Customer Reviews:
Keep looking.......2007-10-07
For those readers who have given up on Finnegans Wake, or alternately are convinced that its wordplay is a puzzle that can in some conclusive way be "figured out," my advice is the same Kant gave for recognizing the beautiful: Look again.
One of my favorite Joyce quotes is "The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.h" FW may require a stack of other books as prefatory material but it is so, so worth it.
Greatest book ever written.......2007-06-14
Unbelievably complex book; possibly the last book you ever have to read & understand. Take 3 years to work on this masterpiece. A good grasp of Celtic and British history essential to its full appreciation. The story of creation, the theory of cultural evolution of civilization, the history & mythology of the Celtic people...what more could you possibly want?
A" wanderous", obscure book; "reveiling" the night: Proceed with Caution!.......2007-06-01
I'd like to address some of these other critical reviews, thought by thought, as most are intelligent people who are asking all the right questions but cannot accept the answers they are coming up with. Your right FW is not "readable", in the normal sense. If you must have a good, solid story, a "page turner", which entertains you and that you finally "get", a story where the meaning is clear: then STOP right now. This book is not any of those things. Its "intention" is to disorient and confuse, to produce an "aesthetic arrest" and to be an epiphany. FW will never be a blockbuster movie, Hollywood will not touch this. Finn again A WAKE is written, kind of, sort of, in english. One reviewer called it a crossword puzzle in novel form, she is partially right. You can read other [negative] comments from the more simple-minded reviews too, but time has and will prove these knuckleheads wrong. Some claim intellectual independence as a smoke screen but they are hiding behind a myopic view of art and they do not want to put in the effort to research the references and push for a bigger picture. Other reviewers say it doesn't mean anything, Isn't poetry or music but there is a personal hatred to their reviews that tells me they are mad at the art work for not revealing itself, clearly, to them. This group is reviewing and revealing their own frustrations at not being able to conceive of or make great art. True critics, I suppose. They want to defend their defination of what art is, for everyone. This group is quite adamant and takes FW personally, like they are on a crusade to inform the world. I suppose, Joyce has worked his Irish magic on them too.. their banner reads:
Books, ultimately, are read for the quality of the ideas they express, and the quality of the style used to express them.
critics want to define artistic "quality". In any case, the "ideas" of FW have universal essence and are of an epic nature. Unfortunately, some reviewers want the transcendent nature of life to be clear, right in front of them, religion is what other people do and everything is just as it seems. Look, some great works of art do not speak to all, [Picasso's - la guerre] but make no mistake; this book is an incredible work of word art BUT does not reveal itself easily OR to everybody and that is exactly what Joyce wanted, he wanted a few sensitive and intelligent readers to experience an epiphany about the cycles of death, life, myth, history, love, war, hate, sex[lots of sex], "social marketing", male female, brother, sister, mother father- how these patterns of archetype forces affect us, this is another "reality", parallel to ours but in dark matter; [Unconscious and subconscious]. FW is not describing these forces but placing us in them by disorienting us, making the reader become part of a jumbled up night world of myth and universal cycles. How these forces of life affect us is a confusing book during the day [James Joyce's Ulysses] but at night they really go off [Finnegans Wake]. People, It doesn't get any more insightful than that.
Another reviewer, a Mr. T.Powerless, who wrote a review of the "FW Skeleton Key", - keeps asking:
What you think this book is trying to say in its 600+ pages of indeciperhable ramblings (and some proof would be nice)
How he can write a review of a book about the meaning of FW and still keep asking this questions is befuddling. His theory is that it is all just random letters [never mind the puns and historical stuff] and there is no meaning and that all the smart people have been fooled, except him. Finnegans Wake is 95% "deciphered" but something is lost in trying to put this art book in sound bites or one-sentence sayings. Take the phrase "reveiling the night". It is "saying" several things at once, each makes sense but it is also mixed up, obscure and in the mystery of the conjoining of mixed up words, is the art. There are straight forward ideas that can be expressed from FW: one of my favorites- how we should strive for things and concepts that uplift the spirit and these will pull us together, because they inspires us as one people, not on material stuff that separate us, but- really, so what, another "good" idea but silly in a way. Like the "ideas" of Hamlet: often puerile, but with Shakespeare's brilliance take on new life. And, when JJ writes the brilliant connotations are imbued in his art. The art is lost in my translations. Yes, but the critic keeps asking, its not clear and What does it MEAN, - but... what is meaning and is meaning always clear?? The hackneyed haiku: the sound of one hand clapping?- what does it mean? The meaning is a paradox or another question. all those things that do not have a sound when struck, but what does that mean? It is not about the meaning of life it is about the feeling of being alive. If you must have a meaning rather than another perspective, understanding or an epiphany: Warning: stop reading FW before you get mad. Clearly, T.Powerless kept reading, couldn't find what it was saying and became irritated.
