Thinking about tackling this behemoth /lit/. The question is: Would I enjoy it without the help of any other text? Did Joyce want it to be confusing and uncomprehensible for the most? Would reading it aloud help me savour at least the musicality of it?
I read everything else from Joyce btw, if that is of any help.
>>8099090
Dude just fucking read it already and stop making these threads
>>8099096
By ''dude'' you mean the whole of /lit/? I barely post here.
I dont want to go into a 600 pages book I know I won't get anything from.
>>8099110
you can read any piece of literature and not get anything out of it. what you pull is from your own ability to close read, extrapolate, and comprehend what the letters on the pages mean.
finnegans has a 'skeleton key' online. read the book with it if you like. make a decision. safety is overrated. go into it.
>>8099090
>Would I enjoy it without the help of any other text?
Yes, but only if you don't have a stick up your ass.
>Did Joyce want it to be confusing and uncomprehensible for the most?
He was expecting certain people to understand certain parts depending on what their nationality/background was but for no one to understand the whole thing at once.
>Would reading it aloud help me savour at least the musicality of it?
Yes, but figuring out how to pronounce it properly would be hard.
>I read everything else from Joyce btw, if that is of any help.
It does.
>>8099090
>the musicality of it
...
>>8099138
says he barely posts here, yet hes memeing like a madman
>>8099090
It's overrated memey gibberish. I don't think there's anything to gain by reading it.
>>8099165
oh god, it's like beethoven
>>8099090
Is there a better version of that cover art???
sauce, name?
pls respond
>>8099176
It's from the book of Kells.
>>8099165
Kek for someone reason I didn't expect his accent to be so strong.
>>8099182
thanks!
>>8099264
>>8099182
Specifically, the cover illustration derives from the top-center of "folio 8R", and can be seen in its context here (navigate to folio 8r):
http://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/home/index.php?DRIS_ID=MS58_003v
It turns out that this detailed information on the book cover's source material is available on the back cover of Penguin's edition.
What are all the best Joyce-related memes? "Arse full of farts", "Deal with him, Hemingway!", etc.? What else is there?
>>8099323
>If you see Kay,
>Tell him he may.
>See you in tea,
>Tell him from me.
From Ulysses.
Also the entirety of Finnegans Wake is a meme. He spent nearly twenty years figuring out puns like Pennis in the sluts maschine.
>>8099323
Somebody post that "teehee what am I referencing now?" pic
>>8099344
Pennis
>>8099165
He's got a pure culchie accent. I can't believe he was from Dublin
>>8099364
Took some digging
I doubt there's a single meme out there that doesn't already appear in Finnegans Wake.
>>8099369
He wasn't originally from Dublin. His family moved there when he was like 6 or 7 I think.
>>8099090
Joyce said: 'If the universe were to be destroyed and only Finnegans Wake remained, we would be able to reconstruct the whole of it through the book''
How could he write something so dense, his genius is astounding.
''Another point, in addition to the original sand, pounce powder,
drunkard paper or soft rag used (any vet or inhanger in ous sot's social
can see the seen for seemself, a wee ftofty od room, the cheery
spluttered on the one karrig, a darka disheen of voos from Dalbania, any
gotsquantity of racky, a portogal and some buk setting out on the sofer,
you remember the sort of softball sucker motru used to tell us when we
were all biribiyas or nippies and messas) it has acquired accretions of
terricious matter whilst loitering in the past.''
This piece is taken from chapter 5. I am albanian and I understand this paragraph completely for the uncomprehenseable words are in albanian, it is just unbelievable he could do something so coherent in such an obscure language. I got goosebumps reading it. And every single paragraph, sentence or word sends you to a unique and magical universe. What a madman.
>>8100280
Joyce was trolling.
>>8099126
>only if you don't have a stick up your ass
See? This is why it's worth making these threads.
>>8099170
good meme
>>8099344
>Pennis in the sluts maschine.
Is it worth reading the book if you've alredy seen what must be the highpoint?
It's great that no matter how long I stay away, I can be sure the same questions are being asked by a new flock of sheep.
>>8100280
Translate words, pls.
>>8099182
Her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.
>>8100805
Sot- Today
Ftofty- Cold (wordplay, it sounds like lofty)
Od- Room (he says odd room while using the albanian for 'room')
Cheery- Candle, telling the candle is spluttered in the chair but also setting the mood of the room: 'cheery'
Karrig- Chair
Darka- Dinner
Disheen- Doubled
Voos- Big kind of plate, like casserole, or a vase to hold food
Gotsquantity- 'Got' is glass
Racky- Raki, liquor albanians drink, alongside most of the balkans,
Portogal- Orange
Buk- Bread
Sofer- Eating table
Motru- Sister, ''motra''
Biribiyas- Biri is son, or kid and Biya (Bija) daughter, when I read the two put together it was quite funny and witty
Nippies- 'nipi' Nephew
Messas- 'mesa' Niece
>>8101370
Something I forgot. When he says 'ftofty od room', 'ftoft' is cold, and he uses it to make it sound like 'lofty'. 'Lofty' means extending high in the air; of imposing height; towering. North Albanian traditional houses are the 'kullas' (it's worth mentioning that he uses the northen dialect as opposed to the now official southern-middle one), which are high tower-like buildings located in the mountains. (pic related) So he tells you it's cold using the albanian word for it while making a wordplay in english to give the nature of the vernacular architecture. Now tell me that isn't genius.
