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Finnegans Wake

3.65 of 5 stars 3.65 · rating details · 5,687 ratings · 478 reviews

Having done the longest day in literature with his monumental Ulysses (1922), James Joyce set himself an even greater challenge for his next book -- the night. "A nocturnal state...That is what I want to convey: what goes on in a dream, during a dream". The work, which would exhaust two decades of his life and the odd resources of some sixty languages, culminated with the...more

Trade Paperback, 628 pages

Published 1976 by Penguin Books (first published 1939)

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Apr 20, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, pogue-mahone, voluminous, penguin-classics, nonreviews

Let me explain the five-star rating. When I was teenager I was ludicrously shy. I was the son and heir of a shyness that was criminally vulgar. My all-conquering shyness kept Morrissey in gold-plated ormolu swans for eight years. Any contact with human beings made me mumble in horror and scuttle off to lurk in dark corners. But I developed this automatic writing technique in school to ease my mounting stress whenever teachers were poaching victims to answer questions, perform presentations or ge...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Manny rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: parody-homage, pooh-dante

The other day we saw The Ghost, the rather fine new movie by Polanski. Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter, who's been brought in to fix up the memoirs of a British ex-Prime Minister who absolutely isn't Tony Blair. He's given the manuscript, and groans in pain.

"That bad?" asks the woman who isn't Cherie Blair.

"Well it's got all the words," says McGregor. "They're just not in the right order."

This suggested to me the following simple experiment with Finnegans Wake, one of the greatest etc etc in t...more

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May 13, 2013 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: rejoyce-again-again, 2013-sepukku, unreadababble, 100-mccaffery-read

At the beginning of 2012, OUP released a newly set edition of The Wake, preserving the line/page count of the first edition : sixty pages of front matter, including a chapter-by-chapter outline of the action : a list of selected variants at the end : different editorial principles than The Restored. I don't like the font. Steven Moore says that it should replace the long-standard Viking/Penguin edition.
http://www.amazon.com/Finnegans-Wake-...

________________
A long quote from Raymond Federman ta...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Paul marked it as assorted-rants-about-stuff · review of another edition

Stealing an idea from Manny's review, here's part of the (British) Highway Code if it was written by James Joyce any time during the last 17 years of his life. This is the section called

ROAD SIGNALS

Swarn and inform other roadusers aminxt that nombre of evelings, including pedestrigirls and jumbleboys (see 'and twinglings of twitchbells in rondel’ section twoozle para fleeph), of your inbended actions. You should have a kelchy chose and clayblade and at all times make prayses to the three of clu...more

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Nov 10, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2012)

Shelves: challenging, irish, 1001-core, favorites, funny, sex, family-drama, doorstopper

Looks daunting, unintelligible and incomprehensible at first. However, read it aloud and with open mind and the meaning might come down on you. I said "might" because no matter how much thinking I put on some of the paragraphs or lines, some meanings seemed so obscure and I had no choice but to let them stay that way.

Still I found this book amazing. It is one of its kind. What amazed me really was its play of words. Unmatched. Never seen before. Close to it so far is Anthony Burgess's Clockwork...more Looks daunting, unintelligible and incomprehensible at first. However, read it aloud and with open mind and the meaning might come down on you. I said "might" because no matter how much thinking I put on some of the paragraphs or lines, some meanings seemed so obscure and I had no choice but to let them stay that way.

Still I found this book amazing. It is one of its kind. What amazed me really was its play of words. Unmatched. Never seen before. Close to it so far is Anthony Burgess's Clockwork but it seems like kindergarten level to Joyce's masteral degree. Joyce used what they call as "portmanteau" or the fusing together of two or more words in the same or different languages. Thus "kissmiss" is both the festive season and something that might happen during it, with a suggestion of fatefulness; the Holy Father becomes a "hoary frother"; and an old photo is a "fadograph." Reading this book requires Job's patience but in the end, it is rewarding for the fact that this is another testimony to James Joyce's brilliance as a writer. Finnegans Wake is the playful luminous moon to Ulysses' serious bright sun. One complement the other like flaunting to the world that James Joyce could be funny after writing the very profound retelling of Homer's classic epic poem, Odyssey.