However, FW, as a bit of a mixed up crossword puzzle, demands an explanation, a guide, patience, translations and a key. The best starting points are John Bishop's book and Joseph Campbell's " A Skeleton Key to FW". In other words, FW MUST ALSO BE STUDIED LIKE A TEXT BOOK, clues must be researched and an adventure game like quality to the mysteries and the possible solutions can be fun. yes, for some tracking down the sources and uses of JJ words and relating it to the essence of a sentence or chapter is part of the mystery. Others see The historical period of FW reflected in the work: pre World War II. Freud and Jung going at it, Picasso and Matisse going off, it was a heady time for all the western cultures. AND to top it off Joyce dies sudenly 6 months after the book is published in 1941!!! Although Joyce hated FW to be called surreal, FW is an abstract work of art and as such, like any great conceptual or complex philosophy [Nietzsche or Wittgenstein] or abstract art, is extremely personal and open to much interpretation. One can get several versions of exactly what is being "said" from the same passage; this really upsets the material minded and if you are not prepared for this kind of art or thought or are resistant to abstract art then, chances are, FW will be/ is gibberish to you. As The above reviewer states correctly: a good work must have great style, FW has a style of immense complexity and quality but NOT great clarity, intentionly.
FW is a huge Irish joke about the cycles of human life, art and thought. There is a twisted sense of humor in this Irish consciousness making a sad joke of life; the punch line is about the Devine Comedy of existence. FW is also an intentional riddle with several answers; the 60 different languages, puns, portmanteaus [the crossword part] with historical and mythical referances as well. the reader can wander and wonder about this book of life for hours or years. At times, like any fine work of abstract art: it reveals the artist and viewer more than the "reality" of the subject. No, FW can not be translated into another "language", no it was not written in the way other books are, The 4 books were not written in order and can be understood as independent sketches on different and recurring themes. Yes, joyce had a comprehensive and firm intention when he wrote it. If you start to dig and study the text the book becomes an obscure magic workbook about the recycled archetypical nights of human consciousness. However, unless you are a scholar, you must study the philology or it becomes drivel and unless you have an open mind and can embrace obscurity the work quickly becomes irritating. The sound of the words can be helpful and so some find that FW is often less abstract if read out loud. In any case the puzzle must be solved in the dark as characters, stories, change, transmute; opposites are defined and then become one and need each other and then digress again. The simple "story" has been figured out, the references have exhaustedly been found and still there are mysteries to this work. Joyce intended this too and future generations will appreciate, miss understand and wonder, love/hate it, fight over and review this book!
No, not everything printed on paper is literature and not all words are found in a dictionary, not all communication is with words, from the dictionary, or for that matter verbal. So the one reviewer that says he doesn't dream in puns and his dreams are about "something" is confusing the description of a dream with the conjuring of the "reality" of a dream world, using language. the difference between going to the movies or describing the movie. Joyce is NOT trying to describe a dream; he is trying to put you in a dream cycle of life forces in motion. JJ is comunicating with strange english sounding words to make a language of dreams. Joyce's subconscious, night world is obscure, intentionally, like "real" dreams. This bothers people, just as their own dreams do. This night book has stages, like the night, but there is no meaning to the actual story or beginning or end, the individual dreams have "meanings" and there is a progression but, like reincarnation or purgatory, there is no end or beginning . How do you escape such a work of art? perhaps a third book about Nirvana or Paradise: a simple book, like the Paridiso of the Devine Comedy. Cambell thought this was in the works when JJ died.
