Finnegans Wake by James Joyce;
Considered one of if not the hardest novel in the English language. I've been meaning to read it, but I don't know if it's worth it, any thoughts?
>>8052952
If you haven't read Joyce's previous stuff don't both. Especially Ulysses. If you aren't a huge fanboy by that point, I would also not bother. It's the kind of thing you have to be convinced that what the person has to say is important to have the stamina to go through it. Even then, without an annotated guide you won't get much from it.
>>8052952
You won't make it passed page 10 because you're a huge fucking pleb faggot.
Good luck.
>>8052952
If you're asking whether you should, the answer is no. I loved it myself, but I never doubted Joyce for a second after Ulysses.
I'll just leave this here.
>>8052980
>Even then, without an annotated guide you won't get much from it
On the contrary, I'd say you'd get the most out of it going in blind. It's not meant to be dissected or puzzled out the way Ulysses was. It's a book of the night, so getting lost in the dark is part of the experience.
>>8053016
Please. It's a humorous book written by an alcoholic.
>>8053016
the thing about darkness is that a candle only makes it bigger
>>8053034
>Please. It's a humorous book written by an alcoholic.
Or it's an as yet still undeciphered book that took 17 years to write by a staggering Irish literary genius who also happened to be an alcoholic.
One or the other. Potato potato. Tomato tomato. Perspective and all that.
>>8053058
You're an alcoholic and I appreciate your perspective.
>>8053063
>You're an alcoholic
Fuck. Is it that obvious?
>>8053079
:^)
>>8053058
good post
peopal learn 2 postan plees
oinkludeing myserf
>>8052952
Yeah, I actually read the whole thing because I had to. I was entering a prestigious PhD program and focusing on Wallace because I loved Broom of the System, Oblivion, and Pale King. To my shame, though, I'd never read Infinite Jest. 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 sincerity of it," somebody would say, and I'd say, "Oh God, yes, it's like Bernie Sanders." Finally, though, I had to dive into it, and let me tell you it was tough going. Stephen J. Burn’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 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 Infinite Jest, 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 Infinite Jest. It had surpassed all of Wallace's other works in my estimation. Pale King, the book months earlier I would've named as my favorite of all time, the best book ever written, was now #2 to the Jest. 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 the Jest, what are its 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’!
pointless gibberish
>>8053248
>google this
>no results found
wtf anon, this is a thread about finnegan
>>8053424
that's a fw/ulysses copy pasta with the names changed to dfw memes, or whatever
this memer is operating on some abstract shit
I think he's drawing a parallel between people's worship of both finny'''''s wake and the neverending jape. To the detriment, frankly, of everyone involved. Hang him, I say.
just read is as bit of avante garde tat, if you go beyond it with bullshit like >>8053005 then you're just being pretentious
>>8053248
Don't be such a Crabby Abby.
Besides the point you're clearly deluding yourself.
Don't come piss up the forum with shit just because you like to pretend you went/go to college.
Do you even know what any of those references mean?
We can all tell you're in high school.
>>8053441
ehhh it's not pretentious because that stuff is really in there
going that deep into it is autistic as all fuck don't get me wrong
but it's not pretentious.
>>8053451
I was just shitposting pham, I think it's quite fascinating and I'm ashamed to say I'll never be smart enough to derive such focused interest in a book to see such things. Keep it up
>>8053456
>implying it's not intelligent to not have too much focused interest on ... anything.
>>8053456
i'm not the type for it, frankly.
I enjoy reading the wake, but I'm not a completion fetishist. I like it because it feels like real life- not getting things and not understanding things - wading through mellifluous murk give way to a clearing, angels, with wings of human voices singing songs that your ears know yet slip and escape your mind
it's a thing
some people like it