I admit that at some point, I thought I would not be able to finish this. I thought of giving up after two chapters and I did not understanding ANYTHING. I felt like I was just wasting my time. However, a GR friend advised me to read write ups in the internet and it helped. I referred to the internet after reading each chapter or part of it. There were times when I could not correlate the two so I let that pass too. That approach of reading a chapter of the book then refer to the internet helped because at least I was picking up the basic plot. Still, it was confusing. The stories in it seemed not connected to each other and there was no main plot. It was only towards the end when I realized that James Joyce was not telling one story but many, as many as 17 according to Wiki. The most ubiquitous, among the 17, is a story of a fall that turns out not to be entirely negative, including the Fall of Man; an indiscretion in Phoenix Park, Dublin, a sex scandal involving an older man and two girls; and a tumble (Humpty Dumpty, yes that children's song) from a ladder by an Irish builder, Tim Finnegan.

This book offers just a different kind of reading experience. One of its kind. It is amazing how James Joyce put together this book and wrote all those verses that are so funny. Definitely brilliant.

And oh I love that unfinished sentence in the end that goes back to the first sentence. When I started reading and saw the first sentence that looked truncated, I was thrown off immediately and shrieked "What is this?" but I said if I was able to finish Ulysses, I should be able to read this one too. Of course, the big encouragement of my GR friends motivated me to continue reading just in time for my daughter to ask this library copy back.

(I now see some of those GR friends liking this review, so I better stop now.) Thank you so much, GR friends!(less)

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Mar 29, 2009 Nicholas Karpuk rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is not a fair score, I'll admit it right up front. This book affirms my reasoning for reading the first few pages of a book before buying it. This I bought because I've been trying to read more classics, and after the attempt I have added the requirement to classics as well.

Here's the second paragraph of the book:

"Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wilderfight his penisolate...more This is not a fair score, I'll admit it right up front. This book affirms my reasoning for reading the first few pages of a book before buying it. This I bought because I've been trying to read more classics, and after the attempt I have added the requirement to classics as well.

Here's the second paragraph of the book:

"Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wilderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyers rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens county's gogios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to taugtaug thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathondjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface."

Ive' read a few books with a confusing intro. It's a common practice in sci-fi, where you throw the reader in head first with mysterious nouns and let them work it out as they go. This is not the case, because after a few pages I realized Mr. Joyce wasn't going to start making anymore sense than he already was. Here's a quote from page 311, when I skipped ahead to see if it was all like this:

"It was long after once there was a lealand in the luffing ore it was less after lives thor a toyler in the tawn at all ohr it was note before he drew out the moddle of Kersse by jerkin his dressing but and or it was not before athwartships he buttonhaled the Norweeger's capstan."

I considered this might be a phonetic thing, similar to what Twain used, but no matter how I tried with the first few pages I could not parse it into anything comprehensible. Even Canterbury Tales has the decency to make sense when read aloud. If I can not comprehend a book on a sentence level, a paragraph level, or a chapter level I'm just going to give up.

Here's the first sentence of the intro, which I went back to look at after throwing the book in the trash, feeling bad, and retrieving it:

"There is no agreement as to what Finnegans Wake is about, whether or not it is "about" anything, or even whether it is, in any sense of the word, "readable".

Oh good. That's very encouraging. Here's the thing, I don't read as a challenge. I read for ideas, or to be entertained. I like to read books with ideas I might struggle with, it's fun to think about it. I do not like fighting to choke down the words themselves. Joyce makes up words, uses dialect, and god knows what else in the first few chapters, it's like he's trying to be obtuse to make a game out of it.

That might be fun in a short story, but this is 600-some pages.

