James Joyce
I have done it; I have completed the first leg of anyone's literary Ironman competition, and what a journey it is. From the blatant absence of an apostrophe in the title to the circular grand finale, which ends before the book even begins (apparently), Finnegans Wake is a journey through impossibility and utter silliness, a highly prized literary send-up of highly prized literature. The book itself makes a mockery of the entire idea of narrative, beginning in the middle of a sentence and ending with the first half of that same sentence. This, however, as so much else in the book, is at once nauseating and incredibly clever. This specific example shows the entirety of the book in a nutshell: Joyce has created an intricately detailed yet entirely unreadable work that has somehow wormed its way into the hearts of the English language's literary intelligentsia. Unfortunately, unlike many other worthy classics, Finnegans Wake is popular precisely because it is unreadable and, I suspect, due to its unmatched ability to induce a headache within mere seconds. The book often shifts between insightful and infuriating from letter to letter as a barely-recognizable pun slides into a mishmash of letters placed together with no eye for coherence or meaning at all. The book is at once deliberate and careless and ultimately it is a 600-page mess of contradiction and pretentiousness that is, at best, silly.
The main problem with Finnegans Wake is its sheer randomness. The reader will recognize an allusion only to have it melt away within words. The only passage that I understood at length was in the first fifty pages or so and dealt with some highlights of Napoleon's career. After that, the only enjoyment the book offers is the brief feeling of competence as a reasonably transparent pun sneaks its way into the nonsense and gibberish. Joyce is clearly a master of the language and cleverly plays with the sounds and shapes of English words; many of the puns in the book are indeed quite clever and those that make sense seem to hint that the rest are as deliberately constructed. The problem is that the puns are so constant as to make the text absolutely indecipherable and that the allusions come out of nowhere and disappear just as suddenly. They are far too specific and woe to the reader who reads this tome without having visited Ireland. There is rarely any sort of theme or trend to grapple onto, which is too bad because one of the highlights of reading the book is seeing some old gags recur throughout the flow. Joyce's constant play on the phrase "Finnegan's wake" and various homonyms for "Ireland" and "Dublin" is delightful and does offer a kind of grounding force through the free-flowing lines of words and words and random collections of letters. Not so fascinating are the fifty-odd letter constructions or words that consist of a string of the same letter ("ttt" is particularly annoying), which come off as merely pretentious and show none of the cleverness that makes other parts of the book pop out. There is potential, so much potential, but it is all wasted as Joyce endlessly congratulates himself upon creating another useless pun.
Finnegans Wake is not for the lighthearted and probably shouldn't be for anyone. It has rare glimmers of genius and talent, but for the most part it is hogwash that does not offer any significant rewards outside of running across the word "hogwarts" in the vast midsection or the recognition of river names in a particular paragraph. The puns are interesting and clever for their phonetic linguistics, but for the most part the pun itself doesn't contribute to the word. Why use a reference to Beethoven or to a sign of the zodiac if that reference isn't going to add anything to an interpretation or understanding of the text? This is the ultimate question raised by the book: why bother with the genius when so much is dreck? It simply is not worth searching for the needle in the haystack, for the needle itself is rusty and only barely resembles a needle at all. Finnegans Wake may not be a complete waste of time, but it is more infuriating than illuminating and I personally question its placement at the pinnacle of English language literature, though not its place amongst the language's hardest works. It requires far too much effort for no reward other than vaguely interesting wordplay that usually works only on one basic level. One-hundred pages and it's genius. Six-hundred and twenty-eight make the most well-meaning reader want to gouge his or her eyes out.
Grade: C-
The main problem with Finnegans Wake is its sheer randomness. The reader will recognize an allusion only to have it melt away within words. The only passage that I understood at length was in the first fifty pages or so and dealt with some highlights of Napoleon's career. After that, the only enjoyment the book offers is the brief feeling of competence as a reasonably transparent pun sneaks its way into the nonsense and gibberish. Joyce is clearly a master of the language and cleverly plays with the sounds and shapes of English words; many of the puns in the book are indeed quite clever and those that make sense seem to hint that the rest are as deliberately constructed. The problem is that the puns are so constant as to make the text absolutely indecipherable and that the allusions come out of nowhere and disappear just as suddenly. They are far too specific and woe to the reader who reads this tome without having visited Ireland. There is rarely any sort of theme or trend to grapple onto, which is too bad because one of the highlights of reading the book is seeing some old gags recur throughout the flow. Joyce's constant play on the phrase "Finnegan's wake" and various homonyms for "Ireland" and "Dublin" is delightful and does offer a kind of grounding force through the free-flowing lines of words and words and random collections of letters. Not so fascinating are the fifty-odd letter constructions or words that consist of a string of the same letter ("ttt" is particularly annoying), which come off as merely pretentious and show none of the cleverness that makes other parts of the book pop out. There is potential, so much potential, but it is all wasted as Joyce endlessly congratulates himself upon creating another useless pun.
Finnegans Wake is not for the lighthearted and probably shouldn't be for anyone. It has rare glimmers of genius and talent, but for the most part it is hogwash that does not offer any significant rewards outside of running across the word "hogwarts" in the vast midsection or the recognition of river names in a particular paragraph. The puns are interesting and clever for their phonetic linguistics, but for the most part the pun itself doesn't contribute to the word. Why use a reference to Beethoven or to a sign of the zodiac if that reference isn't going to add anything to an interpretation or understanding of the text? This is the ultimate question raised by the book: why bother with the genius when so much is dreck? It simply is not worth searching for the needle in the haystack, for the needle itself is rusty and only barely resembles a needle at all. Finnegans Wake may not be a complete waste of time, but it is more infuriating than illuminating and I personally question its placement at the pinnacle of English language literature, though not its place amongst the language's hardest works. It requires far too much effort for no reward other than vaguely interesting wordplay that usually works only on one basic level. One-hundred pages and it's genius. Six-hundred and twenty-eight make the most well-meaning reader want to gouge his or her eyes out.
Grade: C-
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