I'm sure the greatest thing is NOT to listen or watch the defenders of FW. Although there are some fascinating works on the Wake and Dante, Vico, the Egyptian book of the dead, the book of Krells, Cabala, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Talmud and lots of dream consciousness-etc. My suggestion is to read or scan it, with JC's "Skeleton Key" so you can get a sense of what is being said, see which of the 4 books speaks to you and then start digging on your own, the best annotated guide is now on the internet, John Bishop's book is insightful. he also wrote the intro to the Penguin edition. Stop after a while, put it down, read some other stuff, pick it up later. I knew almost nothing of the philosopher Vico and had not read Dante. James Joyce was a true artistic personality and scholar and, as an eccentric, sardonic Irish scholar, he wanted to be obscure and drive all the other [Irish and non Irish] scholars nuts. This book is intentionally obscure and Joyce is known to have re written parts that were not obscure enough!! WHY? Again, dreams can have several meanings because the dreamer and the dream are one. the dreamer/reader must decide which meaning is pertinent to the story and to your own story and see if it fits. There is a subjective part to making something abstract and a subjective part to interpretation the art. Unfortunately, this vagueness plus the references and language threw the doors open to the cross winds of scholarly conjecture. At the end, however, Joyce is communicating something powerful, eternal [not about time] and wondrous but the reader/dreamer must be prepared to study, dig deep and interpret and sometimes just guess. A Warning label would say: it took him 15 years to write it. 1] There is no bottom 2] the journey is "reveiling". - if FW doesn't speak to you, that's cool; just don't say there is nothing there if you can't find or see it.
Hard, but good.......2007-04-27
This is a fun book to read, and has many life lessons in it along with myths that are easy to decode throught its pages. I don't know why people are so quick to dismiss this land mark. If you don't understand the language fine, I don't understand most of the words, but Joyce did say to understand this book to read out loud, and with an Irish accent. I did this, and it was much simpler for me to read the story. Another thing you have to think of are circles, every paragraph tells basicly the same story except in a different way with different sounds. And with that comes a structured whole. For all you people that hate learning things, I would stir clear of this, or you may end up having your mind exband to new harizons.
Life Is Too Short For This..........2007-03-27
As one of the reviewers noted in his review, I too have given many postive marks to those who have given five-star reviews for this novel; because some reviewers have made very good arguments in defense of this novel. [I never give negative marks on anything, even if I don't like a review, but I do give plenty of positives] Therefore, before you begin to throw the bricks and sling your arrows at me, please let me try and explain why I gave this book such low marks. First of all, I have tried to read--or at least decipher "Finnegans Wake" on four different occasions. I see from some of the reviews that anyone who attempts to disagree with this novels merits gets pelted with negative marks. For those of you who enjoy this novel, good for you! I do not profess to be as knowledgeable as some of you may be on this books merits. But I DO KNOW WHAT I LIKE! And I did not like this novel.
I first tried reading "Finnegans Wake" when I was in High School [it was not required reading] because I heard so much about it that I wanted to read something challenging. And challenging was an understatement. Realizing I was young, I attempted it much later while in the military. As if military life were not frustrating enough. It was not until I entered college, where I was reguired to read the novel, that I did so with true earnest: Due to the fact that I had to write an essay on the novel. I did receive an A minus on the paper. However, to be honest, this was after profusely littering the paper with as much b***s***, that to me Joyce littered his novel with. My professor must have seen some great merit in this essay---at least I felt so at the time.
However, wanting to truly understand the novel, I decided to REALLY try and capture what Joyce was trying to write. This too led to my dislike of the novel. Not so much with the books difficulty [although that was a problem], but with the simple question: Is it really worth reading? My answer? No! For me a novel has to give me that quality of enjoyment that makes the journey a delightful one. It has to capture my soul! This novel never did capture my soul. Give me unabridged editions [the only ones I read] of "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas, "Les Miserables" by Hugo, "War and Peace" by Tolstoy [once is enough please] and more importantly, my favorite author, Dostoevsky, "Notes From the Underground," "Crime and Punishment," and "The Brothers Karamazov." These novels have given me something back in my life for the efforts that I put into reading them. They were profound and affected me deeply. They ALL gave me something in my life.
