So after about 5 months, I have finally finished reading Finnegans Wake. Now—the question that I’m sure is on everyone’s mind—did I understand it whatsoever? And the answer is: kind of. One of the things that frustrates me the most in regard to the perception of this book is how many people seem to believe it’s some sort of elaborate literary hoax that’s completely inscrutable by design. No, there’s certainly a semblance of a plot here most people who closely read it could agree on.
I think what Joyce wanted to do with this book was effectively write a story of everything. The “characters” can more be understood as universal archetypes that reoccur in every phase of history. In Joyce’s conception, there’s a sort of creator, or “all father,” along with an “all mother” who gives birth to the fundamental opposing forces of the universe (kind of the yin and the yang). These opposites conflict, combine, and result in a sort of Hegelian synthesis that is reality. This stage of history is still at a high level of abstraction; the same forces can be seen in human history. The invader archetype establishes society, this invader becomes corrupted and falls, a new power arises and falls, and after each fall, the people gather the scattered pieces, combine them, and create something that is new and old all at once. While reading this book, I frequently referred to Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key as a guide and think you can really appreciate how much Joyce’s view of history as cyclical with a series of reoccurring archetypes influenced Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Obviously the most distinctive thing about Finnegans wake is the insanely complex style, but I think that style can really be seen as reflecting the book’s view of identity. Just as societies and individuals are the amalgamation of all that has come before, and, in a sense, are heirs to civilizations they may not even know existed, the style is built on the amalgamation of disparate elements, the structure of the book paralleling the cyclical, chaotic, yet abstractly predictable world it depicts. If I had to succinctly describe it, I’d say it’s an attempt at constructing a sort of universal subconscious in which all time and space are collapsed and the micro and macrocosms are presented as equally important and reflective of one another.
To me, having finished this book was an incredible experience, and I feel the worldview presented has influenced my own views and seriously made me think harder than anything else I’ve read in a long time. I understand that Finnegans wake is absolutely not for everybody; I had read Portrait of the Artist once and Ulysses a couple times before attempting it. In short, I loved James Joyce, believed in his project, and was willing to invest 5 months to kind of approach understanding it. For someone who’s off-put by Joyce, obviously you wouldn’t enjoy this book.
But a common criticism I see of Finnegans Wake that I have to push back on is this idea that since it isn’t generally accessible, it’s somehow worthless. The fact is, great art can be generally accessible or specialized. To use an imperfect analogy, Kendrick Lamar makes 3 minute bangers for the club and 12 minute story telling songs for the diehards, both of which are great pieces of art. It makes no sense to say the 12 minute song is better simply because it’s more complicated, just as it makes no sense to say the 3 minute song is better simply because it reaches more people.
Ultimately, you have to judge a work on its own merits. With Finnegans Wake, the goal was to create something for the James Joyce diehards who’d spend months and years trying to digest it. Now, is it arrogant to create a work so difficult that you are expecting your readers to devote that much time to understanding it? Absolutely, but I think if anyone deserves to have that level of arrogance, it’s the man who’d just written Ulysses. It’s not like this is a case of someone with nothing to say trying to blind you with sheer complexity; once you begin to decipher it, there’s a lot there, even if you don’t get everything.
I know people will disagree with me, but after finishing it, I think reading this book was more than worthwhile and it is rightly regarded as a classic of 20th century literature. I still prefer Ulysses, as I believe it has a more human, relatable element to it, but ultimately, the experience of reading Finnegans Wake is like no other and it has opened me up to ideas and perspectives I’d never considered. I will definitely think about parts of it for years to come, and you can’t ask much more of a book than that.
by bigben1234567890
28 Comments
>I know people will disagree with me…
I won’t. That’s a fine review and you are an admirable reader.
I just have to say congrats for getting through it. That had to take a lot of effort and patience
This is awesome. I used to he better about challenging myself to tackle these big hard books and I always found them rewarding. Pynchon and Ulysses all under my belt. Late Henry James perhaps counts here.
I’d love to get back to this ambitious reading. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, Bolano’s 2666, Delany’s Dahlgren all on my shelf waiting for me.
