Dusto: can you explain to me...

[Haunty]

The appeal of Finnegan's Wake? I've been going through the Gutenberg Project's database of ebooks, and picked this one up, having meant to read it for some time. What I'm wondering is whether this all means something to anyone or if its popularity is kind of an Emperor's New Clothes effect.

[happiness and harmony]

*finnegans

i would say that the appeal of it comes from the fact that it is an extended break of multilingual puns which when taken as a symphony attempt to tell several human origin stories at the same time, plus describe a crazy time-traveling dream, irish-style

it is kind of like the literary equivalent of the music you would have if stephen o malley and scott hull teamed up with some mongolian throat singers for a double album and then fredrik thordendal remixed it and then dali painted the remix and then bjork and mike patton remixed the painting

all of which is to say that it is meant to be a fun curiosity, something that will leave you laughing and shaking your head and rolling your eyes in about equal measure. BUT: finnegans wake becomes a fun curious read only if you do three things

1) take a deep breath, blow out all of your literary expectations as you exhale, and read it once. often doing so aloud

2) go and get roland mchugh's annotations to finnegans wake out of the library and read it. either in isolation or alongside the book; both work. but you need to see all of the references to the 17000 other cultures and irish specificities joyce laced it with to begin to make any sense of it at all

3) read finnegans wake again, but still without traditional expectations

i mean it is a fuckload of work but then one shouldn't approach every book exactly the same way. if you don't put in the work (or aren't polylingual to an absurd degree) you are all but certain to go "this is drivel" and throw the book away after a few pages. i think it is really silly and neat i read long stretches of it to my nephew when he was a wee lad. he was rapt

finally i advise that you not read it on a screen. you will get a double headache and become resentful of life, which is a terrible way to live

[Haunty]

haha. okay thanks, that was a pretty good explanation. how long is the annotation, though? like every other word looks like gibberish.

[happiness and harmony]

is the length of the annotation the biggest deterrent?