Is this worth reading? Is there anything substantial to get out of it?
>>7354724
I read it when I was 8. It's pretty easy
>>7354724 dont read it. I almost killed myself after reading it. Correlated for sure
>>7354756
Nabokov, please go.
You need to start with the Greeks then work your way up to the décadents, otherwise you won't get jack shit about what's going on in FW.
>>7355154
Nobody knows what is going on in FW, not even James Joyce
>>7354724
It's fun to read aloud
>>7355154
>Not seriously doing this
I mean I'm still not going to know what's going on since that's the point but at least I can act pretentious and pretend that there is something deeper
>the line on page 264 is a reference to x you morons
>>7354724
Not only is it worth reading, it is an intensely fascinating foray into the way language and allusion work. I would rate it as almost necessary if someone wants to improve their reading comprehension or plans to write poetry that's not trash-tier. You should probably try to find it through audiobook or read it aloud first, and then on your second read dig through with a reader to help you along with some of the ways Joyce is using his words specifically to evoke different meanings in the text.
>>7355474
Not knowing what's going on is not the point, or at least not the whole point. Joyce was not writing for the sake of being pretentious, or he wouldn't have spent seventeen fucking years writing it. If the text meant nothing, it would be NanoWriMo tier, which it's not. The book was written in a time where culture and literature was much more homogenized amongst the intellectuals and general populace, so the literary allusions would have been better understood living in that culture and time. Even listening to the song the book is named after gleans a lot of knowledge into how he's using it as a metaphor for the entire story he's telling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kwG2Z1fY-0
>>7355167
Oh he did anon
17 years it took him
>>7354724
While it seems like several hundred pages of pure gibberish (which does exist in it), Finnegans Wake is a meticulously crafted work focusing on the frivolity of dreams. In it, there are hundreds of allusions, portmanteaus, and new words entirely. To put it simply, Finnegans Wake is the most experimental novel in history: take that as you will.
