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Also, I forgot (things about it will always pop up now and then):
It’s best to not start the book at the beginning. A good place is
at Book I, Chapter 5 (otherwise known as the “Mamafesta”).
You won’t “miss” anything by starting there, because, like Vico,
it’s cyclical.

This may help some too:
The Adventurer’s Guide to Finnegans Wake

McLuhan with Tom Snyder

What Television Does Best

(I watched this when it was originally broadcast).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland (Post 2127821)

About halfway years ago, I need to take another swing at it.

There’s no other book that I understood so little of and still enjoyed so immensely. I feel like you have to surrender to it in a way that’s similar to how you have to surrender to an acid trip. Don’t worry about anything except the sentence you’re on. I remember when I came across “Love loves to love love.” and I felt like mother****er yes! I haven’t read Finnegans Wake perhaps because I’ve been told it’s even crazier. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was sane enough to where I could at least pretend to understand some of it.

Kind of related: Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is A hella difficult book that’s extraordinarily rewarding to read carefully and slowly enough to unravel its meaning.

This segment of Ulysses made a big impact on me both as a reader and writer at the time. One of those moments where you have to stop reading for a second just to let it sink in.

Quote:

The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden of man’s ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.

I get what you mean about surrendering yourself, that's part of the fun of Finnegans Wake: you don't always get what you're reading until you've read or said it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rostasi (Post 2127837)

Ah, I knew the cyclical element of it but didn't know about chapter 5, good to know!

...and because you started there (I/5), don't necessarily think that you go thru the book in order. Yeah, after a little over 100 pages (I/5 thru I/8), you might find it more comfortable to jump to II/4, then III/4 and other places that I’ll suggest after you get that far - ending with the most intense section of II/3 - known as “The Pub.”

Ulysses: James Heffernan is the greatest guy that you’ll want to get to know when it comes to Ulysses. He has a 12 hour course about it that’s absolutely fantastic. He lives and breathes this work and has good insights into it. An excerpt about the “Calypso” chapter is here:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland (Post 2127821)

About halfway years ago, I need to take another swing at it.

Wait, Frown. You've actually read Finnegans Wake?

What do you feel that you get out of reading it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland (Post 2127832)

Ja, I've spent a good deal of time with the Wake but all in all have only really read the first 100ish pages straight through along with various sections that I've either been told about or randomly flipped to

Oops - nvm - just catching up on the thread.

Anyway, I've read about the first 20 pages of Finnegans Wake and couldn't do it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OccultHawk (Post 2127839)

I've been meaning to read the Sound and the Fury for a long time now. One of the more complex, layered fiction novels that I've read is Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. A beautiful, haunting, difficult book.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SoundgardenRocks (Post 2127850)

Wait, Frown. You've actually read Finnegans Wake?

What do you feel that you get out of reading it?

Even though I didn't finish it or really comprehend everything, there's a similar joy to solving a puzzle, having an involved conversation that you're kind of lost in with a very drunk, very interesting Irishman, a kind of infantile realization of the impact of your words after you speak them, and comedy wrapped into one with a slew of other things that probably went over my head. Overall it's just a fun time that's always rewarding if you put the effort into it. OH's analogy of giving in to an acid trip analogy fits pretty well too.

rostasi and Innerspaceboy are the MB experts for Finnegan's Wake afaic, I'd be interested in their more informed perspective.