Title:
- Finnegans Wake
Authors:
Genres:
Editions:
| # | Date | Publisher | Binding | Cover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1939-00-00 | Penguin Books |  |
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- Blurb:
- Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature: Experimental novel by James Joyce. Extracts of the work appeared as Work in Progress from 1928 to 1937, and it was published in its entirety as Finnegans Wake in 1939. The book is, in one sense, the story of a publican in Chapelizod (near Dublin), his wife, and their three children; but Mr. Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Mrs. Anna Livia Plurabelle, and Kevin, Jerry, and Isabel are every family of mankind. The motive idea of the novel, inspired by the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, is that history is cyclic; to demonstrate this the book begins with the end of a sentence left unfinished on the last page. Languages merge: Anna Livia has "vlossyhair"--wlosy being Polish for "hair"; "a bad of wind" blows--bad being Persian for "wind." Characters from literature and history appear and merge and disappear. On another level, the protagonists are the city of Dublin and the River Liffey standing as representatives of the history of Ireland and, by extension, of all human history. As he had in his earlier work Ulysses, Joyce drew upon an encyclopedic range of literary works. His strange polyglot idiom of puns and portmanteau words is intended to convey not only the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious but also the interweaving of Irish language and mythology with the languages and mythologies of many other culture. Reader Comments: There are many people who own Finnegans Wake. I have seen these people. The book sits peacefully on a shelf, the spine of the book as immaculate as the day the book was purchased. To understand SOME of Finnegans Wake, the book needs to be falling apart due to the wear and tear of years of study. I refuse to listen to anyone who claims to understand all of the Wake, unless they have spent no less than seventeen years reading and studying it. Of course the beauty of this book is that a reader need not understand the whole thing. Joyce wrote this for the "common reader," so there must be something here that all readers can find amusing or touching in some way. Granted, the book"s reputation alone frightens away some readers. We are talking about a book that has been labeled "unreadable" by some folks. Let us not forget that JR was labeled similarly, and many people thoroughly enjoyed that book. My point, and I do have one, is that this is a book that can be read at any level possible. If I want to spend days studying each page, I can do it. If I want to read the book straight through and not care what I miss along the way, I can do it. And if I don"t want to read the book at all, I can do that too. But doing that, or giving up after the first page, will offer no opportunity to find that passage that may stay with me. I hope that you will give this book a chance, and perhaps you too will find some passage or some joke that will brighten your day and make you glad that you got tangled up with this Joyce fellow in the first place. IBDoF Notes: See also "A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake" by Joseph John Campbell.