Finnegans Wake

By James Joyce

This early work by James Joyce was originally published in 1939 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'Finnegans Wake' is a an experimental novel of comic fiction. James Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1882. He excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, and then at University College Dublin, where he studied English, French, and Italian. Joyce produced several prominent works, including: 'Ulysses', 'A Portrait of the Young Artist', 'Dubliners', and 'Finnegans Wake. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the early twentieth century and his legacy can be seen throughout modern literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grant Press
• Release date: Jul 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781473395831

James Joyce

James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish poet, novelist, and short story writer, considered to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. His most famous works include Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939).

Reviews for Finnegans Wake

[chichikov_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Which that that rang ripprippripplying. -- Bulbul, bulbulone!I will shally. Thou shalt willy. You wouldnt should as youd remesmer. I hypnot. 'Tis golder sickle's hour. Holy moon priestess, we'd love our grappes of mistellose! Moths the matter? Tabarins comes. To fell our fairest. . . . . " p. 360

[antao-3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

"We'll meet again, we'll part once more. The spot I'll seek if the hour you'll find. My chart shines high where the blue milk's upset."In “Finnegans Wake” by James JoyceJoyce could really write. “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is exquisite, and “Ulysses” is a masterpiece. I see Joyce as a product of his 'modernist' era, certainly, but a sincere one. He was reaching for something, a kind of synthesis of prose and poetry that came close to the true language of the mind. It's remarkable how much of Finnegans Wake is comprehensible, in spite of the fact that Joyce's words don't actually exist; we know what he means, or we can guess at it, which would be impossible if it was just gibberish. The question is whether it's worth the trouble. So much of what goes on in our minds is just noise, and really, who wants to read a transcription of mental static, no matter how impressive the act of having transcribed it? I've never finished Finnegans Wake, and I'm not sure whether that's my issue or Joyce's. To paraphrase Rossini talking about Wagner, Joyce's writing has some wonderful moments but some terrible quarter-hours! I got the idea that I was missing things, and hallucinating things of my own accord; I found it not very fruitful. Can't remember it that well, either, much like some of my own teenage years, then...On a sentence level is makes little sense - or if it does, thought it's so angular. On a wider level, structurally, it's like “The Divine Comedy” - Joyce created his own mythological cosmos - and typically for him he based it on a normal family. Or it reminds me of Ovid and his “Metamorphosis” or Blake's prophetic poems... it's that kind of work.I agree that bits of it are sublime, but in my experience it takes real determination to get to them. It was the act of a very large ego to write something that assumed people would take the time to wallow in someone else's unconscious over an extended period. I think that life is short, the world full of difficult books and you need to be selective. I think I'd rather re-read “Middlemarch” or “Odysseus”; they're more comprehensible and I feel better reading them than I do with the Wake.Ulysses certainly changed the English Language but "Finnegans Wake" didn't. A waste of time, a beautiful waste of time; it’s a case of Causabon's Key To All Mythologies with Guinness and Opera.

[atwood.david · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Frustratingly favorite

[duncan_jones-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A book to swim in and to read aloud in the bath. There are some good jokes; a fair bit of bawdy. It comes out of the mud of sleep. If you read it in the hope of setting down the meaning of it in a box in your skull you may as well not begin.

[skavlanj · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This should really be in my Abandoned collection. It's the only book in the Modern Library 100 Best list I didn't finish. No book should need a roadmap to read. I can understand having to research parts of a book (e.g. Dom Casmurro, where I wasn't familiar with the culture and consequently missed a lot on my first reading). But this book is unintelligible.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Surprises and laughs on every page. What's not to like?

[tungsten_peerts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My first experience with FW was in undergraduate school, when as a pretentious putz I used to carry it around so I would look impressive. It didn't work. :^)It's now my favorite book (well, of "fiction" anyway) evar. My plan is to have this be the last book I own on my "deathbed": I will sink towards oblivion as I hand it over to whatever vulture is sitting there.Like many others here, I went through an "oh, you need to read it aloud!" epiphany with this book: in my case, I handed the book to my mother, who proceeded to read from it and to my astonishment render it with stunning clarity (can't remember what passage it might have been).I can't say enough things about this wonderful wonderful creation. So I won't start.