If someone can suggest a good method for consuming this damn thing, the Rosetta Stone for why I should care, I'm open to ideas, but otherwise, it's getting put away(less)

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Jun 09, 2012 David Lentz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Tim Finnegan’s Wake"
by David B. Lentz

When God reeled in good auld Tim Finnegan,
And looked into his green Irish peepers,
Said He, “Now, what was I thinkin’?
Poor lad, he ain’t one of the keepers.”

To hell Tim descended without any fear,
To the devil, whom not much is lost on,
Said he, “I’m sure you’ll be comfortable here,
Among all your old friends from South Boston.”

Tim’s jokes night and day caused Satan to swear,
As migraines crept behind blood red eyelids,
“An eternity with you is just too much...more

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May 13, 2013 Ed Smiley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: to-re-read, favorites, read-joyce-and-be-exceeding-glad-fo

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

Fourth time through! The date is set to the date I read the final word "the".

(Read twice before and a third time selected passages.)

This is my favorite book of all time. Admittedly it is challenging, but what it does is sim...more

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Jun 19, 2007 Charlie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: lorry drivers

Since this book is an anomaly unto itself, I will review it with a true story that I made up. There's a custodian in my apartment complex i've become friendly with named Red. One day, I noticed Red eyeing me up while I sat reading my copy of Finnegan's Wake and asked him if he was familiar with it. He replied "Yes" in his kindly old Red way, and launched into a breathless, half hour criticism of Joyce as a literary thief, "Picasso of letters" he called him, convincingly accusing him of cobbling...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Leo Robertson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, to-read-again, reviewtastic

Why you will read Finnegans Wake:

The short of it is this: have a think about all your greatest achievements, the accomplishments you’re most proud of. What they have in common is hard work and originality. Read Finnegans Wake. Fine, you know what? If you’re even in this review for the short term, chances are you won’t read it. If anyone’s still interested, please let me convince you further.
Michael Chabon, Pulitzer-prize winning author, wrote a big article for The New York Review of Books on why...more Why you will read Finnegans Wake:

The short of it is this: have a think about all your greatest achievements, the accomplishments you’re most proud of. What they have in common is hard work and originality. Read Finnegans Wake. Fine, you know what? If you’re even in this review for the short term, chances are you won’t read it. If anyone’s still interested, please let me convince you further.
Michael Chabon, Pulitzer-prize winning author, wrote a big article for The New York Review of Books on why he wasn’t going to try and read Finnegans Wake any more, and quite frankly it’s the proudest I’ve ever heard someone sound for not having read a book. If that strikes you as odd too, maybe it’s time you too picked up a copy of Joyce’s 17-year distilled puntastic masterpiece. No sooner do you enter the book that you realise you’ll be here for a while. Your reading slows down every time you hit an unfamiliar word: perhaps it’s in one of the sixty to seventy languages that appear in the Wake, or maybe it’s a Joycean triple-pun, but when whatever they are is every second word in the book, it can feel like you’re reading treacle.
Yes, a lot of it is nonsense, and if I wrote a 600+ page book consisting mostly of words that were invented, I would judge anyone who wanted to read it, but you and I didn’t write it, the greatest author of the 20th century wrote it, so don’t worry: it comes preapproved. It’s like that third Bloc Party album that made you turn your nose up the first listen, but somehow you knew you’d get into it if you persevered, the only difference is that with the Wake you’d be right.
Also, Finnegans Wake is the ace up the sleeve of a surprising number of authors. After a few months spent with the Finnegans, maybe you’ll pick up Lolita and say “Hang on a minute: that pun’s a bit familiar”(1) , perhaps it’s Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things that makes you think “Hm, language as rhythm… Not her idea!” , or you could find yourself raising your eyebrow knowingly at the latest Zadie Smith. It has been said that nobody reads FW any more, and it’s absolutely true. As a result, a lot of writers are having an “originality” field day with it. But you and I will know their secret!
Finnegans Wake, not Finnegan’s, the wake of many a Finnegan, Finnagain and Finnomore, is a cyclical hallucination of a book.Let Joyce himself tell you the story of two washerwoman having a chat, one slowly turning to stone and the other to an elm tree as night approaches, read the longest story ever written about a man passing out drunk in his own bar, feel characters blending and dissolving then budding off from each other once again in a dark rainy dream, hear the thunder in Joyce’s 100 letter words.
Our hapless hero H.C. Earwicker, also known as Heinz cans everywhere and most appropriately Here Comes Everybody, is everyone. He’s ready to be you, too, even after all this time, if you give the Wake a chance. So pick it up, take it slowly, read it aloud, forget what you know about the novel and enjoy the music of the words. What does it mean? Three answers: nothing, we’ll never know, and whatever you want.