In conclusion, to those who find this novel worth the high praise it has garnered, I respectfully disagree. There are many great novels from which to choose to spend and evening, afternoon, or morning perusing. And while I do not look negatively on your opinions; if this book gives you enjoyment, then great for you. For me, however, the book gave me nothing. Nor do I wish to spend what little time we are alloted in our short life to spend it on this type of reading. That is my honest opinion. I am sure a 5 star review will give me many positive marks, but that is not why this review exists, or what I am about. This is just my honest opinion.
Today I am going to start reading two novels that I have been wanting to read for some time, but have put off until recently. "Growth of the Soil", by Knut Hamsun, and "The Master and Margarita," by Mikhail Bulgakov. I hear they are good novels; and after laboring over "Finnegans Wake" for too many hours in my life, I will begin to start on that reading list of mine. I'll let you know how these two novels work out. One thing I am pretty sure of, however, is that they will probably not frustrate me as much as "Finnegans Wake" did; and in fact, no other novel has been more of a disappointment to me than Joyce's so-called masterpiece.
Book Description
Since its publication in 1939, countless would-be readers of Finnegans Wake - James Joyce's masterwork, which consumed a third of his life - have given up after a few pages, dismissing it as a "perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first "key" or guide to entering the fascinating, disturbing, marvelously rich world of Finnegans Wake. The authors break down Joyce's "unintelligible" book page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up thoughtful interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary. They outline the book's basic action, and then simplify — and clarify — its complex web of images and allusions. A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake is the latest addition to the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series.
Customer Reviews:
If you are looking for insight .......2007-08-13
The book is by far one of the best on Finnegans Wake. If you are or are not familiar with the story and James Joyce, this book with get you there.
Insightful, keep your copy of Finnegans Wake beside you while you read Joseph Campbell's work and enjoy the ride.
Truly a skeletal key.......2007-02-24
A very good guide to Finnegans Wake with amazing insights, but it's often difficult to see how they came about. While many things are purposely left unexplained, you can at least know who's talking to whom, and what the general drift of conversations are when you take on Finnegans Wake.
night keys to the skeleton of a wake.......2007-02-04
finnagans wake is not comprehensible. it is not like reading or watching a film. Mr.Joyce spoke over a dozen languages fluently and this book is in English and french and Swahili and Italian and Latin, Greek AND mostly in his own language which is kindof like English. it is not understandable because some many words are derivative of others, the characters are always changing and the story is circular. It took a quarter of a lifetime to write and may well take that or longer to grasp. it also has many meanings depending on your perspective. One-review claims it is contains the recipe for making an atomic bomb, oh well. Campbell and Robinson have done just what they say- given the reader a skeleton- you supply the body and sole. A marvelous book to read and extremely helpful bones to knaw.
As Joseph Campbell books go, this is one of the rare ones that did not wow me........2007-01-15
It's takes a man who possesses such academic prowessness and a healthy ego to tackle anything Joyce has done. Who wouldn't want to be like Champollion decoding Egyptian heirglyphics or the first man to land on the moon? Well Joseph Campbell tried and he ended up with an outline that seemed fairly obvious if you read the book once or twice. There is a shorter outline version already provided in the Penguin edition of Finnegans Wake that covers pretty much the same territory as Campbell does and gets more to the point. Although, I have to say I admire Campbell for having tried to crack the Finnegan Code.
Pattern Recognition Run Amok.......2006-07-04
This won't be received well.
I know that.
But, there's little point in my writing this if I'm not going to be truthful. I've read this book and the book upon which this is written, and this is what I've found:
Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key purports to explain the incomprehensible "masterwork" Finnegans Wake. It does offer up an explanation of sorts but this explanation, itself, makes little sense. Further, apart from a small "demonstration passage" early in the work, Campbell offers next-to-no evidence that what he divines is in the Wake itself.