[shabacus · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I'd love to say it's unreadable, but that would only mean that I couldn't read it. I'd like to say it's worthless, but that would only mean that I find no worth in it. There are many who have found it very worthwhile, who have painstakingly read and devoured its many secrets, following each clue, reading each scholarly commentary on each line, and experienced the joy of unraveling a tiny piece of the great puzzle Joyce left behind.I am not one of those people, and have come to realize that I never will be.Most authors enter into a contract of sorts with their readers, unspoken yet nearly always there. "I will meet you halfway," says the author. "I will spend effort to communicate to you, and you will spend effort to understand that which I have communicated." Because after all, it is the arrogance of authorship to assume that anyone will ever want to expend that effort simply to understand what you have to impart. (And yes, I'm fully aware that this applies equally well to this review!) When the message is of high value, or the language that communicates it of surpassing beauty, the author can require more of the reader, because the reader will want to expend more effort.And therein lies my dislike of Finnegan's Wake. Of Joyce in generally, actually, but most sharply of Finnegan's Wake. So far from expending effort to communicate, Joyce has expended hideous force to cloak his meaning, to bury it under layers of twisted, tortured prose. If I thought that what lay within were important, or that the journey itself was an attractive one, perhaps I would supply the effort to dig it up. But I don't. To me, it stands for everything that is wrong with literary fiction--or rather, it is an unwelcome stain on literary fiction that ought to be removed.But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.

[jarvenpa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It really, really helps if you can read bits of this aloud, and if you don't fuss too much about understanding everything absolutely. If you can find a recording of Joyce reading...it helps even more. This is a book to submerge yourself within. Don't fret about it the first time through.

[rickharsch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The hearse awheeze but the chap is swilling.

[donnamariemerritt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Brilliant wordplay, irony, satire, alliteration, rhyme, assonance, consonance, nonce, spoonerisms, and so on…but I have absolutely no idea what it was about.

[porius_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

robert anton wilson has much to say about FW. his COINCIDAnce has some fine sections on joyce's nite-mare book. the going gets a little thick, but if you haven't the patience, neither author is for you.

[aethercowboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Considered unreadable by many, Finnegans Wake takes us on a journey through a dreamland along a stream of consciousness. With such diverse characters who are at times unique, but at other times, the same person, Joyce gives the reader a challenge, what with most phrases having a double (and sometimes triple) meaning. You'd have a read it a few times before even being able to pick up on some of the gems hidden in this prose.This book is not recommended for the casual reader, and even more lightweight avid readers may want to bring a map along for the ride (there are many critical/guide books on FW, find the one that works the best for you). Nevertheless, it's a challenging yet fulfilling read for anyone who wants to read one of the most difficult books in the English language.

[linus_linus_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Have managed to read it once, understood parts of it but more importantly have realised how hopelessly unqualified I am to even pass a proper comment. Some day.

[ganeshaka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Polthergeistkotzondherhoploits! Kick? What mother? Whose porter? Which pair? Why namely coon?"Choirs of inquiring minds want to know. Oh where o-weird is our friendly NPR interviewer, asking "Now Mr. Joyce could you explain, for those of our listeners who may not be familiar with "herhoploits", or poltergeists for that matter...well, why namely coon?" Ah but there's only one Terry Gross, and she's busy with Bette Midler, and Michael K. Williams, and the like, and the living. And Mr Joyce is deceased, desisted, and done damn dead. So solly, no wakee wake.Does it really matter? That you reap some linear harvest from Joyce's scattered grain. What are you, a peasant girl, a lass with a scythe? Sigh! Just dive in, like into a pile of leaves, and roll around. Smell the Autumn. get witchy, poke your variouss elves in the eyes with a sharp schtick.This is a multipurpose book. Pick any word. Use it to name a band, a coffee stand, a keety-keety, your next child. Program your favorite lines into a Furby, and converse with it while you're doing the dishes. Read it aloud with children of different ages to see how they react. Memorize a few choice lines for use in awkward moments like at the office water cooler, or when you're being mugged, or fart in an elevator. Use it to "improve" your spelling - why let phat rapmac daddios kick sand in your schnizzle? Put the puff back in your fizzle.Now if you're a poet...CAVEAT...seen a cat on catnip? Be prepared to read and react foolishly. Chasing chimeras shimmying like Kate. You WILL be influenced.as in "in flew Enza". Sickabed with jalousie, spewing your freshlygreen 'snot poetry. How humiliating, like first love.Or not. Riverrun...I don't think so? Dam it? Like a bewildered Randy Jackson, you shake your head, look at Mr. Joyce, breathless on the stage, and say "Dude, I dunno, it was a bit pitchy and that was very very big song for you? What were you thinking?" Go ahead, be that way. We Paula Abduls are legion. In Flounderer's field, our poppies grow. We shall not sleep, but finally wake again.

