Evan’s Reviews > Finnegans Wake > Status Update

I'm at what I call "the laying up before Moscow" stage of a long-traversed epic, slowing down as I spy the golden dome ahead. This happens, often. I should finish fast, but I stop for awhile. I don't know if this is part of my completion fear or procrastination tendencies or not. It never stops me from completing, which I always prove, outlasting the naysayers. Anyway, about a half hour of reading left.

1/8th inch thick tiny sliver of pages 'tween me fingers and the finish and a brick of pages in the past and the Wake is all but conquered, or a least a surface reading. It is a deep mine that cannot be tapped in one go. The gems I did get, though, were precious.

I have got this! The code has opened up. There are pages where I completely understand it now. OMG! What a book! Holy shit! Joyce you absolute genius. Greatest, book. ever. Only days away now. I'm going to fricking cry I tell ya.

"For sleeking beauties I spinned their nightingveils, to slumbred beast I tummed the thief's air." Damn, that is gorgeous. This section is a tour de force of HCE painting a massive portrait of the town and the people, his accusers; the idea of casting stones without sin. Incredible, masterly, perplexing, but great.

Because I didn't read the editor's foreword, the page alignments have been off, but I'm now far enough to the end that I can match the count and so am advancing the page count forward to match the number of actual pages left. TMI, but it's just a note ...

Some real laugh-out-loud puns in this part. The trial scenes are always fun in this. I'm going to miss the Wake when she's over.

Looking at finishing in about a week.