Campbell believes that Finnegans Wake is the story of the cyclical nature of man as expressed in the writings of some obscure philosopher named Vico who, for all I can tell, found his greatest glory in the critical commentary on Finnegans Wake. That's well and good, but the Wake is a mass of 600+ pages of senseless rambling. Why does it take Joyce 600+ pages to communicate a story that Campbell can neatly summarize in the first fifteen pages of his work? Because, according to Campbell, Joyce tells this story over and over again in a "dream language."
According to Campbell, the Wake is one tiny story repeated a thousand times, enshrouded in a rebus-like pseudo-language of puns and portmanteaus. The only thing worse than the suspicion that Campbell is just as fradulent as Joyce is the suspicion that, maybe, he's right. If Campbell is right, then the Wake is transformed from a fairly decent practical joke played on the academic community into a nightmare of pointless, wasted effort. His, Joyce's, yours, and mine.
I cannot bring myself to conclude that Campbell was fraudelent; he seems sincere. So, I simply hold out the hope that he was honestly mistaken in his assessment of the work. Of course, it would be impossible to say whether he was right or wrong--the Wake, like the inkblot in a Rorshach test, will accomodate the human need for pattern recognition by supplying almost any concievable image. There's no way to "prove" any interpretation of the Wake right, or any other interpretation wrong. I could just as easily say that it's a tale about the colonization of Mars. I bet you I could find good textual evidence for it, and then defy you to prove it wasn't so.
Campbell, bound and determined to come up with a coherent tale that fits Joyce's almost-words, indeed produces *something*, though it, itself, is only on the borderlands of the rational. But is that something what Joyce had in mind when he sat down? How would we ever know? Those who need to believe that "Joyce was a genius" because that's how they'll build up their own cultural cachet, will continue to believe it no matter what I say. But those who approach the Wake, or this purported exegisis of it, with an open mind will realize that, for thousands of years men claimed to find meaning in tea-leaves and sheep's entrails, and pictures in the stars, but those images and tales lie more in our own minds than in the entities themselves.
Average customer rating:
- A REFERENCE book
- Disappointing
- okay
- Great help
- An Invaluable Tool For Making It Through The Wake
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Annotations to Finnegans Wake
Roland McHugh
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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ASIN: 0801883822 |
Book Description
Long considered the essential guide to Joyce's famously difficult work, Roland McHugh's Annotations to "Finnegans Wake" provides both novice readers and seasoned Joyceans with a wealth of information in an easy-to-use format uniquely suited to this densely layered text. Each page of the Annotations corresponds directly with a page of the standard Viking/Penguin edition of Finnegans Wake and contains line-by-line notes following the placement of the passages to which they refer. The reader can thus look directly from text to notes and back again, with no need to consult separate glossaries or other listings.
McHugh's richly detailed notes distill decades of scholarship, explicating foreign words, unusual English connotations and colloquial expressions, place names, historical events, song titles and quotations, parodies of other texts, and Joyce's diverse literary and popular sources. The third edition has added material reflecting fifteen years of research, including significant new insights from Joyce's compositional notebooks (the "Buffalo Notebooks"), now being edited for the first time.
Customer Reviews:
A REFERENCE book.......2004-03-27
This book is most helpful for pointing out the puns made in languages with which one is not familiar. It also helps with some of the historical and literary allusions. IT IS NOT A BOOK THAT IS A GUIDE TO READING FINNEGANS WAKE. That said, it is nevertheless invaluable as a reference book when reading the Wake.