(1) Incidentally, Vladimir Nabokov said that Finnegans Wake was "nothing but a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room [...] and only the infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter insipidity.” Oh please! Could he be more jealous?(less)

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Sep 16, 2012 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mmxii-infinite-joyce, james-joyce, mega-novels, five-stars-muthafunka, wicked-pissah, 20th-centurys-greatest-hits, reviewed

Oh James, you crazy fucking Irishman.

I am tempted to leave my "review" of the Wake (as it is commonly known) as just that one thought. It just about sums up the thought-process of every person who has ever read the Wake (and depending on the person it could be meant positively or negatively). But I decided that I would try to "review" this novel, for some strange unknown reason.

What can you say about Finnegans Wake? No, really. What can you say?

It is: astonishing, astounding, baffling, bamboozl...more Oh James, you crazy fucking Irishman.

I am tempted to leave my "review" of the Wake (as it is commonly known) as just that one thought. It just about sums up the thought-process of every person who has ever read the Wake (and depending on the person it could be meant positively or negatively). But I decided that I would try to "review" this novel, for some strange unknown reason.

What can you say about Finnegans Wake? No, really. What can you say?

It is: astonishing, astounding, baffling, bamboozling, bewildering, confoozling, confounding, confuddling, confusing, difficult, flabbergasting, flummoxing, frustrating, impenetrable, incomprehensible, inexplicable, perplexing, puzzling, mysterious, mystifying, staggering, unfathomable.

It is a novel that you will hate. Even if you love it, you will upon reaching the end/beginning be maddened, angered, and will never want to touch it again. Until, that is, you read it again.

It is a novel that I cannot recommend to anyone, yet recommend to everyone.

It is a novel whereupon you could open to any page, read ten pages, and it would still make as much sense as it would had you started from the beginning.

And it is a novel that contains one of the most beautiful sentences I have ever read. It is the sentence that both begins and ends the novel, and it reads:

“A way a lone a last a loved a long the 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.”

For those of you brave/insane enough to tackle this beast, I suggest reading alongside A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: James Joyce's Masterwork Revealed (something I have yet to do; maybe because I am just as fucking crazy an Irishman as Joyce). I have been told that it is the best of the many guides and very helpful in deciphering Joyce's masterwork. Or you could do what I did on this second readthrough: sit down, open, and let the words flow over you without trying to understand. Who knows; some of it may make sense.(less)

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Oct 22, 2007 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Curious Types, Mystics, Academics, Small Children, People w/Psychosis, Students, and Drug Addicts

