First read everything else that was ever printed before Finnegans Wake.

>>2659138

This. Finnegans Wake is the final boss.

>>2659138
>>2659148

i took a senior college course on Joyce where 20 out of 25 classes were dedicated to Ulysses, and I still don't think I could tackle Finnegan's Wake.

It's like that trope of getting to the top of an impossible mountain, only to find an even higher summit before you.

To pass this boss you should know every english word ever and be able to recognize if two or three of them are now one word.

>>2659161

and by Finnegan's, I mean Finnegans

Gosh, I should get a Coles Notes or something...

>>2659161
To dream the impossible dream. To fight the unbeatable foe. To bear with unbearable sorrow. To run where the brave dare not go. To right the unrightable wrong. To love pure and chaste from afar. To try when your arms are too weary. To reach the unreachable star...

This is my quest, to follow that star - no matter how hopeless, no matter how far - to fight for the right, without question or pause - to be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause.

Yeah, it's fairly impenetrable for casual reading. That, and having to learn your way up to the humor kinda takes the wind out out.

Even if you manage to stumble through it running your eyes over the words, it wouldn't be meaningful. There's no shame in admitting you're not ready for a book. Return it. Let it go.

>>2659176

GET OUT.

The worst part about this is how I probably looked like a complete idiot when borrowing it. I'm back in my hometown, so I had to renew my library card just to casually take out an impossible book that is undoubtedly out of my league.

>>2659136

>but I unfortunately didn't realize that the language was so incoherent utter shit.

Oh? You didn't bother skimming the first page at least?

I still hold that Finnegan's Wake is the greatest literary hoax ever played. People still consider this gibberish literature and even take its very ridiculousness as proof that its literary greatness.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disumbrationism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectra_(book)

>>2659297

Yes, James Joyce spent 17 years working to the point of blindness writing a 600+ page book just so it could later be called a hoax.

>>2659297
Wisdom to not read by.

>>2659297
nobody who has looked into it for more than five seconds thinks it's a hoax.

>>2659314

To be fair, if he had gone blind, I would blame the drinking and not so much the writing...

>>2659351

My point wasn't that the writing was the cause of his blindness, more that even under such circumstances he spent a majority of his time writing FW.

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>>2659356
>>2659314
>17 years
That's what makes this harder to believe it's a hoax.

>>2659402
forgot to mention

this would make it one hell of a hoax. He could've just spent 2 years writing it in total and 17 years just writing it in his spare time as a grand hoax and as some sort of challenge to himself.

>>2659297

Excepting the one about the monkey painting, the rest of those "hoaxes" are like saying Sgt. Peppers was a musical hoax because the Beatles developed a fictious collective persona while doing it, in styles apeing other bands and genres.

He might as well had fucking schizophrenia and people mistook it for great literature because of Ulysses

Seriously
Try to make sense out of this

I dare any of you fags to make some sense out of this:

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.
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 wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf 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 nathandjoe. 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.

If it's a joke then it's still great literature for obvious reasons

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>>2659409

Finnegan's Wake isn't the sort of book you want to tackle unless you: have a near complete mastery of the English language and all of its peripheral languages and dialects; have a high level of command of wordplay; are able to interpret experimental text; understand European history, British history, Irish history, the culture and social landscape of Dublin, the history of the Church, and every other subject that James Joyce farted around; and are willing to not just read it but to spend a considerable amount of time actually studying it.

If you don't do this, it's like reading a book in a language you hardly understand. There's no point in doing it. None at all.

>>2659409

The sad thing is Joyce probably patted himself on the back for producing this garbage. "I'm a genius!"

Anyway, it's well known that he was only published to begin with by his rich friends and otherwise would never have seen print.

>>2659420
What blows my mind is that it's still in print. Are there actually classes trying to make sense out of all this or are these books yellowing until they finally get sold?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60Mo613VSY&feature=related

Some of these puns will take a while to figure the fuck out

>>2659423
Bunch of faggoty try-hards sucking each others dick.

>>2659430

the language is beautiful, regardless

>>2659423
You'll usually find the best selling art, in general, is the shit that lets the upper crust of semi-educated plebs posture and pretend they get it, just because they're nothing to actually get

>>2659439

>just because they're nothing to actually get

And you're the authority on this? Who the fuck are you?

>>2659439

how do you know there's nothing to get?

Try reading aloud. The sounds of the language will help establish more meaning than the words themselves.

Am I the only one floored by the idea that (a) OP is intimately familliar with Marshall McLuhan but (b) has no idea about James Joyce?

Great literature is when only a handful of people can even grasp the first sentence.

>>2659409
I really don't want to read Joyce anymore. Are Dubliners and Ulysses already written in this nonsensical style?