Disappointing.......2002-12-04
Roland McHugh is an admirable Joyce scholar and most certainly knows more about the Wake than I, but I must say this book is not at all what I was looking for in an annotated guide. I was expecting the format of Ulysses Annotated, but instead was confronted with a very different mode of operation. McHugh's book is very useful in two areas, those being 1.)Foreign Words and 2.)Joyce's compound words. This is because the author presents the annotations as if they were personal notes in his own copy of the Wake, rather than full explications as found in Ulysses Annotated. McHugh argues that this will force the reader to make his own connections and lead to more frutiful conclusions, but the same goal could be accomplished by simply doing what McHugh has done, read FW, study it, and make notes of your own. Any beginner who is not familiar with some of the primary themes of the Wake will be sorely disappointed. The best example of the way McHugh skims over these is found in the preface (which I believe can be previewed on this site), where he shows how in a regular annotated guide a reference to Giambattista Vico would take up 9 lines of text, briefly explaining his theory, and in his own method it is simply referred to as 'Vico'. This reference would mean absolutely nothing to a reader unfamiliar with Vico. For a reader seeking to add a little convenience to their own personal study, this is perfect. For the reader seeking (relatively) full explanations of historical and literary allusions and such, this is most certainly not the guide to get. This book would have been exponentially more useful had it simply been integrated into the text of FW, ie one page of FW, one page of annotations.
okay.......2002-03-11
so many things he misses, so much obvious stuff he includes, and so little detail on the meaning of some of the annotations end up making this book somewhat of a nuisance, breaking up the flow which makes the Wake enjoyable. I still prefer Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key to FW, though it admits that it does not try to catch every allusion. I find that most of the things that I really do want to find out, where I hear some echo of something, he doesn't touch on, or doesn't touch on to my satisfaction. Really, this project should be a collaboration online where people would add their comments to the possible meanings of different lines, because there are so many. Each man comes at it with his own knowledge, interests and needs, and can't get everything. So while this is useful for some, it's more of an impediment for me. A tattered security blanket that trips you up while you walk, you feel like Linus from peanuts lugging out this big blue thing.
Great help.......2000-08-03
The Annotations is a very helpful reference, pure and simple. Even for those familiar with the nightlife of the Wake, Annotations to Finnegans Wake invariably points out literary redlight districts that have escaped the reader's attention. This book is also simple to use - it is identically paginated to the Wake so there is no confusing looking for the right page. Etymology is provided where necessary, and there are the usual plethora of allusions. A quick review of this book before reading Joyce's Finnegans Wake considerably increases the percentage of puns, parodies, allusions, and portmanteau words you will understand while reading.
Not an absolute requirement for reading Finnegans Wake but doubtless a great help.
An Invaluable Tool For Making It Through The Wake.......1998-02-24
I found this book invaluable in studying Finnegans Wake. There is a brief introduction followed by a 1 to 1 mapping of each line and page of the Wake. I've found no other source with a better brief annotative structure that this one.
Average customer rating:
- The perfect companion
- An insightful and compelling look into a life and a marriage
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Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom
Brenda Maddox
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin (T)
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Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake
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Nora
ASIN: 0395365104 |
Book Description
In 1904, having known each other for only three months, a young woman named Nora Barnacle and a not yet famous writer named James Joyce left Ireland together for Europe -- unwed. So began a deep and complex partnership, and eventually a marriage, which endured for thirty-seven years. This is the true story of Nora, the woman who, transformed by Joyce's imagination, became Molly Bloom, arguably the most famous female character in twentieth-century literature. It is also the story of Ireland, a social history encapsulated in the vivid recreation of Joyce and his small Irish entourage abroad. Ultimately it is the portrait of a relationship -- of Nora's complicated, committed, and at times shocking relationship with a hardworking, hard drinking genius and with his work. In NORA: THE REAL LIFE OF MOLLY BLOOM, the award-winning biographer Brenda Maddox has given us a powerful new lens through which to see both James Joyce and the woman who was in turn his inspiration and his salvation.
Customer Reviews:
The perfect companion.......2005-10-16
This is the perfect companion to Richard Ellmans bio of JJ. I first read it when it came out a few years ago and I found it to be a good "other side of the story". Much has been made of Joyce's letters to his wife and of her being the model for Molly Bloom. He must have been a happy man if that was the case. She was all woman.
An insightful and compelling look into a life and a marriage.......2003-01-04
The story of Nora and James Joyce's unconventional relationship and how it shaped the writings of one of history's most controversial authors. This book is nothing short of riveting, both in terms of the story it is telling and the way it is told. It explores the influence Nora held over Joyce in his life and his writing and gives countless examples of how he used the experiences of those around him in his books. More than anything, this is the story of a woman struggling to hold her life and her family together in the face of hardship after hardship. A truly incredible read that I couldn't put down until the last page - I even read the bibliography!
