Allegedly the most difficult book ever written, so, here's my 'review'
When I say I read Finnegans Wake, I mean I tried to. Of course, the 'issue' with this novel is that it is, in many ways, unreadable. Even after 'getting used to' the neologisms, this text offers a huge challenge to any reader. Arguably the most complex novel ever written, Joyce's masterpiece boggles the mind like no other. I personally am deeply in love with Modernism; Ulysses is my favourite novel of all time; I love Woolf, I have been likened, as a poet, to Eliot himself, though I must admit I am no match; the 'problem' Joyce proposes with Finnegans Wake is that the thinking mind of the individual far exceeds the ability of the decoding mind of the reader: no matter how erudite the reader might be, this novel requires a 'substitution of the cultural self' which very few are capable of, or prepared to, undertake. It requires unconditional love on behalf of the reader, and total dedication. In so doing, it pinpoints the very aporia of the reader-text-(author) relationship. In my limited way, I have tried to address this paradox of Modernism: the feeling of intellectual dexterity yields huge satisfaction when one manages to appreciate a Modernist text, but is there a way a text can go too far and leave the reader in perpetual frustration? Finnegans Wake must have proved so to many a reader, including myself. Joyce is an 'extreme writer' without being a 'writer of the extreme', my great idol, thus, I have taken it upon myself to start where he left off with the last of his 'comprehensible' novels, and went down the diametrical opposite route in The Road to London; can Modernism ease the reading? How?
When I say I read Finnegans Wake, I mean I tried to. Of course, the 'issue' with this novel is that it is, in many ways, unreadable. Even after 'getting used to' the neologisms, this text offers a huge challenge to any reader. Arguably the most complex novel ever written, Joyce's masterpiece boggles the mind like no other.
I personally am deeply in love with Modernism; Ulysses is my favourite novel of all time; I love Woolf, I have been likened, as a poet, to Eliot himself, though I must admit I am no match; the 'problem' Joyce proposes with Finnegans Wake is that the thinking mind of the individual far exceeds the ability of the decoding mind of the reader: no matter how erudite the reader might be, this novel requires a 'substitution of the cultural self' which very few are capable of, or prepared to, undertake. It requires unconditional love on behalf of the reader, and total dedication. In so doing, it pinpoints the very aporia of the reader-text-(author) relationship.
In my limited way, I have tried to address this paradox of Modernism: the feeling of intellectual dexterity yields huge satisfaction when one manages to appreciate a Modernist text, but is there a way a text can go too far and leave the reader in perpetual frustration? Finnegans Wake must have proved so to many a reader, including myself.
Joyce is an 'extreme writer' without being a 'writer of the extreme', my great idol, thus, I have taken it upon myself to start where he left off with the last of his 'comprehensible' novels, and went down the diametrical opposite route in The Road to London; can Modernism ease the reading? How?