In waiting for more books to arrive, I've decided to reread Finnegans Wake. Is anyone up for a group read of it? As in, bouncing ideas, sharing knowledge and stuff, off one another. I was thinking five pages a day...
Left in extrinsic hands.
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In waiting for more books to arrive, I've decided to reread Finnegans Wake. Is anyone up for a group read of it? As in, bouncing ideas, sharing knowledge and stuff, off one another. I was thinking five pages a day...
Left in extrinsic hands.
Okay, I'm up for it. If anyone interested has problems getting a copy (as did I), I found quite a good site here http://www.beotel.yu/~sinkest/finn1.htm. I like the word-explanations, so I don't have to read it with a dictationary in my other hand.
When would you like to start, Sloegin? Oh, and I've never done group reading...
Give "The Wake" my regards. I've made four attempts at it over my life time (like Everest!) and I'm sure I'll tackle it again before I'm through. I'm not up to the challenge at the moment, and I am interested in the results of the "group read."
ihrocks
Yes, I'm up for a group read, please! I've just finished Ulysses and liked it a lot, to my great surprise as I had been putting it off for ages thinking I would NOT like it. Now I definitely want to try Wake and a group read will ensure that I stick to it. Please do get one going!
Sindhu.
Hi Sindhu, so now it looks like we could start the group reading thingy, as soon as Sloegin shows... you have a copy of it?
Haven't read yet... I'm choosing to start with Joyces' `A Portrait...' someone along the way told me this was bet best at a first attempt/intro at Joyce. Good luck with Finnegan...
Thakns Den, it can't be THAT bad, right ;)?
Okay, I'm here. I guess, everyone read the first five pages; then post your thoughts, emotions, questions, answers, on here. Tomorrow we read five more, and so on.
If you are struggling, I would look into McHugh's Annotations to Finnegans Wake and/or A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by Campbell and Robinson. They COULD help.
Jay: The black box at the bottom of your copy looks alot like the info in 'Annotations...'. As for never participating in a group read, no worries, me either.
Sindhu: Welcome.
ihrocks: Come on you know you want to. Are you a climber?
Den: This is the Joyce I started with.
Note to all: I don't want to come off as a pedant or a pedagogue. I don't want to turn, Mr. Joyce's work into an academic platitude, and if it starts to become one, I shall withdraw quietly. I just want to read and talk about it with people.
I love the first paragraph, its rhythm, the flow of it, the way it comes off the tounge. I think that is what Nabokov was trying to do in Lolita. If anyone comes up with the meaning for: 'pftjschute', 'pentschanjeuchy', please let me know.
Starting with Finnegans Wake seems like a good idea (after all, it's the unconscious of all Joyce's other works), but for most readers the Dubliners is perhaps the ideal place to begin. On the other hand, Den is going to skip that and move right into A Portrait of the Artist . . ., that's what I did (and I have no regrets). D didn't come until after Ulysses for me.
By the way, the Annotations to FW are pretty much a waste of time. It's just a bibliography of the works that influenced Joyce (and sometimes a brief overview or anecdote); it is nothing like Gifford and Siedman's Ulysses Annotated (the cornerstone of all annotated guides). The Skeleton Key is good, from what I've gathered, but it's tantamount to Gilbert's Ulysses, which is a little outdated. Nothing wrong with that, but I prefer John Bishop's Joyce's Book of the Dark. It is the most thorough explanation of FW to date, and I doubt anyone will surpass its ingenuity for quite some time (he stresses the importance of the setting: the dream, a vague and dark place where sound is the only functioning sense). Don't take it too seriously either. Joyce once commented that it was just a joke, a joke that he took serious enough to rest his reputation on. It's a song, you should really try and read as much of it out loud as you can (not that I read it out loud, I just say that because it's the one piece of advice that you can fall back on when the book seems void of any meaning----which, according to Joyce himself, isn't far from the truth).
Anyway, there are my two cents worth of reason.
I agree completly about reading aloud, it makes things more fun. I haven't read, Don Gifford and Robert Siedman's Ulysses Annotated, or John Bishop's Joyce's Book of the Dark;but I'll look into them. After I finished Ulysses, I tried to read The Arguments of Ulysses by Stanley Sultan, and realized that having a degree from Yale doesn't mean ****. Also, by trying to put logic into something that is ment to be illogical, besides being a waste of time, is a sign of incompetence for his life. It is not devoting a life to another that irks me, it's the elitest attitude about the whole thing.
Abdo, have you heard Wings of Art by Campbell? It is fairly informative if you can stay awake for the 6hrs listening to his monotone voice.
I undestood it!! Quite honestly, didn't expect to understand a word. And yes, I had reference to several sources and read the pages about 7 times- but at lest now I got an idea of what is happening. The theme of the father's fall is brought out so clearly in he first five pages itself. I really want to go on now.
I got "pftjschte" from the glossary- apparently it's justhe expression of disgust "pftui". Makes sense when you cosider that it's supposed to have been untimely elicited from Finnegan at the collapse of the wall. "pentschanjeuchy"- if I am not going crazy here could be a portmanteau of The Pentateuch" and "Punch and Judy"- Joyce has just finished talking about Genesis and Exodus" and the disappearing trick is very Punch and Judyish!Quote:
Originally Posted by sloegin
Read till you can read no more. :D Thanks for the words.