>>8101433
Forgot pic
>>8101433
It is genius, but these fags don't appreciate actual genius and would rather jerk off to Ernie Memmmmmeingway's manchildish tales of crusty old man semen.
>>8101370
Thanks. Knowing this obscure shit makes the book amazing.
I understood the words in my language too.
t. Serb
>>8101433
>So he tells you it's cold using the albanian word for it while making a wordplay in english to give the nature of the vernacular architecture.
What's the point of compressing a sentence down into wordplay in order to communicate something when decompressing it takes longer to explain than simply telling you the original sentence?
>>8101433
Then he should have said that directly. It's not my job to reenact the author's philological research.
>>8101645
Because it's meant to be a dream of the collective unconscious, and nothing is straightforward in dreams.
>>8101702
This.
Read his other stuff if you want conscious thought.
>>8099090
>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 generally humiliate. I would start out composing a piece of surrealist free-association prose, usually violently satirical. As the teachers (or pupils or other humans) closed in around me, my prose would lapse into soothing gibberish. Sometimes I wrote a stream of pretty sounding words (I was a rabid sesquipedalian in my teens)—zeugmatic, antediluvian, milquetoast, mugwump. Luscious lovely words! Sometimes language broke down into neologisms or gibberish—boobleplop, artycary, frumpalerp, etc. Nervy, throbbing syllables. I came to associate collapsed language with an inner space where I went to hide from the imagined humiliations of interacting with others. Once I escaped the imprisonment of my inner conscious (over a four-year period known as The Torture Years), I always used nonsense writing as a means of getting through difficult situations—where others might doodle, for example, I would write Joycean Jabberwocky. Still do, usually on the phone. So this book, to me, is The Little Book of Calm. Except it isn’t little, and it makes people shit themselves. Me? I love this magnificent beast. Unless you suffer from similar deep-seated psychological wounds that threaten to gradually consume your entire adult life, don’t read this.
>>8101370
how the hell did you decipher this
>>8103755
It's my mother tongue.
>>8102034
>shy
It's sound a damn lot more than just shyness, he describe persecutory thoughts and his coping mechanism seem to be some kind of mania
>>8104627
We should group together and decipher using our various nationalities.
Is there french in this shit?
>>8099090
Yeah, I actually read the whole thing because I had to. I was entering a prestigious PhD program and focusing on Toole because I loved The Neon Bible. To my shame, though, I'd never read Confederacy. I'd never even tried, as hard as that was to admit. It was this huge blind spot and area of vulnerability for me. Whenever it'd come up with my colleagues I'd just smile and nod, smile and nod, hoping they wouldn't ask me anything specific about it. "The musicality of it," somebody would say, and I'd say, "Oh God, yes, it's like Bach." Finally, though, I had to dive into it, and let me tell you it was tough going. Louisiana State's guide helped a lot. Reading it out loud helped. I listened to other people read it, read online commentaries. Eventually it started to make some sort of sense. It was like I was learning to read for the first time again, and in a way this was enjoyable. I got better at reading the book. Soon I was reading entire paragraphs without trouble, getting the puns, laughing at the valve jokes. I could sort of follow the story, it was like a blurry picture resolving into clarity, or like I was drunk and I was sobering up, I could actually understand it. As I became more and more adept at reading Confederacy, I began putting myself to the test, initiating conversations with my colleagues about it, but specific passages this time, specific parts of the book. You can probably guess what happened. After a number of these conversations it became blindingly obvious that I understood the book a lot better than they did, they who I thought were the experts. It eventually became sort of embarrassing for them and I stopped trying to talk about it. And at the end of the day I would pack my things, catch the bus home, and settle into my apartment to read about Ignatius. It had surpassed all of Toole's other works in my estimation. The Neon Bible, the book months earlier I would've named as my favorite of all time, the best book ever written, was now #2 to Confederacy. So majestic, so ambitious, so wide-ranging, erudite, glorious, incredible was it that I couldn't believe that it was the work of one man. Best of all, the heart of it isn't complicated at all. What did I get from Ignatius, what are his lessons? First of all, be yourself. Second of all, put one foot in front of the other. And lastly, just do it for crying out loud, time's a wastin'!
>>8104975
There are about 40 languages used if I remember correctly. So yes, a big part is in french.
>>8104975
That'd actually be a good idea senpai.
>>8099090
About 6 months into doing a solo run through and I'm surprised at how fun it is. Really, you just need to have patience and a sense of humor.
(The "chapter notes" at the beginning of the book are really useful for staying on track with all the crazy shit going on.)
>>8099165
>And that's the he and the she of it
If I just strait stole this expression and used it in my book do you thing anyone would notice?