>>2659520
>Dubliners
No
>Ulysses
Yes

>>2659523

Ulysses reads like YA in comparison to Finnegans

>>2659523
So why is Ulysses so critically acclaimed? Fuck, why is Joyce so thought highly of if he writes like this?

I'm getting angry.

>>2659532

it's not wise to make value judgements before having read the work

>>2659532
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL_rXp-T4tc&feature=related

It's not as fucking incomprehensible load of fuckery as Finnegan's Wake

>>2659532

Because publishers make money off the pleb's ignorance and desire to be uber-intellectuals. And the plebs buy it. Simple as that.

>>2659614

>pleb

Just stop posting in this thread. Stop shitting it up. Seriously. I don't care whether or not you're actually being serious, but if you're going to be so dismissive of people trying to understand Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses as "plebs", don't post here.

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>>2659614
>anyone who understands things that I don't understand is just pretending


jeez people on this board get so defensive at the thought of anyone being smarter than them. Get the fuck out with your anti-intellectual bullshit

>>2659620

Your assumption is that reading Finnegan's Wake is something a pleb wouldn't do. Fits my argument perfectly, pleb.

The only works of Joyce that have honestly stood out to me were A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man Araby and The Dead honestly, although I have not yet read a great amount of Ulysses. I'm able to appreciate Finnegans Wake for it's mastery of writing in all its forms but I cannot be a fool and pretend that I am intelligent enough to decipher it myself.

>>2659624

And you're a pathetic self-congratulator who relishes the feeling when his straw men don't threaten his self-image?

>>2659631
I wouldn't call my statement a case of straw man at all; it's pretty much exactly what you are saying. Obviously you didn't understand Joyce too well, so instead of simply dropping it or trying to understand it better, you came up with a way to assert a sense of superiority over those who do enjoy and understand it by dismissing them as 'plebs'. Thank god for you that you have /lit/ to voice your stupid opinions, or else you might just explode with anger.

>>2659638

I'd like to stay and chat with you more but I feel it would be pointless to entertain your idiocy due to your idiocy.

>>2659638
>>Obviously you didn't understand Joyce too well, so instead of simply dropping it or trying to understand it better

Typical pleb logic.
>if you don't understand something it must be worth understanding

You should have gone in the following order:
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Dubliners (optional but recommended)
Ulysses
Finnegans Wake

There's this one bitter guy with a mental problem who refers to people as 'roaches' and 'plebs' when in fact he's the shit-eater.

>>2659661

yep.

>>2659161
>i took a senior college course on Joyce where 20 out of 25 classes were dedicated to Ulysses

What did you discover?

>>2659655

I read "a portrait" in my senior year of HS and loved it. I don't think I'll ever be able to tackle Joyce beyond that though.

>>2659409
>people don't know what's going on in this passage
>people haven't used A Skeleton's Key to Finnegans Wake
>people literally arguing out of their ignorance that the book is shitty
I'm done, /lit/.

Past Eve (ALP) and Adam's (HCE), from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus (pun on the name Vico. Vico was a philosopher who attested that all history goes in 4 phrases, and these 4 phases repeat (repetition is a theme of finnegans wake)) of recirculation (see?) back to Howth Castle and Environs (sets up setting, introduces the HCE as land element).

I'm not doing the entire thing, but seriously? Don't say "I don't understand it, therefore it's useless"

>>2659626
Finnegan's Wake is a song.

Please, don't.

>>2659409

It helps if you know what Eve and Adam's is, and where Howth is, and are familiar with the course of the river.

>>2659417
>>2659419
What's with all the "V." themed tripfags?

>>2659785
with a love for the liquor poor tim was born

>>2659967

They seem to have popped up quite recently too ...

>>2659967

I don't know, I'm not sure which one of us was first, I made my name and then saw that other guy posting a few weeks later

I consider myself a fan of Joyce, but I can't tackle Finnegans Wake. That might be why I don't like it. A little humility never went amiss /lit/.

op here. i studied literature and linguistics for 3 years at university. apart from that i realized that 90% of these literature theorists and lit. philosophers are mostly full of elitist crap, trying as hard a possible to make everything they say as inaccessible as possible to everyone, i really find it hard to see a book as brilliant when it's plain boring. but i guess i'll fight my way through.

>>2660001

>>2659989

?

>>2660003

?

Do you always ask questions without subject matter? Is that some nihilistic gesture?

>>2660009

the subject matter was the duplicate posts. I'm curious as to whether or not it's the same OP

>>2660010

Oh, that would explain it. I guess your question has no answer, pleb.

You know what is the funniest part? There are TRANSLATIONS of it into other languages.

Two of the most respected modern brazilian poets (the Campos brothers) translated it (or "trasncreated" it, in their words) into portuguese as "Finnicius Revém".

