O O Ø O O O O
Finnegans Wake
I finished reading Finnegans Wake. If you’ve ever thumbed through a copy, you understand what’s at stake.
While not overlong at 628 pages, I was continually overcome with despair while mucking through its depths. It’s one thing to be thoroughly confused for the duration of Burrough’s Naked Lunch, but at least he’s got a recognizable language in play. With Wake, I found I could weather several dozen pages at a time—not in one sitting, mind—after which I would have to get the book out of my sight.
So off and on for 13 years, until one last sustained push brought the last page into view. (The book being what it is, I had long ago flipped to the end to see how things turn out.)
I opened a beer to celebrate.
Now to save you the suffering, I offer the following insight: Don’t bother. As is actually mentioned in Seamus Deane’s forward, the Wake is unreadable. In my case, it wasn’t until I was well past the first 500 pages that I got the hang of reading it semiotically, which made it more interesting and perhaps more impressive, but certainly not more intelligible.
For the more stubborn (like me), I have carefully assembled the following condensed version, which should save you on the order of magnitude of a decade.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. (FW 3.1-3)
∃! (FW 36.17)
Haar Faagher, wild heart in Homelan; Harrod’s be the naun. Mine kinder come, mine wohl be won. There is nothing like lether. O Shee! (FW 546.34-36)
Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousandsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the (FW 628. 14-16)
It just ends like that, but it makes more sense if you run the last line back into the first, so the story repeats. As if it weren’t full of enough recitations of the same story already.
To fill in a few more of the blanks I can enumerate a few of the characters. There’s the Janus-like figures of Shem and Shaun, the mother Anna Livia Plurabelle, and the father abbreviated HCE. Something bad has happened and continues to happen between them.
Something about a river, someone probably dies, and I think there’s a pub.
pintday.org: we read Finnegans Wake, so you don’t have to.
You’re welcome.
Evan Spence
June 20, 2006
OOØOOOODCCLIX
June 21st, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Thank you.
I will open a beer to celebrate.
July 6th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
No car chase?
July 24th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Perhaps you should have had the beer before reading the book. The text would have slurred together for you better. Finnegan’s Wake is a book best served cold. Congratulations on your reading triumph!