Reading 1001 discussion

This book is close to unreadable- I gave it 5 stars lol.

I've definitely ripped on other books on here for being intentionally obscure, but I usually do that for books where the obscuring of the language seems to assist in puffing up the author but not the book's themes and ideas.

Here, Joyce wanted this book to follow the rules of dreams: people, places, things, and words switch form and name yet retain some sort of essentialness that makes sense in the dream. The surreal and tangential happens, but there may be some plot or idea pulling through it all.


That is what happens in this book. There does seem to be something of a plot: the Earwicker family tries to preserve itself though some rumor attached to the father, and one of his sons tries to supersede him. That being said, the book opens with the cannibalizing funeral of an Irish folk-song hero, and uh, stuff like that keeps happening. It makes sense to the idea of the book though: references to media we consume folds into dream narratives that also include our real lives.

Some other neat things about the book include the first sentence of the book being the second half of the last sentence of the book (it lends itself to the idea of the repeating dream- I definitely have those), patches of Irish folk songs (done beautifully in the audiobook version I listened to), and the lyrical quality of the language.

That being said, I know I missed a lot (there are scholars devoted just to this book) and for other readers I highly recommend reading the book summary (Wikipedia has a perfectly good one) either before you start or as you make your way through it. I also recommend the audiobook for maximizing the musical quality.