Finnegan’s Wake is definately more a maybe someday (alongside Stein’s Making of Americans). But good on you for doing it and getting so much from it.
Is it the only thing you read for 5 months??
Excellent review! I do need to get around to an earnest attempt at the book myself.
Nice review, thanks!
James Joyce is one of my favorite authors, specifically because of *Ulysses* and *Finnegans Wake*.
I see those books as being partially about the totality of experience. For Joyce, it’s the totality of a single man’s day in the life. For another “big book” – Melville’s *Moby-Dick* – it’s not just whaling, but the essence of adventure and being out of one’s element, then looking back on those salad days with the knowledge and pity of older age.
For books like that… of course I won’t get everything or understand it. The point isn’t to be understood. It’s not my life. It’s Starbuck’s life, or Ishmael’s life, or Bloom’s life, or whomever’s life in the *Wake*. If someone wrote a comprehensive story about your particular existence, then there would be thousands of allusions that a reader wouldn’t pick up on simply because the minutiae of everyday existence is filled with nuance and even encyclopedic level of experience. I treat Joyce’s latter two book the same way; the occasional incomprehensibility is a celebration of existence, not spiteful of it.
I always recommend people interested in *Ulysses* or *Finnegans Wake* to not use footnotes. Don’t worry about getting it. Just read it. Experience what you experience. Then, whatever you walk away with from Moby-Dick (and other modernist literature) will be completely and uniquely yours as you bring your own allusions and experiences to the book. Be Ishmael – be uncertain.
>To me, having finished this book was an incredible experience, and I feel the worldview presented has influenced my own views and seriously made me think harder than anything else I’ve read in a long time. I understand that Finnegans wake is absolutely not for everybody; I had read Portrait of the Artist once and Ulysses a couple times before attempting it. In short, I loved James Joyce, believed in his project, and was willing to invest 5 months to kind of approach understanding it.
You might enjoy *Dubliners* if you haven’t read it already. It’s his funniest book.
Haha, I didn’t come here expecting a Kendrick Lamar reference in a Finnegans Wake post. Great write-up.
I tried it once, and I don’t think my life will be long enough to subject myself to it. Glad that you liked it. I just admitted defeat. Had I chosen the literary direction of my English degree, I probably would’ve felt more pressure, but since I didn’t, I don’t
Extremely well written post. Thank you!
I’m reading this right now (along with Skeleton Key) and just set down the book to open Reddit and see your post. In the last few months I’ve been working my way through Joyce in order and this is definitely the most difficult – at first it does look like gibberish but with the help of a commentary you can start to unpack it and appreciate the language and see the themes come together. Thanks for your review! It’s a great encouragement for anyone wading their way through or thinking about starting.
I have read many reviews such as this one and went into the book wide eyed and with great patience ready to breach its supposedly impenetrable style. I tried twice and genuinely only got in about 25 pages. It just could comprehend absolutely nothing and I would rather use that time reading other things.
I appreciate reviews like yours for giving us commoners some insight into the text.
Wow. I am impressed. I have tried several times to read Ulysses and just can’t do it.
I went to Dublin last year on a very literary trip but I am not tempted to read James Joyce. Instead I am studying the work of William Butler Yeats. At my hotel I was given bottles of artesian well water, W. B. Yeats water, which I found amusing.
I did go to the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLi) and saw an original copy of *Ulysses*.
That’s quite an accomplishment!
Do you think you would have been able to discern the plot if you didn’t have Campbell’s Skeleton Key as a guide?
I have a first American edition. I pick it up and read a few pages at random once in a while. Haven’t been able to make much sense of it but there are moments of genius.
It’s good right? I have a few papers out on FW, among “Joyce Scholars” it’s nothing but it’s my specialty within his writing, I love the book. Supplementary texts are absolutely vital to the text, it makes it feel like studying some kind of scripture, something archival.
This is an amazing review, thank you for writing it. It’s the first thing I’ve read about Finnegans Wake that makes me feel the effort-reward ratio might be enough for me read it someday.
