Status Updates From Finnegans Wake

Wow. Joyce was on fire in this section; hitting his musical stride. Is this the greatest novel ever written? Even if written in code? Maybe. All I can say is, beyond all reason, this is damned amazing. How the hell am I loving Finnegans Wake, of all things?

My edition is a few pages shorter than the count listed here, so I'm actually slightly past the halfway mark, at 50+ percent. This is some kind of achievement and I'll accept cheap champagne for it. The real stuff when I finish.

Introduced to Finnegan

someone has taken a fall and we get to hear it

Page 300, we are spitting distance from halfway and 8 pages from completing book II chapter II the most insanely difficult, multi-footnoted section of the book. This is actually a fun project and a great way to open the possibilities of rhythm and vocabulary.

As my friend Julio puts it in his review: Literally no subject and no Indo-European language is left out of this magnum opus; an apparent attempt to put an end to the novel. Joyce wants you to hear colors and see noise. If you can't understand it, well, Joyce once told his wife Nora, "Listen to the sound of the words. It is more important than the content."

I’m craving art and depth and epiphany so here goes.

Joyce language is corrupting me so that regular English no longer makes sense. I'll never be able to read a normal book again. It has been a good run, Goodreads. (lol)