Shelves: favorites, modernist

Many people find this book perplexing, but I find it’s something like a magic hat crossed with a hall of mirrors. You can pull almost anything out of it, but usually you'll get a twisted reflection of your own ideas, obsessions, or hidden fantasies. Perhaps that's the cause for perplexion, but I think its good to dig all that stuff up.
I love this book for its tangled etymologies, and the way these pieces of words delve so deeply into a common mystical, lingual history that spans nations and cul...more Many people find this book perplexing, but I find it’s something like a magic hat crossed with a hall of mirrors. You can pull almost anything out of it, but usually you'll get a twisted reflection of your own ideas, obsessions, or hidden fantasies. Perhaps that's the cause for perplexion, but I think its good to dig all that stuff up.
I love this book for its tangled etymologies, and the way these pieces of words delve so deeply into a common mystical, lingual history that spans nations and cultures. When Joyce ventured through the tortured decade it took write this monstrous masterpiece, he was both graced and plagued by so many coincidences that came out of the language and myths he was integrating. He wanted to write an epic using 'dream language'; he's trying to take the modernist 'stream of consciousness' one step further, with this artistic expression of the consciousness of dreams. The book thrives on paradox: it’s the waking stream of consciousness of sleep.
The story is simply one man's dream, but that dream seeps into the consciousness, language, and archetypes of all humanity, and hundreds of mystical traditions. These ideas sound Jungian, and actually Jung was a contemporary of Joyce's, who thought Joyce was insane. Actually, this relationship becomes one of the coincidences that manifests itself in the text. As I mentioned, Jung thought Joyce was arrogant and ridiculous. However, Joyce respected Jung and wanted, desperately, for Jung treat his daughter Lucia, who had Paranoid Schizophrenia. Jung did treat Lucia, and he and Joyce became friends through a common care for Joyce's daughter. There is a famous quote where Jung compares Joyce to his daughter saying, "They are two people going to the bottom of a river--one falling, the other diving."
Jung, Joyce, and Lucia, all become characters woven into the dream language of Finnegans Wake. You can find this story hiding in crumbled phrases such as this:
"How glad you'll be I waked you! My! How well you'll feel! For ever after... I only hope whole heavens sees us. For I feel I could near faint away. Into the deeps. Annamores leep. Let me lean, just a lea, if you le, bowldstrong bigtider. Allgearls is wea. At times. So. While you're adamant evar. Wrhps, that wind as if out of norewere! As on the night of Apophanypes. Jumpst shootst throbbst into me mouth like bogue and arrohs. Ludegude of Lashlanns, how he whips me cheeks! Sea, sea! Here, weir, reach, island, bridge. Where you meet I."
As you can see I love this book, and would recommend it to a variety of people. The magic hall of mirrors becomes quite fascinating, you just need a proper entry point.
(less)

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Mar 29, 2012 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Finnegan's Wake is the night to Ulysses' day. It is riddled with obfuscatory language to separate the reader from the events described as a sleeper is separated from his waking consciousness. If anyone has captured the language of dreams it would be Joyce. It is often playful and insightful and other times it is aggravating and loathsome. I, like many others, had a Joyce phase once, where reading his works was akin to eating ambrosia; I could not put his books down for fear of losing my grip on...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Lara rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: post-modernism, yelch

In What Is Art? Tolstoy unleashes criticism on all things artistic, sparing no one. His main argument is that art--whether literature, paintings, music, or drama--should be accessible to everyone. He says anything that the common man cannot understand or that does not represent the common man is actually a form of war on the common man. All art must teach; all art must be accessible; all art must tell the common man's story. Else, it is not art but an elitist manipulation--a dangerous one, at th...more In What Is Art? Tolstoy unleashes criticism on all things artistic, sparing no one. His main argument is that art--whether literature, paintings, music, or drama--should be accessible to everyone. He says anything that the common man cannot understand or that does not represent the common man is actually a form of war on the common man. All art must teach; all art must be accessible; all art must tell the common man's story. Else, it is not art but an elitist manipulation--a dangerous one, at that. The main target of his anger is art that is enigmatic solely for the sake of being enigmatic. He even spends an entire chapter on Wagner to prove his point. While one could argue that this kind of critique is a signal of the Stalinist suppression of anything not "for the people," (the Bolsheviks actually praised Tolstoy and suppressed Dostoevsky) I do think that Tolstoy has a valid point--especially with regards to Joycean Modernism.

I'll be honest, Modernism does annoy me. I understand the idea behind using style to comment on, well, style, but I really can't stand this pompous approach to art. It's boring and kind of defeats the point of publishing for the masses. This obviously does not apply to all Modernists; Hemingway and Fitzgerald are both very accessible. But Joyce is definitely an author who delights in name dropping and pretentious ramblings. Not my cup of tea.

