Why did Joyce write Finnegans Wake after he had already made himself a legend by writing Ulysses?
It seems to me that he had publicly humiliated himself when he published Finnegans Wake. No one liked it. Many thought that he had lost his sanity. Why did he find it necessary to write such a book?
Don't get me wrong, I love Joyce. But did he really think that sticking a bunch of words from different languages together is genius?
I had the same problems with the Wake as well. I was entering a prestigious PhD program and focusing on Joyce because I loved Dubliners, Portrait, and Ulysses. To my shame, though, I'd never read the Wake. I'd never even tried, as hard as that was to admit. It was this huge blind spot and area of vulnerability for me. Whenever it'd come up with my colleagues I'd just smile and nod, smile and nod, hoping they wouldn't ask me anything specific about it. "The musicality of it," somebody would say, and I'd say, "Oh God, yes, it's like Beethoven." Finally, though, I had to dive into it, and let me tell you it was tough going. Joseph Campbell's guide helped a lot. Reading it out loud helped. I listened to other people read it, read online commentaries. Eventually it started to make some sort of sense. It was like I was learning to read for the first time again, and in a way this was enjoyable. I got better at reading the book. Soon I was reading entire paragraphs without trouble, getting the puns, laughing at the jokes. I could sort of follow the story, it was like a blurry picture resolving into clarity, or like I was drunk and I was sobering up, I could actually understand it. As I became more and more adept at reading the Wake, I began putting myself to the test, initiating conversations with my colleagues about it, but specific passages this time, specific parts of the book. You can probably guess what happened. After a number of these conversations it became blindingly obvious that I understood the book a lot better than they did, they who I thought were the experts. It eventually became sort of embarrassing for them and I stopped trying to talk about it. And at the end of the day I would pack my things, catch the bus home, and settle into my apartment to read the Wake. It had surpassed all of Joyce's other works in my estimation. Ulysses, the book months earlier I would've named as my favorite of all time, the best book ever written, was now #2 to the Wake. So majestic, so ambitious, so wide-ranging, erudite, glorious, incredible was it that I couldn't believe that it was the work of one man. Best of all, the heart of it isn't complicated at all. What did I get from the Wake, what are its lessons? First of all, be yourself. Second of all, put one foot in front of the other. And lastly, just do it for crying out loud, time's a wastin'!
>Why did he find it necessary to write such a book?
I guess because he felt like it?
>No one liked it.
The booktubers of the day.
It is a psychedelic drug. It is pure pottery, pure music (but much much more). It stands purely on its aesthetic qualities, like monk chanting, or indian ayying voice wobbling, or an entire repertoire of different classical instrument ensemble pairings, it is a masterpiece of phonetic aesthetics,,,and thats just the surface. It takes too much to dig beneath that surface,therefore, it takes little to dislike it.
I want to be this guy so bad
This is copypasta
He left english behind
this feels remarkably rewarding, though i can't imagine undertaking such a momentous challenge, and perservering all the way through. at what point does the workload surpass all enjoyment you could possibly get from the novel? is it just sickeningly hard at one point and almosy irremediable? it's as if someone told me to chop one of my fingers and toes off every day for the next ten days in exchange for a three-hour orgasm. at what point do you just tell the guy to fuck off? how good is this orgasm going to be really?
i dunno man. good on you. i can't imagine ever becoming fluent enough in literature to make sense of it. and why should i? what value is there in a story which aims to alienate as many readers as possible?
fuck. wish i'd known that earlier.
guess i'm still too new.
Because he could afford it. He knew he had won the perpetual gold medal at the literature Olympic games with Ulysses--so he invented himself a new game where he knew he would rule matchless--at least for a while. He knew he didn't have that long and he knew he didn't have anything to prove to his contemporaries and peers anymore. So he pulled on his suspenders, exited the stage and came back hauling a huge golden gong.
He wrote Ulysses for the men who lived in his time.
He wrote Finnegans Wake for the men who would live after him.
He wanted to best Shakespeare in word play.
he left consciousness behind on finnegans wake.
He already knew he was the greatest writer of all time after Ulysses so the only other challenge he had left was to write beyond the confines of normal language and logic. Same thing happened with Miles Davis, after you conquer traditional art you move on to more weird / abstract shit.
>Implying a genius like Joyce would care about irrelevant pointless plebshit like that
He seemed a little annoyed that people didn't get it. He wrote in one letter complaining how people kept calling it "obscure."
his last words were
"Does nobody understand?"
>his last words were
>"Does nobody understand?"
Which, phonetically, is PIE for "Good fecking riddance to the lot of ye, shitebags!"
jesus, he was very far from the greatest writer of all time.
