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Can never get enough of the Wake — already running a Wake group at my school and attending another in town and writing about the thing for my dissertation and so on and so on, but happy to lurk this thread as well and chip in where I can. It always makes me laugh when people describe the book as unreadable (or similar) because it's about the most obsessively readable book out there. I know people who have been reading it for 60 years or more. For a print edition, I really highly recommend the Oxford World Classics one, has a very helpful intro and short breakdown of the most generally accepted postulates about what's going on in different parts. Also since the whole thing loops around, and was written way out of order anyway, there's no need to start at the beginning, actually a lot of people who try the book run aground early on and never come back. There's easier entryways, such as the section starting on page 104, or the one on 196, or the one on 555. I would gently caution against overreliance on the Campbell Skeleton Key — not because all that stuff isn't there, but because it's easy to start thinking that stuff is all that's there, or some sort of root meaning to it all, when it'd be closer to say that it's the sheer proliferation of potential meanings, and the inability to settle on any single one, that is the "key" to the work. Really that's just all my prejudices though, the Wake is a book every reader ought to try at least once or twice in their own ways, especially if you can join a group to read it out loud while drinking. edit: also, as resources go, FWEET is pretty great once you learn a little bit about the book and have some ideas about how it works. elentar fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Nov 1, 2014 |
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Nov 1, 2014 01:58
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It's difficult to overstate the weirdness of Vico's New Science. For just one example: he suggested the reason that the giants of the Old Testament got so big was from picking up nutrients by rolling around in their own filth. As Joyce connections go, it's also worth noting that Vico Road runs just south of Dublin, and offers beautiful views of the Irish Sea.
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Nov 1, 2014 21:19
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Invicta{HOG}, M.D. posted:I tried to read this after loving Ulysses and got to like page 30 or so before realizing I was just reading words. I have the Skeleton Key and started reading that as well but failed still. I guess I will try again along with the thread and hopefully the web annotations will help me through. Honestly, there's worse ways to start than just letting the words wash over you. Reading out loud helps a lot, even if it's just mouthing the words to get the feel of them. I still really like the Oxford intro as a primer, because it gives a sense of the most generally accepted propositions about the characters and the events of the book. But I distilled as much as I could into a 2-page PDF here: http://www.docdroid.net/kslh/finnegans-wake-in-miniature.pdf.html
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Nov 7, 2014 21:51
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anilEhilated posted:Silly question: is there any point in trying to read Finnegan's Wake when English isn't your first language and there's no way in hell you can tell whether the translation is worth a drat? I managed to finish (translated) Ulysses and kinda hope that the feeling I missed everything important is what you're supposed to have at the end. Finnegans Wake is basically already halfway between English and a bunch of other languages, so try that first? There's tons of every Indo-European language at least, plus bits of many, many others besides. There was a recent book, Impossible Joyce, that argued all attempted translations should also be considered part of the Wake text, but whether you buy into that or not (I mostly don't, with a few reservations), it's still interesting as a limit case to try and see what strategies the translator used to try and render it into a different tongue.
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Dec 6, 2014 18:44
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