I had to read Finnegans Wake for a Modernist British literature class in undergrad and couldn't finish it. I suppose I'm a lesser English major for criticizing the inimitable James Joyce, but I found this novel pretentious and, frankly, stupid. As far as I can tell, there's no plot and really no characters. Every word in every sentence is a combination of three or more languages. This may sound interesting, but it's really painful to read and a ridiculous way to address linguistic issues. If you have something so profound to say, why the hell can't you make your writing accessible? Are you trying to keep it a secret? What is the point of combining 30+ languages to create linguistic garbage? I learned nothing from this novel other than language itself can be a kind of prison. I think D.H. Lawrence makes this argument much more powerfully in Lady Chatterly's Lover--anther Modernist novel, yes, but one whose acclaim does not exist just because the author was able to reference every piece of literature written before the Common Era.

I guess I do understand the acclaim this novel receives: it references everything and Joyce DID have to be rather brilliant to know all of these languages. You can also see the coming of Post-Modernism here with Joyce's total disregard for anything (and I mean ANYTHING) traditional. Perhaps that is why I hated it.

Moreover, going back to Tolstoy, I think there are political and biased reasons for this novel's godlike status. There are countless books that attempt to find Wake's meaning and many a floundering grad student struggling to grasp Joyce's points. The pretentiousness of this novel ensures there will never be a shortage of criticism about it, and, having the ability to make sense of nonsense allows one to appear cultured and genius-like. This does create a problem when you think about it. Only a few books out of the zillions that have been written are included in the canon, and mostly for their reinforcing our own racial, classist, gendered, and sexual prejudices. Finnegans Wake certainly fits this criteria by being accessible to only, say, 5 people on the planet. This isn't necessarily because of racism or sexism, but because of this idea that the best literature is NOT understood by the lowly masses. "They want John Grisham or Stephenie Meyer? Let them have Joyce!" is probably the best way to put it.

All in all, I can't stand this book. If you want a good post-modern novel, read Kundera or Vonnegut. Finnegans Wake is waste of time (and brain power).

(less)

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view all 23 comments

Lara Jeff wrote: "Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Jeff wrote: " I hate to resort to basic name calling here"

So then please don't. You do Mr Joyce no favors when you...more
Nov 05, 2012 11:35am

Steve I suppose I'm a lesser English major for criticizing the inimitable James Joyce, but I found this novel pretentious and, frankly, stupid.

If it's not...more
updated Feb 20, 2013 12:50pm

Feb 16, 2013 Scribble Orca is currently reading it · review of another edition

Recommended to Scribble by: Nathan "N.R." Gaddis

The problem with Finn Egan's Splashy Fest-o-the-Dye Inn is muchly how there is to admire and lake, and how much to make and add lyre that nary a chary chance haven't a nanobreadth's posse and abillybongabitty in all of onrushininginfinity to Die Cifre.

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May 19, 2007 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Dedicated Readers

I spent a couple of years working my way through this book. Besides Flannery O'Connor's short stories and Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony, I can think of no other text that inspires me with evangelical zeal. I think about Finnegans Wake and I want to convert everyone to the Church of James Joyce.

For me, reading the Wake was about getting to know Joyce. Finnegans Wake is written in a stream of consciousness that is both unconscious (that is, the language of dreams) and clever (puns abound in a mul...more

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Nov 20, 2007 Kelly McCubbin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

The easiest book in the world... seriously. With scholars unable to ever reach consensus on what the book is or how it should be read or even if it actually has value, you can simply ignore them. Your opinions are just as valid. Add to this the wads of cultural ephemera that Joyce has packed the book with and you find yourself in the rare position to occasionally be BETTER qualified to interpret parts of the text than academics.
Try this, get some friends together, pop the cork on a few bottles o...more

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Apr 04, 2009 Jimmy marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: partially-read

