Finnegans Wake Grappa discussion

So if you've got something nasty=spirit'd to say about Finnegan, corral it here please so that the rest of us can breathe through our mouths too in the rest this Gripes.

"You don't have to know English to read Finnegans Wake. But it helps." -- Nathan "N.R." Gaddis

I am in a bit of a "can't be bothered and have far too many other things I am enjoying reading" phase at the moment so have not touched the Wake for (gasp) two whole days. "Don't force it when you don't feel it" is my motto for this book.

I have nothing bad to say about it. I can't understand most of it. That's why I love it. A good challenge is exciting. Don't apply it towards your love life, though. Doesn't work.

It's amazing to me how many people in the 1 star reviews of this book feel the need to personally attack Joyce for having written this. As if by writing this he has somehow attacked them! Do they feel the same about physicists who have created equations or theories they do not comprehend immediately? Religious fundamentalists I do understand get angry at mathematics and the higher sciences for not being comprehensible without study, but why do we not give the same benefit of the doubt to literature? Especially from someone like Joyce who has proven himself to be a master of the form? We seem to give this benefit of the doubt to painting, to photography and sculpture, even film at times, though less so. But in literature this is met with anger, hurt, something like loathing or fury. I want to know why. Okay just talking whatever bye!

Geoff wrote: "It's amazing to me how many people in the 1 star reviews of this book feel the need to personally attack Joyce for having written this."

Okay but just on a tech-nichol note ; this thread is for saying precisely that kind of thing ;; I mean attacking Joyce and his wIlk. Attacking one-star-freaks, hmm, ---; where ought we do that more of?

hum, but a parallel to music would be the kind of response dished out to Schoenberg, Berg, other serialists ; a lot of the seri-ous music of twentieth century that was not kitchy-Copland/John=Williams type stuff.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "this thread is for saying precisely that kind of thing"

yikes okay sorry!

but I think I see an answer to my own problem. it is when a medium is thought of firstly as entertainment that the anger begins to encroach. Science, oh that's brainy, Painting, oh, that's sophisticated, Architecture, that's tough! But writing, movies, music, that's for me to sip my beers after a long day's officeslough and to shut my mind off! FU for making it hard. it's an old argument, but I think I answered it meself.

anway, this was in the wrong thread to begin with. GODDAMM THE WAKE. ......etc.

Geoff wrote: " firstly as entertainment"

ta ehll with the where!

My thing though isn't so much about the entertainment ; but that a book is supposed to convey something to its reader (and thus be quickly intelligible). Rather, I prefer to speak of art as a world within which one can dwell, abide, sojourn, while. The Wake simply has too large of a quotient of possibilities to allow comfort to the agoraphobic reader.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "the agoraphobic reader."

Yesly. Verily.

Oh but hey I did think of something to say about GODDAMMING THE WAKE. The other eve I was with the Sig. Other and some of her friends and one of em says to me she says "well watcha been reading" and I mention a few sundry things and then I says to her I says "oh I've been giving Finnegans Wake a go" and she looks at me all sly-like and she says to me she says "Finnegans Wake is the most lied about book there is. More people lie about reading Finnegans Wake than any other book" and gave me the ol' "I got you buddy" look and so GODDAMM YOU WAKE because she was pretty nice 'cept for that and she thinks I'm a liar.

Gaddam! the Weck!

I've got Miss MacIntosh, Ancient History, soon the Brunists get Wrathful! and Europe Central and Tom Jones and and and and (not to mention Schelling and Whitehead(!)) and I've got no time because

THE WAKE WON'T LET ME GO!


gd dmn th wk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goddamn!!!! Where's my Wake? Ox? Bridge? Harv?

Goddamn Wake! The Study Period is hard! Why you makin' me think n' stuff and look at McHugh so much...

Goddamn Wake! I think you've ruined me for other novels....

EYE (H)art!!

It's not The Complete Works of Hegel stuffed into sausage casings, but it's pretty damn cool ::
http://niccihaynes.com.au/w/finnegans...
"One great part of human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cuttanddry grammar and goahead plot."

WAKE ART!!!! ART WAKE!!!!!

What a lot off cutandpaste for finnegans sake