Book Description
In this landmark study of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Luca Crispi and Sam Slote have brought together fourteen other leading Joyce experts in a genetic guide to one of the twentieth century’s most intriguing works of fiction. Each essay approaches Finnegans Wake through novel perspectives afforded by Joyce’s preparatory manuscripts. By investigating a work through its manuscripts, genetic criticism both grounds speculative interpretations in an historical, material context and opens up a broader horizon for critical and textual interpretation.
The introduction by Luca Crispi, Sam Slote, and Dirk Van Hulle offers a chronology of the composition of Finnegans Wake, an archival survey of the manuscripts, and an introduction to genetic criticism. Then, the volume provides a chapter-by-chapter interpretation of Finnegans Wake from a variety of perspectives, probing the book as a work in progress. The fruit of more than two decades’ worth of Wakean genetic studies, this book is the essential starting point for all future studies of Joyce’s most complex and fascinating work.
Customer Reviews:
innovative critique of Finnegan's Wake yields new insights and understandings.......2007-05-29
In this critical tour de force on modern literature's most distinctive tour de force, 15 leading Joyce scholars (including the two editors) enhance understanding of "Finnegan's Wake" by "genetic criticism [whose] goal might be to show how the published text came into being or to demonstrate how the earlier documents can illuminate the published text, or might be more a matter of studying the writing process itself." "Genetic" implies the psychic origination, the embryonic, cellular-like growth, and the fruition of Joyce's work; which all combined like the strands of DNA as a code bringing it about. The code is not a code as in "secret code," as if the scholars were attempting to--or even could--decipher the book; but rather a biological or physiological code, something like a personality, making for its cogency as a work of art and its polyglot elements. "Finnegan's Wake" has a cogency, but not a coherence; an unpredictable, ultimately unfathomable mix of elements which is not in the end gibberish.
The number of authors who know Joyce and "Finnegan's Wake" inside out try to shed new light on what is going on by moving "away from a strictly textual approach" to consider factors of Joyce's life, including books he read, and also the creative writing process. Joyce worked on the book from 1922 to 1939. Thus the effects of time in this lengthy period are also considered. The insights and commentary of this approach by the authors with a lifetime of scholarship on Joyce are richly rewarding for ones interested in this singular modern author and in the currents and new terrain of modern literature in general.
Book Description
"Beckman has mastered a staggering array of source materials and humanities disciplines to provide this survey. It is a lucid and profound contribution to the literature in this area."--Michael J. O'Shea, editor, Studies in Short Fiction
"Offers many, many penetrating and persuasive readings of different passages in Finnegans Wake, and does so in a lucid, lively, and engaging style."--John Gordon, Connecticut College
"Beckman has written a wonderfully wise book, with a critical and sensitive eye, a book that delights in close reading, and holds everywhere a philosopher's detachment from his subject."--Sebastian D. G. Knowles, Ohio State University
Richard Beckman argues that readers of Finnegans Wake must develop a new method of reading that flows from the text itself. Focusing on the mode of perception in the Wake--seeing the world obliquely because that is often the only way to get at the nature of things--Beckman maintains that Joyce's satire depends on looking at the public scene from behind, a view at the same time vaudevillian and philosophic.
Indirect perception is at once the basis for Joyce's peculiar locutions, conveying incompatible double and triple meanings, and also an account of how the mind works. Thus, Beckman shows, the object world in the Wake is as unstable as a troubled dream, accessible only by glimpses and guesses at suspected overtones of significance. If the Wake shows only the wrong side of things, this perception hardly belongs to the Wake alone, but Beckman maintains that no other text has presented this idea with such imitative power, applied it to life so energetically, or wrung so much humor from it. In the Wake, Joyce has made his case for choosing the wrong and even oddball way of considering the human situation--as opposed to the ever-present culture of received opinions--and he creates a book of life that goes nowhere and everywhere, doubling back on itself, methodically seeing things the wrong way, and conjuring up characters, events, and meanings that are inherently reversible.
Written for students of the Wake and Joyce scholars and critics seeking innovative commentary that renders familiar passages fresh, Joyce's Rare View offers new, close readings of a myriad of passages and phrases in the Wake, illuminating many of the themes of this encyclopedic satire.
Customer Reviews:
New Views of "Finnegans Wake".......2007-07-22
With "Joyce's Rare View" Richard Beckman has added an important new look into the comic, cosmic, puzzling pages of James Joyce's most difficult yet, ultimately, rewarding text. Through a close reading of various sections of the "Wake," Beckman provides information and insights that are completely fresh, making it an instant classic to be included with the well-known scholarship of the last century. This work is clearly written as well, accessible to lay Wakeans such as I and not restricted to academicians. It offers valuable and welcome guidance through that amazing maze, the wonderful word world of "Finnegans Wake."
Average customer rating:
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Reading of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake"
James Joyce
Manufacturer: The Lilliput Press Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
20th Century
| British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Joyce, James
| ( J )
| Authors, A-Z
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1874675627 |
Customer Reviews:
One of the Best.......2000-12-19
Guides to "Finnegans Wake" seem to be a dime a dozen now a days, but rarely are they so insightfull and easy to use. Although perhaps it is not as good as Bishop's or Campbell's Guides, but it is shorter and easier to read, so it is good for the beginer. It also acomplishes this condensation without significantly marginalizing any of the great themes of Joyce criticism. Thus, perhaps this deserves four stars for the material covered, but it still does so in such an easy way that I give it five for readability.
Good starting place.......2000-08-24
Tindell is one of the foremost Joyce critics and this in-depth analysis of FW is well worth the money. In the text the author discusses the historical, literary, and philosophical framework of FW while maintaining an less-than-monotonous tone. Any and all of Tindell's Joyce studies are recommended.
Great for the initiate.......2000-01-26
This book meant a lot to me years ago when I first began reading "Finnegans Wake." I felt paralyzed before each new chapter of "FW" if I didn't read Tindall first. Now I just plough on through Joyce, and I haven't read Tindall in years, but it's still close to me heart. (Allen's review is on the money.) Also, check out Tindall's "A Reader's Guide to James Joyce."
An excellent invitation to the Wake........1999-09-14
Probably the most commonly known modern FW guide, Tindall's book is intended to be a guide for the "average" reader. (It says something about Joyce scholarship that anyone who is reading Finnegans Wake can still be considered an "average" reader!) The basic structure of Tindall's guide is a "walk-through" of the text, with each chapter of the Wake getting its own personal excavation. Tindall sets down the basic "action" and "plot" of each chapter, especially calling attention to the symbolic nature of the "characters" and how certain themes tend to repeat, forming a network of structural motifs that give the book its overall shape. Tindall sees Joyce as a symbolist more than anything else, and he makes a case that FW is a cosmos in a book, a symbolic labyrinth that contains the whole world reflected in a vast and inexhaustible work of literature. Most of Tindall's explanations and interpretations are supported by frequent quotations from the text, many of which he takes the time to explicate and/or decompress. At the end of every chapter is a list of additional information, with a particular emphasis on reccurring themes. Tindall is very good at linking together key elements in the book, a task almost impossible for the first time reader. He is also very good at unpacking the dazzling levels of meaning Joyce packs into a single word. His sense of humor is quite enjoyable, and he's very gracious in crediting others -- especially his many students. On the negative side, his writing can be a bit brisk at times, and his style can feel choppy and disconnected. I often find myself wishing that he would spend a little more time supporting some of his comments -- some seem as if they were just tossed off the cuff, some periodically strike a false note, and a few even bear the faint aroma of academic BS. Still, this is an excellent guide for the beginning reader, and though a hard core Wakean may crave a deeper analysis, Tindall has some very illuminating views on the Wake to share. He also seems quite aware that some of his ideas are just conjecture, and he rarely proffers them as if they were the irrefutable truth. I get the impression Tindall would welcome anybody at his Wakean kaffeeklatsch, expert or neophyte alike.
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