>If I had to succinctly describe it, I’d say it’s an attempt at constructing a universal subconscious in which all time and space are collapsed and the micro and macrocosm are presented as equally important and reflective of one another.
Well, after reading this several times and not being able to derive any kind of idea of what you were trying to say, I’m gonna go ahead and assume the work you’re discussing is even further over my head lol.
Thank you for this. You’ve inspired me to give it a go. I got through Ulysses with the help of some excellent guides. It’s a book that will stay with me forever. But I always believed Finnegans Wake was far beyond my comprehension. After reading your post I’m thinking, so what, time to give it a try.
Excellent review.
Did you have/use an etymological dictionary?
I’ve read it too and I kinda think you’re overthinking it. He engineered a recursive pun machine. It’s fun to read if you don’t go into it with expectations. But I really don’t think it is as much about the “substance” of the story as people try to make it seem. It’s about the experience of engaging with the novel. By the time you “finish” the first sentence takes on a completely new meaning.
I think it’s just a metaphor for the way we relate to mediums. They give us new perspective and meaning which in turn leads to us inventing new mediums which in turn give us new perspective and meaning and so on and so on and so on.
It’s generally accessible it’s just most people don’t like it because it has things that could be interpreted out through in side of a joke that I forgot the name of when I was dead but a reference is the apple of the librarian’s eye as summer dawn dawns despair. Here I am again back before I was before I wrote what I said now to you before I said it because I never did. Perhaps I could follow fellows stopping along my path but brewing arches births the bitch and the sound and the fury can only signify but a coming of the end as all tragedies end a mess. Now softly I bill my time will though I can hardly stick to as glue to pages I am bound to this place but I will not return again as my secret tongue runs dry, what a wonder is it to be the father’s spark so tinderly tending to catch sight of a word wrangler sight catcher in the devil dreams that bled me dry. Oh to be horizontal per the tangent line tangent to gravity’s paint though really qt it’s just that un sans it unsans tea w divided once sans tea a final time just leaving you and eye. Now out damned spot now figure me the grossly incandescent silhouetted once wetted to drown as Apollo would beneath Hades beak lies to the lover cheek to cheek. No stranger not found not rest but tea lest sans tea but familiar with her vapors as she is to mine I trumpet she trumpets and now we sinners lie in the mess of this tragedy in publics eye the end of Psalms we clasp palms as links bind us to our past we are driven away and the public still a ghouls descriptor finally at last just you and I.
> it’s an attempt at constructing a sort of universal subconscious in which all time and space are collapsed
I’m quite blown away by Edmund Lloyd Epstein’s [A Guide through *Finnegans Wake*](https://upf.com/book.asp?id=EPSTES04). According to Epstein, the book is divided into two modes: SPACE and TIME. Chapters I.1 up to I.8 are SPACE mode, and contain all the things and characters that will appear again later. The first reference to time in the book doesn’t happen until quite late in the book (about 200 pages in).
Chapters II.1 up to III.4 are TIME mode, so a progression of time is very clear in this section. Last chapter, which Epstein called one of literature’s greatest masterpieces (and I sort of agree), is a shift back from TIME to SPACE to the beginning of the book. I really recommend getting this guide as it’s the most accessible explanation I know so far—makes me excited to read the *Wake* again.
I love the story of Joyce’s wife hearing him laughing his ass off in the other room hours into the night while writing FW. Say what you want about it, but he wasn’t just taking the piss, it was a project he really poured himself into. To devote the last 17 years of your life into such challenging book when he no doubt could’ve published more frequently and sold well is bold, and speaks to how much it meant to him
Might read it some day, kudos to you for making it through!
Bookmarking this reddit thread. Thanks so much for the great review. I’m going to reread it.
This is one of the best perspectives on the Wake that I’ve seen. Why not, after having written significant works of literature, try something so completely unheard of at the end of one’s life while losing one’s sight? I am in the process of preparing to read it.
I believe that satisfaction of the reading of this work does require some preparation in the form of seeking out overviews, opinions, simple deconstructions and outlines etc.