Here's a sample of the first sentence:

riocorrente, depois de Eva e Adão, do desvio da praia à dobra da baía, devolve-nos por um commodius vicus de recirculação devolta a Howth Castle Ecercanias.

It is just as elusive in portuguese as it is in english.

It makes me think of Borges'The Library of Babel.

>>2660057
>riocorrente, depois de Eva e Adão, do desvio da praia à dobra da baía, devolve-nos por um commodius vicus de recirculação devolta a Howth Castle Ecercanias.

I can confirm that to be just as elusive, and I don't speak a word of portuguese.

>>2659417

That is awesome. Got anything else like that?

Sadly, this book is too literate for most people. Most people can't understand it because their stupid.

>>2660065

Nope, I found it floating around some thread here a while ago

I thought it was incredibly fun to read. Quite exhausting, though.
The last chapter and book 1.8 more than justify the existence of the rest of the book. Joyce never wrote anything more beautiful than those two passages.

My advice is if you're curious about the book, just go ahead and read it. I definitely didn't even begin to understand most of it, but I'm still glad I read it, and I will definitely be rereading it when I've read everything else there is.

I definitely didn't even begin to understand most of it, but I'm still glad I read it

>i'm not sure what the fuck it is but it's clearly the best thing ever i didn't understand any of it but it's beautiful i can't tell you a single meaning or moral or form or concept from it but i got the distinct impression it was incredible, after being told by everyone else that they had this impression, no i'm not biased at all or anything

>>2660152
i studied literature and linguistics for 3 years at university. apart from that i realized that 90% of these literature theorists and lit. philosophers are mostly full of elitist crap, trying as hard a possible to make everything they say as inaccessible as possible to everyone, i really find it hard to see a book as brilliant when it's plain boring. but i guess i'm glad i finished it. I definitely didn't even begin to understand most of it, but I'm still glad I read it.

>>2660154
You keep saying that (I've seen it three times now) yet your grammar, syntax and spelling are all atrocious.
No-one's really trying to make literature hard just to be elitist - it's simply that you're too stupid to understand. Either someone did your work for you, you had staggeringly unlikely flukes all three years or your university was awful. The other, more likely option is that you're lying about having studied English for so long.

>>2660178
he didn't use the capital letters. that's how you know he is a pleb. lock onto him and fire all weapons. sperg the fuck out. do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it

it's not a hoax

>>2660178

but i did indeed study at university for 3 years and i thoroughly enjoyed my time there, despite the elitists.

>Either someone did your work for you, you had staggeringly unlikely flukes all three years or your university was awful. The other, more likely option is that you're lying about having studied English for so long.

why would i lie about it? have you been to university?

>>2660179
I didn't say he was a "pleb", I said he was stupid.

>>2660187

i have a 160+ IQ, how can i be stupid?

>>2660195
>My intellectual cock is bigger than yours.
>4chan

>>2660202

actually, i studied literature and linguistics for 3 years at university. apart from that i realized that 90% of these literature theorists and lit. philosophers are mostly full of elitist crap, trying as hard a possible to make everything they say as inaccessible as possible to everyone, i really find it hard to see a book as brilliant when it's plain boring. but i guess i'm glad i finished it. I definitely didn't even begin to understand most of it, but I'm still glad I read it.

>>2660209
>actually, i studied literature and linguistics for 3 years at university. apart from that i realized that 90% of these literature theorists and lit. philosophers are mostly full of elitist crap, trying as hard a possible to make everything they say as inaccessible as possible to everyone, i really find it hard to see a book as brilliant when it's plain boring. but i guess i'm glad i finished it. I definitely didn't even begin to understand most of it, but I'm still glad I read it.


actually, i studied literature and linguistics for 3 years at university. apart from that i realized that 90% of these literature theorists and lit. philosophers are mostly full of elitist crap, trying as hard a possible to make everything they say as inaccessible as possible to everyone, i really find it hard to see a book as brilliant when it's plain boring. but i guess i'm glad i finished it. I definitely didn't even begin to understand most of it, but I'm still glad I read it.

>>2660187

Anon likes to call people stupid without understanding the word.

>>2660001
>>2660216
>>2660209
>>2660152
>>2660154
>>2659136

What the fuck happened?

Anyone who isn't familiar with Joyce or Modernist authors probably shouldn't jump straight into the big boys like Ulysses and understand them.

Anyone who isn't James Joyce and didn't write Finnegans Wake shouldn't read Finnegans Wake and attempt to understand it.

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Holy fuck, after I thought /lit/ was getting somewhat better this thread comes along and re-affirms that the flood of retardation is constant.

Did /lit/ suddenly get a bout of new people, a.k.a summer?

>>2660195
This faggot right here