Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
“And still nowanights and by nights of yore do all bold floras of the field to their shyfaun lovers say only: Cull me ere I wilt to thee!: and, but a little later: Pluck me whilst I blush!” Finnegans Wake, James Joyce.
So, in all honesty, I have absolutely no idea what on Earth I just read. There may have been some paragraphs in which I had a vague understanding of what might have been going on, but as a whole the book just went straight over my head. I borrowed the book from my library, so I only had three weeks to read it (and it took the whole three weeks to get through it), but I’d like to buy the book some day when I have more free time to read it slower and be able to annotate it.
Before starting it, I looked it up on Goodreads and saw on the reviews that it was a good idea to read the book aloud because it made more sense spoken than read silently. I am very glad that I read this because I’m not sure I would have understood anything had I read it silently to myself. Some words are spelt phonetically and there are a lot of instances were there are two to four words jumbled together without spaces.
Partway through the book, I searched the title on Tumblr to see if anyone had posted anything that could help me understand the book. Most of what I found was just quotes from the book (and a lot of those posts were the same quote again and again), but one user had posted a link to a free audio recording of the unabridged version of the book. I listened to that and followed along for most of the rest of the book, but there were times when my mind would wander too much just listening and I would make myself read a few sections aloud instead to make myself focus more in the desperate hope that I would start to understand what I was reading.
The only other comment I can even make about the book is that Joyce has quite the command over the English language. There were several passages which were beautiful to hear read aloud (or to read aloud to myself), even if I didn’t understand what was happening.
I’m not even sure I can give this book a rating because of how much I didn’t understand it.
If anyone out there can help me understand what I just read for the next time I pick up the book, please leave a comment or something. I would appreciate it. Occasionally I would just look at the book and wonder I just wasn’t focusing enough, or reading close enough, so if you’ve also read this book and didn’t have a clue what happened, you should also leave a comment so that I know I’m not alone.
Read on!
Molly
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