A TEXT BOOK, clues must be researched and an adventure game like quality to the mysteries and the possible solutions can be fun. yes, for some tracking down the sources and uses of JJ words and relating it to the essence of a sentence or chapter is part of the mystery. Others see The historical period of FW reflected in the work: pre World War II. Freud and Jung going at it, Picasso and Matisse going off, it was a heady time for all the western cultures. AND to top it off Joyce dies sudenly 6 months after the book is published in 1941!!! Although Joyce hated FW to be called surreal, FW is an abstract work of art and as such, like any great conceptual or complex philosophy [Nietzsche or Wittgenstein] or abstract art, is extremely personal and open to much interpretation. One can get several versions of exactly what is being "said" from the same passage; this really upsets the material minded and if you are not prepared for this kind of art or thought or are resistant to abstract art then, chances are, FW will be/ is gibberish to you. As The above reviewer states correctly: a good work must have great style, FW has a style of immense complexity and quality but NOT great clarity, intentionly.FW is a huge Irish joke about the cycles of human life, art and thought. There is a twisted sense of humor in this Irish consciousness making a sad joke of life; the punch line is about the Devine Comedy of existence. FW is also an intentional riddle with several answers; the 60 different languages, puns, portmanteaus [the crossword part] with historical and mythical referances as well. the reader can wander and wonder about this book of life for hours or years. At times, like any fine work of abstract art: it reveals the artist and viewer more than the "reality" of the subject. No, FW can not be translated into another "language", no it was not written in the way other books are, The 4 books were not written in order and can be understood as independent sketches on different and recurring themes. Yes, joyce had a comprehensive and firm intention when he wrote it. If you start to dig and study the text the book becomes an obscure magic workbook about the recycled archetypical nights of human consciousness. However, unless you are a scholar, you must study the philology or it becomes drivel and unless you have an open mind and can embrace obscurity the work quickly becomes irritating. The sound of the words can be helpful and so some find that FW is often less abstract if read out loud. Like the Hindu vedas, which are songs or hymns, FW has a lyrical quality when read out loud too. In any case the puzzle must be solved in the dark as characters, stories, change, transmute; opposites are defined and then become one and need each other and then digress again. The simple "story" has been figured out, the references have exhaustedly been researched for the last 70 years and still there are mysteries to this work. Joyce intended this too and future generations will appreciate, miss understand and wonder, love/hate it, fight over and review this book!No, not everything printed on paper is literature and not all words are found in a dictionary, not all communication is with words, from the dictionary, or for that matter verbal. So the one reviewer that says he doesn't dream in puns and his dreams are about "something" is confusing the description of a dream with the conjuring of the "reality" of a dream world, using language. the difference between going to the movies or describing the movie. Joyce is NOT trying to describe a dream; he is trying to put you in a dream cycle of life forces in motion. JJ is comunicating with strange english sounding words to make a language of dreams. Joyce's subconscious, night world is obscure, intentionally, like "real" dreams. This bothers people, just as their own dreams do. This night book has stages, like the night, but there is no meaning to the actual story or beginning or end, the individual dreams have "meanings" and there is a progression but, like reincarnation or purgatory, there is no end or beginning . How do you escape such a work of art? perhaps a third book about Nirvana or Paradise: a simple book, like the Paridiso of the Devine Comedy. Cambell thought this was in the works when JJ died.I'm sure the greatest thing is NOT to listen or watch the defenders of FW. Although there are some fascinating works on the Wake and Dante, Vico, the Egyptian book of the dead, the book of Krells, Cabala, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Talmud and lots of dream consciousness-etc. My suggestion is to read or scan it, with JC's "Skeleton Key" or Tindall's so you can get a sense of what is being said, see which of the 4 books speaks to you and then start digging on your own, the best annotated guide is now on the internet, John Bishop's book is insightful. he also wrote the intro to the Penguin edition. Stop after a while, put it down, read some other stuff, pick it up later. I knew almost nothing of the philosopher Vico and had not read Dante. James Joyce was a true artistic personality and scholar and, as an eccentric, sardonic Irish scholar, he wanted to be obscure and drive all the other [Irish and non Irish] scholars nuts. NON SERVIAM I am slave to none- was the motto he lived by. This book is intentionally obscure and Joyce is known to have re written parts that were not obscure enough!! WHY? Again, dreams can have several meanings because the dreamer and the dream are one. the dreamer/reader must decide which meaning is pertinent to the story and to your own story and see if it fits. There is a subjective part to making something abstract and a subjective part to interpretation the art. Unfortunately, this vagueness plus the references and language threw the doors open to the cross winds of scholarly conjecture. At the end, however, Joyce is communicating something powerful, eternal [not about time] and wondrous but the reader/dreamer must be prepared to study, dig deep and interpret and sometimes just guess. A Warning label would say: it took him 15 years to write it. 1] There is no bottom 2] the journey is "reveiling". - if FW doesn't speak to you, that's cool; just don't say there is nothing there if you can't find or see it.