I remember this being fun to read up about until I started having really weird nightmares (technically, the novel is supposed to mimic the language of nightmares and dreams in general). Also, I remember just feeling awkward about language in idle conversation. Someone would start talking to me, about anything, and I had a hard time suppressing my laughter. That in mind, the effects that this book had on me were about as ridiculous as it actually is. I like Ulysses, but this is clearly the work o...more

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May 21, 2010 Evan rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: absolutely-certain-i-shant-read, for-codebreakers-only, philistine-sez-unreadable

-- "He spillyspilled the javagroundsdowndown down on the dillyportportmanteau dallyrig and spiedeyed the bigbuggered werdybirdys tome and glazed himself cataractous and craniallyabled himself away along the ruttedroad to the pubbubbly where Evesapples temptation restor'd his senseandsensibility."
-- Evan Gilling, from a never-to-be written opus

That is my answer to Finnegans Wake -- a book I've sampled and thereupon decided to not spend further precious minutes of my fleeting life on.

Before I say...more

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Jul 10, 2008 Michael Kneeland rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: crazy people (or linguists, or both)

Recommended to Michael by: no one I know has actually read the book the whole way through..

Shelves: comic-masterpieces

The professor who taught my "Homer and Joyce" honors seminar in college best described how one should read Finnegans Wake:

After you have a couple of Guinnesses in your stomach.

(Seriously, it does help.)

There are several things one can [try to] say about this book (I don't really want to call it a novel), but there is really no point in going into much in-depth discussion about this work. It's best instead to just skim the surface: it's cyclical (the first line of the book seems to have started s...more The professor who taught my "Homer and Joyce" honors seminar in college best described how one should read Finnegans Wake:

After you have a couple of Guinnesses in your stomach.

(Seriously, it does help.)

There are several things one can [try to] say about this book (I don't really want to call it a novel), but there is really no point in going into much in-depth discussion about this work. It's best instead to just skim the surface: it's cyclical (the first line of the book seems to have started somewhere else; the last line starts but doesn't finish...put them together and what have you got? Bibbidy, bobbidy, boo), which I'm pretty sure says something about the cyclical nature of life, particularly since the first word of the book (actually the middle word in the complete sentence) is "riverrun," and rivers are ubiquitous symbols for life in Joyce's works (particularly the Liffey...why, you ask? What do sperm do in order to get to an ovum and get about making life? Why, swim up-river, of course!). Then there are all the archetypes to talk about: Mr. Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (aka HCE aka Here Comes Everybody--hence, the quintessential "Everyman"), his stern but life-giving wife, Anna Livia Plurabelle (aka ALP, the quintessential "Wife of Everyman," or, I suppose, "Everywoman," though I don't quite think Joyce had that in mind), and then, of course, HCE and ALP's Cain-and-Abel-esque sons, Shem and Shaun (who have aka's of their own, but enough is enough).

So, what does this all mean?

I haven't the slightest idea. Nor do I care to, really. I'm sure this meant a lot to Joyce (who was essentially blind when he "wrote" it, and had to have his secretary, Samuel Beckett, transcribe it for him), and the ideas of life cycles and archetypes are quite interesting, but you can't actually read this book, at least not in the normal way you'd read, say, The Sun Also Rises or even To the Lighthouse. To "read" this book is to essentially decipher a nonstop 628-page cyptogram, and to decipher the code, you need to know a lot of foreign languages and minutiae.

Still, it took Joyce from 1922-1938 to finish the Wake (as we Joyceans prefer to call it), so you have to at least appreciate the book for that. A lot of effort, pain, and frustration went into the creation of this book, and that's quite admirable, to say the least.

Even if no one knows what the heck it means.(less)

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Jul 24, 2011 Adam Floridia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star-books

Who am I kidding, I got off to a strong start and then just never picked this up to read each weekend as I had planned. Page 56 is probably as far as I'll ever get, but that's enough to be completely blown away. Language, history, time itself all collapse/overlap (fall/resurrect) to form all-language, all-history, and all-time. All this is set into action by the thunderclap of the fall, the thunderclap of Giambattista Vico's four-phase history dawning a new cycle.