Yet he produced one of the greatest fiction novel, so who cares.
ps : i’m not anglo
It isn't one of the greatest, its very overhyped. Not saying it isn't good, inventive, or genius, but very overrated. Inventive narrative and literary device isn't the same thing as great: Joyce is ultimately empty. Previous literary inventions provided a brilliant aesthetic-soulful world underneath, a mythology. Joyce ultimately boils down to word-play, fart jokes, and repetition paraded as art.
Should say that he provided more for people after him to use his invention for genius more so than he proved his own genius.
So who's your pick for greatest writer then?
Also it's one thing to say he's not the greatest, but to say he's "empty" is just retarded.
eheheheheheheheheh
I'll get them talking about this one for centuries
What am I referencing now? What am I referencing now? The Greeks? The Romans? The Bible? History? Modernity? Myself? They'll talk about my little puzzle books forever! eheheheheh
Ultimately empty, as in he hides emptiness with invention. There isn't any spirit or soulful-aesthetic at his core.
>So who's your pick for greatest writer then?
There isn't a greatest, but if you want a decent list, take your pick, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Goethe, Sterne, Rabelais, Dostoevsky, Gogol, or newer, maybe lesser greats such as Bernhard, Krasznahorkai, Schmidt, Powys.
Forgot Melville, Whitman, Beckett. There's always a degree of subjectivity but I dont think Joyce will be on any very intelligent person's list in the future. He will be known and read, but not considered a great, rather, someone who inspired greatness.
Shakespeare, Dante, Homer yes...the others are very weird picks and Joyce is far greater thant hem all
They aren't weird picks at all. And Joyce is not greater than any of them. His successor Schmidt surpassed him easily, but people are very philistine these days. He was inventive and obviously still worshiped by people, but I'm sad that more people don't see his banality.
this is the biggest reason people dismiss finnegan's wake. it isn't built as a book.
I guarantee you've never read Zettel's Traum so don't act like you know what Schmidt is about, you fucking pretentious jackass
Holy shit calm your projection pal, I've read everything by the man and the authors I listed that I could, I am currently reading Zettel's Traum and his Radio Dialogs for recommendations of new writers. You are such a bitch, get self worth somewhere besides an anonymous imageboard.
Anyway, I would compare Joyce to Nabokov. Stylistic genius, yes, but ultimately empty of other requirements of genius. Genius is a visionary, not intellectual thing. They won't be considered greats in the future because their inventiveness is a way to hide their emptiness.
Have you ever met a person who agrees with you? Where are you getting this nonsense?
Serious question...who is Schmidt?
>Have you ever met a person who agrees with you?
Of course plebs like you need social reassurances for your judgments.
>Where are you getting this nonsense?
From my mind?
Think: why are you feeling so hostile to someone questioning the greatness of a writer? Is it a form of cognitive dissonance?
Arno Schmidt, but most of the plebs here like the guy who got angry at me only heard of him because they republished a huge medieval-size book by him lately in English translation.
Quads checked.
>Stylistic genius, yes, but ultimately empty of other requirements of genius.
Is it really the place of a random nobody to say someone widely recognized as a genius isn't a genius? Like it wouldn't really make sense to go around calling Isaac Newton mediocre when you work as a plumber, right? Or calling Bach a middling composer when you're some guy in Nebraska who's finishing up a Communications major?
>Of course plebs like you need social reassurances for your judgments.
There isn't anything in your head that didn't ultimately come from the society you happened into though. In order to even express your opinion there you had to borrow the words and meanings that society taught you. Ironically Joyce kind of embodied your ideal of independence from society by writing his last book outside the bounds of standard English.
I said they were stylistic geniuses, I like how you ignore this fact.
>Is it really the place of a random nobody to say someone widely recognized as a genius isn't a genius?
How is it not? Why is a random nobody not potentially somebody who is considered genius in the future?
>Like it wouldn't really make sense to go around calling Isaac Newton mediocre when you work as a plumber, right?
If the plumber was sufficiently intelligent, what is the issue? But literature isn't science, its merit is ultimately subjective, but this merit is also tied into the perception of other genius. I can guarantee you the majority of writers considered of merit these days aren't inspired by Joyce, they're inspired by Gogol, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, etc, Schmidt is the exception here. Your plebeian social-acceptance attitude is sickening.
>There isn't anything in your head that didn't ultimately come from the society you happened into though. In order to even express your opinion there you had to borrow the words and meanings that society taught you.
Wow, what a profound insight there. Fail to see what this has to due with not needing social reassurances to make judgments and relying on yourself for them.
gud post
>Ultimately empty, as in he hides emptiness with invention. There isn't any spirit or soulful-aesthetic at his core.
pure pretension
>Why is a random nobody not potentially somebody who is considered genius in the future?