I read Finnegans Wake with the idea that it was, as Joyce said, the "night" to Ulysses' "day", and that therefore it would somehow be based on a classical counterpart which could be read as the night to the Odyssey's day. I took that to be the Oresteia, because Aeschylus' trilogy contains the other, darker homecoming story of the heroes of the Trojan War, and the more night-like, interior (inside the palace, inside the city) consequences of the adventures out in the exterior world found in the Odyssey and the Iliad.Ulysses closely follows the books of the Odyssey, so it is always clear which episode corresponds to what book. Finnegans Wake with its four Books and its first sentence that completes its last sentence does not have anything like the structure of 3 Greek tragedies. The imagery and language in Finnegans Wake are so diverting, and the things they reference so wide-ranging, I really couldn't see how the first two Books could be related to the first two plays as I struggled through them.But FW's Book III has a much clearer correspondence with the scenes from the third play. It has three different inquests of the same character (Shawn, Jaun, Yawn) much as The Eumenides has Orestes' fate examined in three different settings. This did not spring into my mind until I started the third chapter with Yawn on the hill and thought of the Areopagus and the jury of Athenians, and then had a laugh looking back at the swarming school girls from St. Brides as stand-ins for the Furies in Athena's temple, with Jaun's lecture on proper behavior reminding me of Apollo's lame and blustery arguments against them. Shaun appearing out of the darkness and the voice that questions him in Chapelizod I hadn't recognized as particularly like the scene with the Pythia when I read it, but in retrospect his story, the Ondt and the Gracehoper, does highlight with those names the idea of someone looking for absolution as Orestes was in Delphi, and while the sort of involuntary way Shaun exits the scene is still puzzling me, I can see a parallel with Orestes' having to flee on. Also since the voice turns out to be his Sister Issy, a character who is more explicitly described as having become a nun later (in Chapter III.4) that makes her more Pythia-like back in Chapter III.1.So for The Eumenides and much of FW Book III, I could find correlations that were playful and let the FW chapters stand on their own like the ones in Ulysses, while giving a reason for the particular sequence of the scenes and their different settings. Had I just missed similar correlations in the first books? Apparently so. I never saw any other clear parallels until I had finished the whole book.In the very beginning of FW I could find passages that could be said to relate to lines from Aeschylus' watchman on the roof. Laboriously, I did look for these. Even the songs appeared where I'd expect them to, as the watchman speaks of singing to stay awake, but still there is no actual watchman in the beginning of FW. And the most bizarre, vivid and unforgettable image of all where Finnegan is laid out as a fish dinner has zero connection to any imagery at the start of the play. Only after a pass at reading the whole book did I see how (with a twist) I could relate the prologue of the Agamemnon to Finnegans Wake, but to all of the book, not just the first 13 pages.The twist I can best describe as Joyce playing a fanciful game of "What if?". It's not just "what if the watchman fell?" setting up the story of Finnegan and his fall. And it's not just "what if he didn't stay awake?" although with that twist, Joyce could turn Aeschylus' wakeful watchman into his own book's sleeping listener "Earwicker" (Earwicker and Porter have an etymological and a functional connection to "watchman" respectively.) It's the most fanciful "What if?" of all, and it comes from the watchman's parting comment, "if the house could take voice." What if the building really could speak? If buildings are actually going to be able to speak and tell us what is going on, then we get the structure of Finnegans Wake that I struggled to make sense of: a book in which different places, from historic landmarks like Howth Castle to the Porters' four ordinary bedroom walls, give us the sights and sounds they have been witness to. I had always noticed and liked the voice of the river in the Anna Livia Plurabel chapters, but I hadn't really considered how the voices of other places and natural features were speaking throughout the book.For my purposes, it is a lot simpler to match places and their storytelling task to the Oresteia's scenes than to cherry-pick through the text for passages that might. For instance, the old castle itself, not the four Old Masters plus Mute and Jute plus the Prankquean raconteur etc., makes the best parallel to the chorus of the old men of Argos. The old men remember the history of the beginning of the Trojan War; the castle remembers things it has seen and heard about its own history and the history of Dublin. Sometimes simply realizing it is a place that is speaking is really helpful to understanding what is going on. The idea that it's the walls' point of view in III.4 explains why we see the Porters' bedroom and their lovemaking four times from four different directions, and why we are sometimes looking into the room and sometimes out of it. I was completely confused by this, and even thinking the prurience was getting tiresome! Guessing that the domesticity of this chapter's setting paralleled the scene in the Eumenides where the Furies' roles are being redefined by Athena and scaled down to household and marriage concerns didn't help as much as understanding the walls themselves were defining what that chapter holds.So, does it really help in reading FW, to have the Oresteia in mind? It certainly did not help generally with understanding the prose. For me it was helpful overall to think that, instead of Joyce purely rambling in a dreamscape, going from scene to scene in a stream-of-conscious way, he had a chain of references for the order of the scenes, a reason for why particular settings were chosen for particular chapters. How big an impact this has on anyone else is more or less up to each reader, because it is so difficult to spot that taking it into account is entirely optional. I started with my guess that FW was based on the Oresteia, but I wasn't always convinced, and I am not sure even yet that I will ever grasp how each chapter fits.I have also come to think since finishing that the correspondence between FW and the Oresteia highlights a particular ontological reading of the Oresteia as much as the bare classic. In this reading the Agamemnon is considered Orestes' past and deals with what is known and thought about that past, The Libation Bearers is considered Orestes' movement toward his future and deals with him developing, and The Eumenides is Orestes' present, and deals with his relating to others around him and how he appears to them (how they judge him). Athena leading out a joyful procession at the very end is thought to be a moment of aspiration that makes a unity of this past, present and future. In FW Book IV we get the river reaching the sea, and I cannot begin to capture how that passage does it, but a sense of the unity of the whole book is definitely achieved.The philosophy that inspired this reading of the Oresteia would have been contemporaneous with Joyce, but who knows if he bothered with it? And who knows if the correlations that I described are really the product of a deliberate effort to work from the Oresteia? Joyce doesn't seem to have ever told anyone that he was basing his last work on another classic, when he made no secret of it with Ulysses. It wouldn't have made sense to mention when he was publishing excerpts, but he was open about the other works he was incorporating into the Wake both before and after he published the whole thing, so I have to believe that even if he did incorporate a structure from the Oresteia, he wanted his last work to stand alone. Which it certainly does.I have promised myself that I will reread it someday. But only if there is a group of us to share the journey. I couldn't have read it at all without the friends I read it with, and I wouldn't have missed sharing the experience with them for the world.

