So, is this just Reddit: The Novel?

>he thinks finishing duolingo and ability to ask for a check is what 'speaking a language' means
erry tiem

H'es a genius.

Read it aloud. It's not supposed to make sense unless you deeply read into each word, which is far too much work. The language is fun to read.

This. It doesn't make sense for a narrative but you'll recognise there's a rhythm to the language, as if it's replicating some archaic Irish dialect and accent.

OP, how would this ever be reddit: the novel? C'mon, man. At least try.

1 englich 2 gormin 3 donich and which two other? Realy interestink

A novel I began and did not finish, uniquely. I felt it was one man's descent into madness and I did not want to accompany him.

However, the title is fascinating. It is not Finnegan's Wake, as most suppose. It is not that a man named Finnegan died, and this is about his wake.

The author is declaring that we are all Finnegans, and the author is commanding us to awaken.

Finnegans Wake

(I also enjoyed the Fall of Man language.)

Etymological dictionary is essential. Actually wiktionay is great for it as they catalogue etymologies and English definitions of even foreign words

Joyce only spoke English, French, and Italian. He also had some Latin, Greek and Irish, but wasn't fluent in any of those by a long shot.

Because he's that fucking good.

modernism means the same thing in visual art and literature

>he hasn't descended into madness yet
lmao what a pussy

i personally don't like james joyce in general
i guess im not
/verbose/ enough
i dont understand the /prose/
/monolingual/
hhhhnnnn

A formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book. Conventional and drab, redeemed from utter insipidity only by infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations. Detest it. A cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory. Indifferent to it, as to all regional literature written in dialect. A tragic failure and a frightful bore.

I guess you could make that case, in both instances it signifies "something unbearably shitty that is fawned over by pseuds", although the exact content of that varies.

>gibberish
>waste of time
>phony

>unanimous praise
There is nothing unanimous on Veeky Forums.

>unable to appreciate artistic genius of joyce or picasso
>hurr durr le pseud plebs shitty shitty
This is an 18+ site, please leave.

I only speak English and I know next to nothing about Irish folklore and yet FinWake is still my absolute favorite book

You just need a good brain for puns and other wordplay and it really isn't that difficult to understand. An incredibly fun read, too

it's as close as it gets to unanimous praise around these parts

"Shize? I should shee! Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie?
of a trying thirstay mournin? Sobs they sighdid at Fillagain's
chrissormiss wake, all the hoolivans of the nation, prostrated in
their consternation and their duodisimally profusive plethora of
ululation. There was plumbs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers
and raiders and cinemen too."

I just want to show an example of how to think about the book. If you can follow the plot, up to this point the book has described the area around Howth Castle and Dublin, and told the tale of a drunkard named Finnegan who drunkenly fell off a ladder to his death while constructing a brick wall.

>Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie? of a trying thirstay mournin?

Phonetically written like a sobbing drunk Irishman, someone mourns him at his wake. "Oh why did you die?"
"Of a trying thirstay mournin?" has multiple double-meanings, with "thirstay" being both "thirsty" and "Thursday," and "mournin" being both "mourning" and "morning."

>Sobs they sighdid at Fillagain's chrissormiss wake,

"Sighdid" is sighted/sigh/did, meaning they were sobbing and sighing as well as seeing others around them sob.

>There was plumbs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers and raiders and cinemen too.

One of my favorite sentences in the book. It has a triple meaning, it a) describes the different sorts of people attending, b) describes all the food at the wake, and c) is all a reference to a line from the Irish carol "Miss Fogarty's Christmas Cake"
plumbs = plumbers/plums, grumes = grooms/prunes, cheriffs = sheriffs/cherrie, citherers = citrons/zitherers, raiders = raiders/raisins, cinemen = cinnamon/men

How in the world can you just not find FW fun? Not every word is a challenge to your intellect user. Not everything you don't understand is "pretentious". Have a good time with it.

>He addle liddle phifie Annie ugged the little craythur.

One of my favorite sentences in the whole book. "He had a little wifey and he hugged the little creature." "Annie" is both his wife's name and phonetically acts as "and he" to continue the sentence. I also know "craythur" is an Irish term for whiskey (used in the ballad, Finnegan's Wake) which addresses Finnegan's alcoholism with an image of him holding a bottle

>Wither hayre in honds tuck up your part inher.

"With her hair in hands, tuck up your part in her." Switching to second-person, implying a connection between the reader and Finnegan, it describes him roughly making love to his wife, also making use of the word "wither" to imply something dying or failing. "inher" could be a pun on "inherent."

> Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed,

I believe this is simultaneously talking about her clothing and her breasts or ass under them, and how he "habitucularly" (habitually + particularly) "fondseed" (fancied + fond + seed (semen)) them.

>like Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicab-les the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the liquor wheretwin 'twas born,

This is more cryptic but after another HCE reference, I believe it's referencing his lewd thoughts about his wife's body which were multiplied by his drinking of liquor.

Dubliners is Joyce's only worthwhile work. Portrait is self-indulgent and severely flawed, Finnegans is unreadable, and while I'll concede that Ulysses is probably a masterpiece, I'll have to say that absolutely no one on Veeky Forums is capable of appreciating it, and the very fact that there exists an annotated version speaks volumes about the sort of hardcore middlebrow pseudness inherent in many of those who laud it.

You'll disagree, since you must. I am going to ask you to articulate why you, you personally, consider Joyce an artistic genius. You are most likely going to refrain and throw an insult at me.

Your move.

Because there is an incredible playfulness to him. I have never read another author who so fully understood the English language, yet also broke and exploited and twisted it to such an extent. I have always been really fascinated by wordplay and it is nearly constantly on my mind, so when I discovered Joyce and FinWake specifically, it felt like everything was falling into place. It was like reading a mirror of my mind. Of course I'm not claiming to be anywhere near Joyce's understanding of language but it's just so comforting to read something by a man who clearly had a mind that worked like mind, even if in a far greater way.

*a mind that worked like mine

Even Nabokov bows to Joyce. No amount of ego can make one ignore his immense virtuosity.

So you be sayin we finna woke af?

>I unironically speak 5 languages
>Joyce is a waste of time. It's all fart-sniffing.

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonneronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk is thunder in 11 languages, Danish being one of them

>finnegans wake
>reddit

A lot of them would probably struggle getting through Dubliners

>at last I dowabhdyuawhduyawdhawhdawyadoaywdwa have become Finnegans Wake

wtf joyce!