That's the generalized gist of the Copernican Principle: It's much more likely than not that any random case you're looking at is mediocre rather than extraordinary, for obvious reasons. Just as it was a bad assumption to believe the Earth was the center of the universe, it'd be a bad assumption to believe a random user on an image board is a genius, let alone a genius on a scale of worldwide recognition.
>I said they were stylistic geniuses, I like how you ignore this fact.
I don't see how that changes anything. It brings up the same point of whether it really makes sense for a random nobody to be qualifying the merits of an extremely acclaimed famous historical writer as "stylistically genius" but "ultimately empty." It's on par with saying "Rolls-Royce motor vehicles are stylistically genius, but ultimately empty." Like at a minimum you need to understand saying stuff like that makes you sound really questionable in your judgement and the expectation is that you do a shitload of explaining about why you feel you're in a position to talk down to something most everyone else recognizes as pretty much the standard for how great is even defined.
>If the plumber was sufficiently intelligent, what is the issue?
The issue is that a random plumber probably isn't anywhere near intelligent / skilled enough to say either Newton or Joyce is mediocre. That's kind of the point, I'm asking whether you can really pass judgement, either artistic or intellectual, on someone you aren't anywhere near as talented as yourself. I could kind of sense the existence of a possible argument that yes you could, but I haven't seen anyone make that argument yet and I can't think of what that argument would be specifically myself.
>Fail to see what this has to due with not needing social reassurances to make judgments and relying on yourself for them.
What it has to do with it is everything about you and your every single waking thought is completely derivative of social influences, so it's nonsensical to say social feedback / prevailing opinions don't matter. That's all you really have to go off of. If anything you'd probably want to make even more references to evidence outside yourself than usual if you're trying to make a contrarian argument and have it be convincing. There's a (good) reason why you can't write scholarly papers without using references to other works.
Yes, fine: I'm a pleb. There, I said it. What now, huh? Got any other gags up your sleeves? Got any other zoinkers hidden away? Oh, nothing? nothing? Didn't prepare you for this eventuality in cool school did they? Oh, no no, please, don't listen to me. I'm just another lowly pleb compared to you, I'm not worth anyone's tim—Sorry? What? Nothing to say? Nothing to say? Well. Well well well. Well well well well well. Seems you're outta moves, kid. Seems you're outta luck! Checkmate. Knockdown! Strike, your out!
you know this is bait right...?
Finnegans wake owns retard
Find an excerpt from Ulysses and paste it here, and tell us what you mean by it being empty.
Holy fucking burn man
One of the few good posts in this shit board, its great to see pretentious retards being assdestroyed
Keep the good work
>trying this hard to create a new copypasta
>new
Shut the fuck up. I'm so tired of being disrespected on this goddamn website. All I wanted to do was post my opinion. MY OPINION. But no, you little bastards think it's "hilarious" to mock those with good opinions. My opinion. while not absolute, is definitely worth the respect to formulate an ACTUAL FUCKING RESPONSE AND NOT JUST A SHORT MEME OF A REPLY. I've been on this site for 6 months: 6 MONTHS and I have never felt this wronged. It boils me up that I could spend so much time thinking and putting effort into things while you shits sit around (probably jerking off to traps or whatever gay shit you like) and make fun of the intellectuals of this world. I've bored you? Good for fucking you. Literally no one cares that your little brain is to underdeveloped and rotted to comprehend my idea...MY GREAT GREAT IDEA. I could sit here all day whining, but I won't. I'm NOT a whiner. I'm a realist and an intellectual. I know when to call it quits and to leave the babybrains to themselves. I'm done with this goddamn site and you goddamn immature children. I have lived my life up until this point having to deal with memesters and idiots like you. I know how you work. I know that you all think you're "epik trolls" but you're not. You think you baited me? NAH. I've never taken any bait. This is my 100% real opinion divorced from anger. I'm calm, I'm serene. I LAUGH when people imply I'm intellectually low enough to take bait. I always choose to reply just to spite you. I won. I've always won. Losing is not in my skillset. So you're probably gonna reply "lol epik trolled" or "u mad bro" but once you've done that you've shown me I've won. I've tricked the trickster and conquered memery. I live everyday growing stronger to fight you plebs and low level trolls who are probably 11 (baby, you gotta be 18 to use Veeky Forums). But whatever, I digress. It's just fucking annoying that I'm never taken serious on this site, goddamn.
7/10
I've never finished the Wake, but I genuinely wonder if Joyce was trying to impact our use of the English language with it, just like Shakespeare did.
The term ameising is pretty nice.