What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
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What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
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Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#2I'd recommend John Huston's film 'The Dead' to anyone who would like experience something by Joyce. I did read a bit of 'A portrait of the artist as a young man'. He really got into the head of a small boy who was being bullied in one part. I never finished it though, I can't remember why.
I don't think that I could ever read Ulysses, I did listen to a reading of it on the BBC's book at bedtime many years ago and liked parts of it.
Finnegan's Wake would drive me insane, I'm certain.
Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#3I'd recommend John Huston's film 'The Dead' to anyone who would like experience something by Joyce. I did read a bit of 'A portrait of the artist as a young man'. He really got into the head of a small boy who was being bullied in one part. I never finished it though, I can't remember why. I don't think that I could ever read Ulysses, I did listen to a reading of it on the BBC's book at bedtime many years ago and lik…
Words of wisdom from @barking, watch "The Dead"!
Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#4I'd recommend John Huston's film 'The Dead' to anyone who would like experience something by Joyce. I did read a bit of 'A portrait of the artist as a young man'. He really got into the head of a small boy who was being bullied in one part. I never finished it though, I can't remember why. I don't think that I could ever read Ulysses, I did listen to a reading of it on the BBC's book at bedtime many years ago and lik…
The Dead is a good film, undeniably, but its basis is the final short story of Dubliners, which is Joyce's most approachable work; everything afterwards was increasingly avant-garde, but Dubliners is at least written according to conventional rules of both English grammar and literature (though there's a lot going on behind the scenes).
(I personally very much enjoyed Portrait... and Ulysses - the latter is very difficult in places, but on the whole an astonishing achievement. I'm saving Finnegans Wake for my retirement.)
Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#5I'd recommend John Huston's film 'The Dead' to anyone who would like experience something by Joyce. I did read a bit of 'A portrait of the artist as a young man'. He really got into the head of a small boy who was being bullied in one part. I never finished it though, I can't remember why. I don't think that I could ever read Ulysses, I did listen to a reading of it on the BBC's book at bedtime many years ago and lik…
Words of wisdom from @barking, watch "The Dead"!
Glad you found it amusing.
Re: 'The Dead', I got a copy of it as a present last christmas after boring people for years about what a good film it is, though I hadn't seen it in years. AFAIK it was John Huston's last film and a labour of love (his daughter Angelica is in it). It's a bit dated now (made in the 80s) and low budget but it still holds up imo. The main character has some long thoughts to himself about life, death and how little we really know those closest to us, that are very moving imo.
Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#6I'd recommend John Huston's film 'The Dead' to anyone who would like experience something by Joyce. I did read a bit of 'A portrait of the artist as a young man'. He really got into the head of a small boy who was being bullied in one part. I never finished it though, I can't remember why. I don't think that I could ever read Ulysses, I did listen to a reading of it on the BBC's book at bedtime many years ago and lik…
The Dead is a good film, undeniably, but its basis is the final short story of Dubliners , which is Joyce's most approachable work; everything afterwards was increasingly avant-garde, but Dubliners is at least written according to conventional rules of both English grammar and literature (though there's a lot going on behind the scenes). (I personally very much enjoyed Portrait... and Ulysses - the latter is very dif…
If I try Ulysses again it will probably be an audiobook, I could never make any headway with it in text. I might try getting hold of Dubliners in book form.
Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#7Came across this nice quote by Kafka recently, which seems relevant:
"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."
Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#8There is a rather fine (abridged) audio book of Finnegans Wake by Jim Norton (Bishop Brennan in Father Ted), some of which is on Youtube:
Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#9I'd recommend John Huston's film 'The Dead' to anyone who would like experience something by Joyce. I did read a bit of 'A portrait of the artist as a young man'. He really got into the head of a small boy who was being bullied in one part. I never finished it though, I can't remember why. I don't think that I could ever read Ulysses, I did listen to a reading of it on the BBC's book at bedtime many years ago and lik…
If you want to try tackling Ulysses again, I have two recommendations:
First, Frank Delaney is doing a wonderful podcast, "Re: Joyce"[1], unpacking the novel in short segments. The original episodes cover just a few sentences each; lately the format has expanded to a whole page, in the hope that he'll finish before 2040! Currently, he's just started in on "Scylla and Charybdis", the ninth chapter. His enthusiasm for Joyce and Ulysses is deep and delightful.
Second, in 1982, the Irish radio station RTE produced an essentially unabridged dramatic reading of the novel. Besides being a terrific way to experience the book, it nicely counters one of the major difficulties for newcomers to Ulysses: Distinguishing dialog and internal monologue from narration, and deciding who, exactly, is saying what! It's available for free on archive.org[2].
Re: What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)
#10I'd recommend John Huston's film 'The Dead' to anyone who would like experience something by Joyce. I did read a bit of 'A portrait of the artist as a young man'. He really got into the head of a small boy who was being bullied in one part. I never finished it though, I can't remember why. I don't think that I could ever read Ulysses, I did listen to a reading of it on the BBC's book at bedtime many years ago and lik…
Joyce's Dubliners is a collection of short stories, one of which is 'The Dead'. It's quite accessible, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read something by James Joyce.
I also read 'A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man' and didn't think much of it. I made it through Ulysses, but frankly half the time I could barely understand WTF was going on. I started on Finnegan's Wake and gave up after realizing that the prose wasn't going to get any less crazy.
Dubliners though is quite accessible and a very nice read.