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Jun 26, 2008 Nick Black rated it 3 of 5 stars

Major life admission: I've never actually finished this book. Let me explain.

I first came across Joyce in the spring of 1996. When "Araby" was assigned for an evening's BritLit homework, I was fifteen and still playing Final Fantasy Legend on my Gameboy from that Christmas ; up until that MARTA ride home, The Catcher in the Rye had seemed the most meaningful and personally evocative thing around. The last line almost blinded me:

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and de...more

18 likes · like · see review

Oct 25, 2012 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-with-me

Idiots, they left out the apostrophe. You’d think a simpleton wrote this. A knockabout comedy, a favourite of Whorrold’s. I have a cameo on p345, in the 99th syllable.

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Aug 14, 2011 Daryl rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I first embarked on reading the 100 Best 20th Century novels, the first one I read was Ulysses by James Joyce. It was a very difficult read and I felt pretty accomplished when I made it through. Now that I’ve gotten to Finnegan’s Wake, Ulysses is just a walk in the park.

This novel is not really a novel in any traditional sense of the word. Or any untraditional sense of the word. No characters, no plot, no narrative to speak of. It’s really more a collection of words than a novel. And a lot...more

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Aug 06, 2010 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: joyce, 2010

This was going to be a regular review. It’s just a book after all, and I should be able to critically look at it and judge it for its merits.

But this just isn’t any old book and this isn’t really going to be a review as I have written in the past.

There’s a cliche about the Velvet Underground; supposedly (and God knows this isn’t really true) but supposedly, only 1000 people actually listened to VU while they were still together, but every one of those people started their own band. This criminal...more

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Nov 25, 2011 Eel IzCool rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, irish

There's a lot going for this book but it really suffers from the lack of emotional content. The writing is usually clever, often funny, and occasionally even beautiful, but I think The Tunnel by William H. Gass does the clever and funny almost as well and is more consistently beautiful, while also having genuine emotional content. Of course, there's the fun of getting references here and there, and it really does often read like what would be called a "dream language" -- often I would read over...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Warwick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A sort of triumph, a sort of failure.

It's impossible to rate, really, but it's not remotely like anything else in English literature so in that way it's certainly impressive.

On one hand it's outrageously pretentious. But even if you want to hate it, there's no denying you can get enormous enjoyment from going through some of the passages here. A sentence can be read in as much detail as some entire books. You can reread the whole thing and it'll be completely different. Some bits are very funny,...more

4 likes · like · see review

Oct 31, 2007 Owen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Crazy people who can't sleep, or complete drunkards. Keith Richards

This is one book that I will finish before I die.... however it may have to wait until full-fledged alcoholism sets in, because the only way I've ever been able to make any headway is to read it after a night of heavy drinking. Proof positive that if you spit out hundreds of pages of stuff no one understands, people will think you’re a genius because they’re afraid of sounding dumb because they don’t get it. The truly amazing thing about this work is that it is NOT utter nonsense; it actually ha...more

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Jul 18, 2008 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

read to me at 16 by the lunatic frank mccourt (in his joyce class elective at stuyvesant), this book changed my language capacity. sometimes i think the only real writers in english are poe and joyce. and maybe flannery oconnor. thackery knows flourish. faulkner knows how to fuse inner monologues. henry miller knows the value of the present, gaitskill grabs boredom, will somebody tell me their favorite english writer. burgess is too off the wall. malcolm lowry was too one hit. chandler dripped b...more

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Dec 07, 2007 Prostetnic rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: no one

Wow, what can you learn from this book? That Joyce is the self-indulgent, self-mythologizing king of all pretentious literary bullshitters? Yes, that's probably the most important thing. Other possible conclusions: (1) the canonical status of this book indicates the insanity of the canon and of current literary studies; (2) it's possible to publish a totally unreadable book that will become assigned reading for grad students if you spin your public image just right. Way to go, Mr Joyce.

9 likes · like · see review

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About James Joyce

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of s...more

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