[ateolf · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

i went into this book wanting to like it...i liked Ulysses a lot...i liked many of the things i'd read bout this book...the whole dream-language thing seemed pretty nifty...i wasn't expecting it to make any sense...William S. Burroughs is one of my favorite writes and much of his work doesn't make any sense...i wasn't reading it looking for a traditional plot...but i there was nothing good about this book on any other level that i could find...i got nothing out of it on either an intellectual, aesthetic, or visceral level...after reading a sentence or whatever i was just left with nothing...i retained no impression whatsoever of what i had just read...a lot of talk is put into this book's use of the sounds and rhythm of the words for their own sake...that can be fine, but i did not find them enjoyable even on this level...most of the book just sounded goofy and stupid (and i'm far from one to think books should be completely serious, i'm just saying i thought the book SOUNDED bad...) Samuel Beckett said of it "[His words] are alive. They elbow their way on to the page, and glow and blaze and fade and disappear." i have to disagree with him here...the words were never able to fade and disappear because they never made it to me in the first place...i found the words buried beneath the page if anything...my eyes moved over the page and nothing would happen...if i did try to pull the words out nothing would happen...i'm sure there a whole ton of stuff that's just over my head...but what little i did get was just uninteresting, unfunny puns...if i made the effort to spend my life studying all the things i would need to know to "understand" half of this book so i could catch more bad, intellectual puns, it just wouldn't be worth it...and one other note: early on i found the book somewhat makes "sense" when read in the voice of Alfred E. Neuman (that Mad magazine dude) from that episode of The Simpsons...this of course is also pretty annoying to keep up with for a page much less 628 pages...sometimes i'd just try out any goofy, bombastic voice in my head, and while it felt fitting it was also annoying and didn't actually add anything to the book except maybe some brief, personal amusement, however minor...

[jcamilo_720582 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Some aspects of Finnegans Wake must be said: It is irrelevant if it is prententious. Of course it is, no one takes as much time as Joyce did if he didn't believed to be working in something special. That does not change the quality of the book - Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy are also pretentious. Joyce didn't write a book that was to be read in the usual sense, he was writing a bible, so those who never finished the book, have done almost what Joyce wanted. Understanding? Understanding the meaning of the text or even of the words is irrelevant. Enjoying it is what matter. There will be alway something left to be discovered, this is a masterwork because of that.There is no story? Literature is not about the plot, no matter what the industry of best-sellers try to impose. Some unfinished stories are among the greatest momments of literature and poetry (this book is a non petit prose poem) is not about meanings, but language. And Joyce mastered it in Finnegans Wake.

[widsith_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A sort of triumph, a sort of failure.It's impossible to rate, really, but it's not remotely like anything else in English literature so in that way it's certainly impressive.On one hand it's outrageously pretentious. But even if you want to hate it, there's no denying you can get enormous enjoyment from going through some of the passages here. A sentence can be read in as much detail as some entire books. You can reread the whole thing and it'll be completely different. Some bits are very funny, some are very sexy, many parts are jaw-droppingly beautiful, all of it is completely insane.It drives me crazy. I think I love it.

[beavermeyer · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a book that dummies bring on the bus and pretend to read so other people will think their smart. No one's ever read it cover to cover, yet people will say they have because there's no way to prove them wrong. There's no plot and most of the words are hybrids. Someone who's read the back cover or read a review on Amazon can tell you just as much about this as anyone who's ever tried to read it though. Life's too short to waste your time on books like this.

[agricolaoval · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting project. The text imitates the incessant chatter of voices in the back of our minds with their own weird logic and syntax. This is something we are all familiar with, but writing a huge book where these voices are allowed to have their say more or less at the same time really is something. The book is a cult thing and clearly a bit hyped by academics, but it's rewarding in a number of ways. Joyce has an extraordinary mastery of the meanings of words, and his way of slightly tweaking ordinary words to give them a whole new and often sinister meaning is astonishing. I really like the robust humor of the work and the occasional intense poetry of the shadowy things that are going on. This being said Finnegans Wake is not really good reading. I have never attempted to read the whole book. My shallow mind cannot quite fathom the depth of the old dude's project, and I quite honestly couldn't care less. I guess it's now kind of resting in the soil along with the guy anyway. But this is a book that I never will chuck though. I keep it on my coffee table and read a few pages now and again and just enjoy the surge of images that it never fails to evoke. To me this is a criterion of all great art. Some people say that the books of antiquity were meant to be read aloud, which may or may not be true. But anyway Joyce has done so with Finnegans Wake. It actually has to be read aloud or as much aloud as I can read it without having things thrown at me by exasperated members of my family. And when I do the text reveals its true nature as beautiful and melodious poetry. The book is a big and cumbersome object, but it creates a host of images and assosiations and thoughts and dreams that clearly has nothing to do with Joyce, but that rather are unforseen results of the contact beween my whole personal history and his obscure mastodont.

[rosecityreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A work of mad genius. Who am I to criticize? It took Joyce 17 years to write it and it contains the history of the world. It seemed to take me as long to read it and I comprehended only a few atoms of Joyce's world.It is a book like no other. In Joyce’s own words, “Suck it yourself – Sugarstick!”

[lilinah_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mind-bending literature, this book is not the easy read that Ulysses is. Rather is needs to be read aloud, rolled on the tongue, and savored, like a fine whiskey. Then studied assiduously, phrase by phrase for the multi-layers of meaning, since it packs in life experiences of the author, Irish popular culture of the turn of the 20th century, Catholicism Irish mythology, Irish paganism, and Irish history, plus an extraordinary love and knowledge of languages - English, Irish Gaelic, Latin, and more

[wirkman_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is almost impossible to rate by one standard, one "metric" as they like to say in business, these days. Why? Because it is an utter failure as a novel, but a complete success as the world's longest nonsense prose poem.Yes, it is quite funny. In places. The sense behind the apparent nonsense is for scholars, mostly. I've no interest in deciphering a novel, and so I regard it as a failure. But there are passage of amazing hilarity. And the whole effect, if read in one long sitting, is akin to taking drugs. In fact, who needs hallucinogenics as long as there's a copy of this book around?One of my stranger endeavors was to hold a weekly reading of this book. Between a half dozen and a dozen of my friends sat around in a circle in my living room, and would read aloud. Pass the wine, pass the chips. Jesse Walker read one section in the voice of W.C. Fields. So, take my advice: Whenever the party gets dull, pass out "Finnegans Wake."

[humdog · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

James Joyce was a prophet of hypertext. once you understand that he was writing hypertext, then his work is not so, well, WEIRD. he did this before there was HTML. it is real hypertext. you have to follow the links to understand the book.

[gazzy_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like staring at a Chuck Close painting hanging in a room only two feet in depth.

[chexmix_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My first experience with FW was in undergraduate school, when as a pretentious putz I used to carry it around so I would look impressive. It didn't work. :^)It's now my favorite book (well, of "fiction" anyway) evar. My plan is to have this be the last book I own on my "deathbed": I will sink towards oblivion as I hand it over to whatever vulture is sitting there.Like many others here, I went through an "oh, you need to read it aloud!" epiphany with this book: in my case, I handed the book to my mother, who proceeded to read from it and to my astonishment render it with stunning clarity (can't remember what passage it might have been).I can't say enough things about this wonderful wonderful creation. So I won't start.

[peterbrown-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It took Joyce [+ an army of helpers] 17 years to write it - and 17 years it took me to read it. The cover fell off years ago and the margins are thick with my scribbledehobble. The book's dusk lead to darkness and to drink, and to lectures and conferences all over Europe in search of some enlightenment to its codes and ciphers. The secret lies on page 308, all you have to do is tilt the book on its side to reveal the hidden image of Biddy the Hen, or any erstwhile scholar, searching in the dump for the letter - whilst at the same time the great artificer is thumbing his nose at you!For two years I wallowed on this one page alone, hunting back through Jim's notebooks, drafts, revisions [his general leavings] aided by copious quantities of Powers whisky. My kids ignored, my wife threatened to leave, then 'the old cheb went futt' and I just stopped - I sold my entire 800 odd collection of books, and guides, and sources to the Japanese. Now my madness rests, but my dump may still be plundered by the abcedminded on the other side of the world ['This way the museyroom. Mind your boots goan out.']. But I've kept my copy with its scribbledehobble, and often I peek into the most interesting and original book ever written and think what might have been - Jim you are a devil - you almost had my soul - but not quite!

[skholiast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The best way to read this otherwise too-scary-by-reputation book is to let your eye rove over the page, murmuring or declaring out loud as you are moved. I recommend reading it just before bed, and until you fall asleep. Not only is it helpful for this, but unless my own experience is aberrant you will find yourself dreaming in stereophonic etymology.

[tripleblessings_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Difficult to read, as are other Joyce works, between the stream of consciousness word associations and the irish dialect and slang. But if you go with the flow and persevere, it's a poetical delight, a unique way of looking at people and at the Irish poor in the early 20th century.