Well, first, this particular edition. Begins on the very first page by telling us that Joyce was the oldest often (sic) children. Is this a typo, or are Penguin getting into the spirit of the book? Anyway, whatever, this is certainly the best book I have never read. I have managed the first page or two, but the reality is that I enjoy books ABOUT Finnegans Wake rather than actually attempting to wend my way through it. One book about it informed me that each sentence, even each single word, could be seen as a microcosm of the entire text, so in that context why actually read it all. "riverrun" is enough. Then again, the word play is very enjoyable and the ABC of the book, and a Lexicon, offer endless interest and much humour. Apparently Joyce was heard by his wife late into many a night as he laughed aloud at his own jokes, setting his traps for the future literary critics to decipher, writing yet another un-understandable book that the long suffering Nora Barnacle wished was more "understandable" and thus, perhaps, more of a cash cow. But as I grow older I see more clearly that understanding life is a terrible trap - as thoughts, words and beliefs congeal and enclose the mind in circles of self-justification as the inevitable end approaches. But what end? The end of Finnegans Wake (not that I have ever reached it) takes us back to the beginning. As Joyce said about Ulysses as he faced the obscenity trials, "if Ulysses is unfit to read, then life is unfit to live". So life is to be lived rather than "understood". And Molly Bloom, in Ulysses, ends her monologue with a beautiful "Yes". Learning about Finnegans Wake, from various books, does help me to live, hopefully with compassion and not a little gratitude. Not least for the life and writings of James Joyce himself who gave us this last wonderful book with eyes that just might have reduced many others to night, darkness and despair. So buy a copy, if not to read it, then to have it on your bookshelf to impress the neighbours.Absintheminded? Absent, mind drifting? Forgetful? Drunk? Or just a joke, all things, or nothing. Dig deep or skim the surface.

We all love stories, but Finnnegan's Wake is hundreds of stories combined into one glorious rigmarole. The reader (or more likely) the listener to this rambling associative work is presented with the dreams and nightmares of Humphrey Clinker Earwicker , a Dublin pub-keeper and his family, his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle, their sons, Shem and Shaun and their daughter, as they lie asleep throughout one solitary night. But this plot summary is a summary of a novel without a narrative sequence, an experiment rather than a consecutive story of events. In many ways it is the most realistic attempt to penetrate human consciousness the reader is likely to experience in fiction. It was begun in 1922 and remained unfinished at the author's death in 1941. How could it be finished? It is written in defiance of time or sequence.Perhaps a sample is the best way of approaching the novel is to select a slice of this very rich exercise in linguistic experiment. At university in the 1960s I was encouraged to read 'at least a page' of Finnegan's Wake. If you are at all interested in what makes a novel you should try the same experiment. Hence : 'He dug in and dug out by the skill of his tilth for himself and all belonging to him and he sweated his crew beneath his auspice for the living and he urned his dread, that dragon volant, and he made louse for us and delivered us to boll weevils amain, that mighty liberator, Unfru-Chickds--Uru-Wukru and begad he did, our ancestor most worshipful till he thought of a better one in his windower's house with that blushmantle upon him from earsend to earsend.' Echoes of outmoded speech and current slang are stirred in together in this bizarre narrative. Puns and ponderable words stretch meanings into something thatat times verges on nonsense. A feast of fancy invites the reader to make a story of it all.

Bought this book a good while ago and have been reading slowly on and off: have just hit a point (57% in) where there are 29 pages missing from the content! Couldn’t find any avenue to report or complain about out it. Have resorted to reading it on line with the added bonus of annotation

Bought on a recommendation, and I know I'm going to love delving into this. A really meaty read, for a change. The language is brilliant. Not for the faint-hearted grammarian, though!

Could not understand it