Okay, seems like I'm at least five pages slower... that was quick. I haven't even "opened the book" yet :oops:. I'm on it...
Dubliners I've already read ;).
Jay
I said five pages as a guess, it really has no meaning. Have fun.
:P thanks ;)
I know that of course 5 pages is not a "rule" but I'm trying to stick to that as I don't want to get off track! What I found most interesting in today's bit was the sudden introduction of a Hindu Sepoy- I had earlier read a really interesting book called Joyce, Race and Empire and this sems to foreshadow the argument there, as also the suggestion of Ireland being a kind of poor cousin to England. This internal colonization was, I suppose a crucial theme for Joyce as it appears in Ulysses and Portrait also.
Got to give Britain credit for making other nations feel inferior. Reminds me of a film called ****land; about the Falkland Island inhabitants vs. the Argentineans. It was quite humorous.
Can't resist a quote by Wordsworth on the Irish people in this context
"English civilization may fairly said to be the sheild of Irish barbarism. These swarms of degraded people could not exist but through us." And that's only two lines from a passage of over 5 pages in the same vein!
That's funny. That someone is so out of touch with reality to believe such BS.
Though I'm sure it helped him sleep well at the time. I'm not so sure it is any comfort in his current residence, The Fifth Circle of Hell. :D
Jay: Are you still with us?
Yep, just have a kinda hectic uni week, might be a little behind you guys :oops:.
Wordsworth . . . what a shnook. :evil: :evil: :evil: He tried to censor Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetry out of jealousy.
I agree completely- my research involved in depth work on the Romantics and as a poet, with a few exceptional pieces, Wordsworth was the worst. And forget about poetry, the stuff he did to Coleridges private life are purely vindictive- you should just see some of the letters he wrote about Coleridge to mutual friends- if he didn't want to help his "friend' OK, but imagine actually writing and "warning" others that they had better not try to help the man either!Quote:
Originally Posted by AbdoRinbo
:oops: Giving up the Wake reading, sorry guys, can't understand a tenth of it. Is it just me or the words really don't make sense at all? :oops: It doesn't even look as if written in English. I think my intelectual's short for this book :oops:.
Or does the novel get more comprehend-able later? :( :oops:
No one understands it all;that's the fun of it, or at least I think so. Joyce is one of the best, if not the best at obfuscating things. According to McHugh's book, Joyce used 62 languages, including english. It doesn't get better. If you want to, post the whatever you are having trouble with and I'll chime in and try to help you understand, what I can. I'm pretty sure Sindhu will as well, though I cannot speak for her. Everybody's intellect is short when it comes to this. It will still be there later, if you don't want to read it now. ;) :D
I'm more than willing to help as far as in me lies! And Jay, don't even expect every word to make sense- it wasn't meant to! But if you have specific problems now or later, just ask and I'll help if I can.
Thanks guys, but kinda no words makes sense to me, and the sentences... yuck. Is there even anything going on? I mean, is there any story or description of anything?
I thought at first, five pages a day, easy. But I read the first page almost for two hours and have no idea what that was supposed to mean or what's going on :oops:.
Thanks guys, but kinda no words makes sense to me, and the sentences... yuck. Is there even anything going on? I mean, is there any story or description of anything?
I thought at first, five pages a day, easy. But I read the first page almost for two hours and have no idea what that was supposed to mean or what's going on :oops:.
Just thought I'd post an update on as far as I've got - did you catch the houhyhnhnm reference? Joyce seems to have had quite a lot in common with Swift and Defoe- a better prose version of "The true-born Englishman" is hard to imagine. I got distinct echoches of Hamlet-Ashes to ashes and the stench! Joyce has practically covered the whole of Irish/world history rom cromgnon to annodomini- and alphabets and languages don't help at all. The Jute- Mutt "conversation is a bit too eerily similar to what we do everyday without realizing it, right? And I loved the feminine counterpart of Tom Dick and Harry. But the absolutely scrumptious bit was "every busy eerie whig's a bit of a torytale to tell." Talk about summing up politics succintly!
Jay, there are things going on, on many levels. I believe it to be one of those things where you have to find the clew, to get out of the labyrinth.(though 'clew' implies 'labyrinth', hmmmm)
Sindhu, if I recall correctly (meaning the names stay the same) Mutt and Jute only get funnier. I know, he plays off everyone. It tells me, I need to read more. Have you read Giambattista Vico's The New Science? It is reportedly what he structured FW off of.
A sentence I enjoyed, although it was pages ago:
"Arrah, sure, we all love little Anny Ruiny, or, we mean to say, lovelittle Anna Rayiny, when unda her brella, mid piddle med puddle she ninnygoes nannygoes nancing by." Ah, the caprice of love and lust.
Sindhu are you still in the running? Are you catching the 'HCE' and 'ALP', he throws in? It's amazing to me, how he weaves them in to the story.
I'mmost certainly in the running! but s I'm doing italong with packingup for a move back to India, I'll have to defintely reread lot once I'm settled to pick up a lot off stuff I'm missing out on right now!
K.
By any chance did you go on a posting spree earlier? Your name was in all the box things. :rolleyes:
Yep! Got half an hour off from packing and couldn't resist the temptation! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by sloegin