Book #27: Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

Finnegan’s Wake. Oh boy. I don’t know why I did this to myself. If you are a literary fiend, like me, you are well aware that Finnegan’s Wake is considered one of the most difficult books to read in the English language (if you can call what you are reading English). I would take War and Peace AND David Copperfield over this book any day and that is really saying something.

It has taken me awhile to get to writing this post. For one, it took me a good long month (or two) to get through Finnegan’s Wake. After that, well,…I procrastinated. I am not going to lie, I was

The cover of my copy of Finnegan's Wake

just like my students and just could not get myself motivated to write this post. I enjoy writing, but when I do not enjoy what I am writing about (or if I don’t have a firm deadline), it can be hard for me to find the motivation. Plus, I had no idea what I would write about for this post since I had no idea what was going on throughout this entire novel. I can’t even give you a decent summary of the plot of the novel because I couldn’t make any sense of it. You should see the notes I took; it looks like I was studying a foreign language. And in a way I was.

In Gilmore Girls, Rory is not actually seen reading Finnegan’s Wake. Instead, it is alluded to in the title of episode 5, “Cinnamon’s Wake” in reference to Babet’s dead cat. I suppose I didn’t actually have to read the novel because it is not actually seen or mentioned in the show, but I can not leave any page unturned! (Ha, see what I did there?) Plus, I got to one up Rory and read one of the most difficult books out there.

I guess to put it simply, Finnegan’s Wake is about the death of a man named Finnegan and the Earwicker family’s secrets. At least, that's what I think it is about. From what I could gather, there were secret affairs, incest, and warring brothers. Not quite sure since James Joyce created his own language while writing this novel. He created new words, smushed words together, and randomly inserted words from another language. In order to fully understand this novel, one would have the break down the entire novel word for word and analyze the meaning of each specific word. Who has time for that? I don't. So I just read it for what it was and took from it what I could.

 

Just so you all know I am not exaggerating the difficulty
of  this text

I just have to wonder if this book would still be considered a classic high end novel if it was written in readable English. If it was discernible, would the plot be any good? If the story wasn’t clouded by the idiosyncratic language, would it be good writing? I don’t know. James Joyce has a good reputation as a strong writer and already had a name for himself when he wrote this novel. The book probably succeeded because Joyce already had a good reputation and a fan base. People probably saw his name attached to the novel and would automatically think “Oh, James Joyce! This must be good!” Much like how people see J.K Rowling and automatically think The Casual Vacancy is going to be good. So the moral of the story for this read is that just because something is labeled as classic literature, a bestseller, or has a name attached to it, does not necessarily mean that a book is good and enjoyable.

Just so you know, episode 5 of Gilmore Girls has one of my all time favorite lines: