Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is significant for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's death, Finnegans Wake was Joyce's final work. The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which many ...
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Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is significant for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's death, Finnegans Wake was Joyce's final work. The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which many critics believe were attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. Owing to the work's expansive linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public. Despite the obstacles, readers and commentators have reached a broad consensus about the book's central cast of characters and, to a lesser degree, its plot. However, a number of key details remain elusive. The book discusses, in an unorthodox fashion, the Earwicker family, comprising the father HCE, the mother ALP, and their three children Shem the Penman, Shaun the Postman, and Issy. Following an unspecified rumour about HCE, the book, in a nonlinear dream narrative, follows his wife's attempts to exonerate him with a letter, his sons' struggle to replace him, Shaun's rise to prominence, and a final monologue by ALP at the break of dawn. The opening line of the book is a sentence fragment which continues from the book's unfinished closing line, making the work a never-ending cycle. Many noted Joycean scholars such as Samuel Beckett and Donald Phillip Verene link this cyclical structure to Giambattista Vico's seminal text La Scienza Nuova ("The New Science"), upon which they argue Finnegans Wake is structured.
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Add this copy of Finnegans Wake to cart. $4.99, good condition, Sold by Bank of Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Ventura, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1959 by Penguin (Non-Classics).
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Seller's Description:
Publisher is Viking (Compass Book). 1970 reprint (10th printing). Cover is different than picture shown. Minimal underlining and margin notes on pages 3-13. Otherwise pages are clean and in very good condition. We have 75, 000 books to choose from--Ship within 24 hours--Satisfaction Guaranteed!
Add this copy of Finnegans Wake to cart. $7.65, good condition, Sold by Taos Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Santa Fe, NM, UNITED STATES, published 1959 by Viking Press.
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Good. Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall; No slant no creases, text unmarked, some soiling on edges of text block, no damp stains but moisture exposure evident from slight waviness at bottom of pages, no age toning, gift inscription first page, Good overall a reading copy, stated fifteenth printing (1974).
Add this copy of Finnegans Wake to cart. $15.00, very good condition, Sold by ZENO'S rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Francisco, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1969 by Viking Press.
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Very good No Jacket. New York. 1969. May 1969. Viking Press. Reprinted Viking Compass Paperback Edition. Good in Worn Wrappers. 0670000450. Included Is Pamphlet Corrections Of Misprints In Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber. 1945. paperback. keywords: Europe Ireland Literature Joyce Ireland Literature World Literature. DESCRIPTION-Having completed work on Ulysses, Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write a line of prose for a year. On 10 March 1923 he informed a patron, Harriet Weaver: ‘Yesterday I wrote two pages-the first I have since the final Yes of Ulysses. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of foolscap so that I could read them. Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio, the Italians say. 'The wolf may lose his skin but not his vice' or 'the leopard cannot change his spots. '‘ Thus was born a text that became known, first, as Work in Progress and later Finnegans Wake. By 1926 Joyce had completed the first two parts of the book. In that year, he met Eugene and Maria Jolas who offered to serialise the book in their magazine transition. For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the new book, but in the 1930s, progress slowed considerably. This was due to a number of factors, including the death of his father in 1931, concern over the mental health of his daughter Lucia and his own health problems, including failing eyesight. Much of the work was done with the assistance of younger admirers, including Samuel Beckett. For some years, Joyce nursed the eccentric plan of turning over the book to his friend James Stephens to complete, on the grounds that Stephens was born in the same hospital as Joyce exactly one week later, and shared the first name of both Joyce and of Joyce's fictional alter-ego, an example of Joyce's superstitions. Reaction to the work was mixed, including negative comment from early supporters of Joyce's work, such as Pound and the author's brother, Stanislaus Joyce. To counteract this hostile reception, a book of essays by supporters of the new work, including Beckett, William Carlos Williams and others was organised and published in 1929 under the title Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. At his 57th birthday party at the Jolases' home, Joyce revealed the final title of the work and Finnegans Wake was published in book form on 4 May 1939. Later, further negative comments surfaced from doctor and author Hervey Cleckley, who questioned the significance others had placed on the work. In his book, The Mask of Sanity, Cleckley refers to Finnegans Wake as ‘a 628-page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital. ' Joyce's method of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations was pushed to the limit in Finnegans Wake, which abandoned all conventions of plot and character construction and is written in a peculiar and obscure language, based mainly on complex multi-level puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than that used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky. This has led many readers and critics to apply Joyce's oft-quoted description in the Wake of Ulysses as his ‘usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles' to the Wake itself. However, readers have been able to reach a consensus about the central cast of characters and general plot. Much of the wordplay in the book stems from the use of multilingual puns which draw on a wide range of languages. The role played by Beckett and other assistants included collating words from these languages on cards for Joyce to use and, as Joyce's eyesight worsened, of writing the text from the author's dictation. The view of history propounded in this text is very strongly influenced by Giambattista Vico, and the metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola are important to the interplay of the ‘characters. '...
Add this copy of Finnegans Wake to cart. $33.06, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1959 by Viking Press.
Add this copy of Finnegans Wake to cart. $77.97, new condition, Sold by GridFreed rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from North Las Vegas, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1959 by Viking Press.
"The most unintelligible [writing] that anyone can understand," is a "wake-up call" to anyone interested in western culture, and/or entertained by deeply resounding wordplay, let alone pleased and astounded, reassured and frightened by the epiphanies and puzzles that arise out of dream fragments. FW is psychedelics out of a book - keep the bottle on your shelf. An alternate title might have been "My, My, My, What a Wonderful Fall." It helps to read the narrative aloud, as phrases tumble into rhythms that conjure meaning on the second or third bounce, not unlike nursery rhymes that even with the words changed are still recognizable for their cadence. Beyond the sounds and stories you will endure, there is history, speculation, editorial comment, and alternate takes, intermingled in a kaleidoscopic tumbling that leaves the reader literally breathless. Excerpt any passage, I challenge you, and perform it along with a light show, a soundscape, a chance choreography, and the collage will meld together better than the sum of its parts. FW is a handbook for the study of the brain as art. Thank you, Sean the Penman.
Maggy
Oct 21, 2007
Difficult, but Worth the Effort
Have you ever had a dream where you can remember the main idea, but you just can't remember the details? This novel is exactly like that. It's darn tough to read, but if you can get over the circular structure, foreign languages, Joyce-isms, and apparent indecipherability, you'll like it. If you need to understand every single thing in a book, don't read this; only James Joyce fully knows what every single detail signifies. The main idea: a dream, or a representation of nighttime.
