Finnegans Wake Grappa discussion

Just to get this thesis out of the way. There is ZERO evidence for this superstition built on the back of resentment. It is not meaningless ; there is simply too much counter-evidence to buy into that thought.

What it is and why it is the way it is instead of being something else in a different kind of way? Well, yes, good question ; but let's not foreshorten the question by not getting past the first thunderword.

I maintain that it is not meaningless because, precisely, it is too meaningful to immediately gain a mastery of. There is just too much all at once ; which is the exact opposite of meaninglessness. Rich!

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Just to get this thesis out of the way. There is ZERO evidence for this superstition built on the back of resentment. It is not meaningless ; there is simply too much counter-evidence to buy into..."

Of course I agree, but what strikes me is that among my GR friends there are one star parody reviews of the Wake, nothing but gibberish, as if the Wake were nothing but gibberish, when even a miniscule glance into what this is and why it is not something other reveals that it is far far far from gibberish! I'm telling you, intelligent people believe the Wake to be meaningless. Staggering. [Manny, I mean you.]

Geoff wrote: "Staggering. [Manny, I mean you.] "

Can we beat up on Manny for a moment? Heh heh and winkwink and nudgenudge. But what the The Wake is not is it's not written for monolinguals. It's written precisely for those folks like Herr Manny with many tongues at hand. I think 23.56% is written in something specifically Scandalnavian.

"I thought it was written in English" ; well, sort of. Short of.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "It's written precisely for those folks like Herr Manny with many tongues at hand."

Exactly! Manny, we will win you over to our side in the end...

That is such a preposterous theory. Everyone knows that the Wake is a complexly coded message from the Justified Ancients of Mu.

Here's this one taken on head-on ::

From a randomly encountered website calling itself The Straight Dope: Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It's taking longer than we thought)", we have the following perspicacious letter :

"Dear Straight Dope:
I heared recently that "Finnegan's Wake" was written as a big joke. According to the rumor, the author, James Joyce, simply typed up pages of gibberish and went into uncontrollable contortions of mirth when the critics called it a"masterpiece" and praised it for its "complexity and depth." Should I be ashamed at having pored day and night over Finnegan and its Skeleton Key?
— FoNiXWeRx"

What follows is what is known as an "even=handed commentating." Mostly correct. Here's the entirely correct concluding parofgraphers ::

"So, if it was written as a joke, it was one of the most complex, thoughtful, and literary jokes ever created. Which really puts it in the realm of great literature anyway.
"Circumambient peripherization indeed. "

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Here's this one taken on head-on ::

From a randomly encountered website calling itself The Straight Dope: Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It's taking longer than we thought)", we have the following..."

This guy's little column is published in our independent weekly here in DC, he's generally an entertaining, funny, intelligent read, dealing with obscure questions about stranger aspects of our humanity. Like you said, he's mostly correct.

The rumor itself reminds me of several other ways people congratulate themselves for not reading something. "Today's fiction is all _______, that's why I never read any." (provoking the question how he knows), or "I don't feel that old novels have anything to do with today's complex world (read: Facebook and Twitter have convinced me my life is complex) so they're not relevant." A friend of mine had a coworker say that regarding Don Quixote. With the Wake joke rumor, you can skip a long hard read with the added bonus of being someone in the know who wasn't fooled like all those eggheads with their fancy book-learnin'.

Gregsamsa wrote: "provoking the question how he knows"

It's a case of intersubjective passivity. Some facet of the big Other is doing the reading for them.

Gregsamsa wrote: "The rumor itself reminds me of several other ways people congratulate themselves for not reading something."

I think it's the same situation as with the act of reading ; it depends upon how well a person doesn't read a book.

But, true, I outsource a lot of my reading and a good portion of my knotreading to our highly esteemed Big Other. I'm just a little a.

Gregsamsa wrote: "With the Wake joke rumor, you can skip a long hard read with the added bonus of being someone in the know who wasn't fooled like all those eggheads with their fancy book-learnin'. "

Um, but, I'm always tempted to be gentle with the common garden variety of anti-Wakean. I mean, in a culuture (USA! USA! USE!) in which the most perspicacious political commentary takes place on SNL, that Steward Guy, and The Coldbear Seaport ; well, one must keep one's ironical=distance from the powers-that-be so as they might keep on reproducing our chains, Please Do Not Disturb!

On an old podcast I hadn't managed to get to, just THIS MORNING, I heard a caller into an npr show on Hemingway say that he didn't read modern fiction because it's all feminized and fancy with flowery language, and not straightforward and honest (read manly) with simple sentences like with Hemingway's newspaperese (my word, not his). I wanted to respond "Dude, you like simple sentences? Then you woulda loved the eighties!"

Sorry, I know it's not Wakey-wakey but it was too odd that I just came across another variation on qualities of not reading.