My Goodreads Review of Finnegans Wake

I had a half completed review of Finnegans Wake  on Goodreads that I have updated from time to time over several years.  I have always meant to finish it, and have been adding bits and pieces to it over time.

I think it is a pretty good explanation, in case you want to give one to somebody a quick answer as to just what "why the heck are your reading that"?


  Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

Fourth time through! The date is set to the date I read the final word "the".

(Read twice before and a third time selected passages.)

This is my favorite book of all time. Admittedly it is challenging, but what it does is simply unique in all of literature, beautiful, silly, inexhaustible and, perhaps, exhausting.

I don't want to say that you should read this book, unless it calls to you. It is not for every one. ...

Anyway here's the link:

Review of Finnegans Wake

T.S. Eliot Prufrock comic book

Because there is a big link to Eliot in the Wake and more importantly, because I know there is a bit of a crossover in terms of Joyce fans and Eliot fans in my circle of acquaintance, I thought I'd post a link to a Slate piece about an upcoming The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock--the comic book. First 9 pages featured HERE.

Are Parnellites Just Towards Henry Tudor?--page 307

Our roving correspondent PQ has alerted us to a new Finnegans Wake blog which seems well worth reading. This most recent post on From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay has to do with the tragic love triangle of Percy and Edith Thompson and her overly ardent lover, Frederick Bywaters. The story fascinated Joyce and it pops up frequently in the Wake, so you'd be  well advised to give it a gander.

We've made, as Ed mentions in the last post that we've begun a new chapter in the Wake, but I'm going to take a moment to mention something that came up as we summarized the Children's Study Hour chapter. For some reason or another, we,  or at least I got stuck on one of the many little headings that form a kind of cascade at the end of the book, "Are Parnellites Just towards Henry Tudor?" So, as we have just recently read the article on Joyce and Parnell, we were trying to figure out how Henry the Eighth might have had an effect on Parnell in terms of politics or women or whatever.

I can't say I've come up with any definitive answer on that. But there is a simpler answer to that. Who was Henry Tudor to Charles Stewart Parnell?

His younger brother. Henry Tudor Parnell, born in 1850 to Charles Stewart Parnell's 1846. Whether the Parnellites were just to him or not, though, I cannot say.
 

It may not or maybe a no concern of the Guinnesses but....

...In honor of our starting a new this new chapter, a note about the pub James Joyce in Prague:
Irish pub James Joyce celebrates 20 years with custom beer - PRAGUE POST | The Voice of Prague:

'via Blog this'

"that host of a bottlefilled, the bulkily hulkwight, hunter’s pink of face..."

"We rescue thee, O Baass, from the damp earth and honour thee...."