Rating: 
Summary: Gibberish!
Review: "Out door, keel cooling vorsnevou." You could add this sentence to this mass of drivel and no one would know it wasn't written by Joyce. If the point of this book is the utter incomprehensibility of mankind, Joyce greatly contributes to it with this rambling waste of paper. A monkey and a typewriter could have written this "experimental" trash. I cannot see any way in which this "work" is a classic. It is stream of conscience gibberish. Anyone could have done it.
Rating: 
Summary: Cross-world
Review: O.k. this book is unreadable. It is not enjoying and it definitely shows you your limits in all categories. But what power must lie within a text whose first 5 or 6 lines could be the subject of 100 dissertations or 1000s of interpretations that make sense too. Just hand the first paragraph to a student class and let them brainstorm what could be meant by "riverrun,... commodius vicus or recirculation, ...etc." and you will see and feel it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Story of Humanity?
Review: The point being, presumedly, that humanity is incomprehensible to humanity? How is my understanding of, or sympathy toward, humanity improved by attempting to read and decode the word "Bababadalgharaghtakamminnarronkonnbronntonneronntuon- thunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoordenenthurnuk"? There are many far greater works that not only tell the same story, but are readable and even enjoyable. My apologies to those who like Finnegan's Wake, but humanity is not best served by having its story told in gibberish.
Rating:
Summary: The Emperor Has No Clothes
Review: FINNEGAN'S WAKE is an endurance contest that intellectuals get to take, and if they finish it, they can feel superior to those who have not made it. And they can also write learned papers about it that they can publish in their academic journals. As William Goldman said in THE SEASON, "As long as there is a PhD. candidate alive, James Joyce will never die." Joyce himself said something to the effect of: "The professors will be analyzing FINNEGAN'S WAKE forever." John Lennon said, "All artist's are egomaniacs, whether they like to admit it or not." And Joyce is indulging in egomania with FINNEGAN'S WAKE. He spent 17 years on this book because he knew people would spend (waste?) hours, days, years of their lives trying to get to the "truth" of FINNEGAN'S WAKE, and feel superior to the great unwashed who don't even know such a work of literature exists. Joyce must be smiling in his grave right now.
Rating: 
Summary: The Ultimate One-Trick Pony; a Fictional Mandelbrot Set
Review: I firmly believe that most who have read -- or so they say -- "Finnegans Wake" extoll its virtues because, to coin a phrase, its reputation precludes it. I am only aware of one detractor: Vladimir Nabokov, who, while considering "Ulysses" one of the four greatest works of the 20th century (a view which I don't share, incidentally), described labelled "FW" only a blot on his memory. (Note: not offered as a proof.) What is "FW", what is it really? Ultimately, I declaim it a failure -- not because I don't like it (an understatement!), but a failure on its OWN terms; and these, after all, are the only terms which any given work of art is obligated to fulfill. I offer one example of this failure -- an example which, however, is crucial to the entire structure of the book. "FW" is, within the story (such as it is) of one man, one family, supposed to represent the history of all of humankind. The history, of course, is relatively easy to represent, with its contextual Vico-ian circularity &c.; but the humankind is a foundering point (no pun intended). Joyce portrays this omnium gatherum of humanity through the meduim of what is commonly referred to as "dream consciousness," the collective unconscious of history, and he exemplifies this through a gallimaufry of languanges: all people, all languages. Fine, makes sense. And it also makes sense that there is a predominant language: English (alright: a very broguish Irish-English), because Finnegan/Humphrey/et al. is/are Irish. But we've glossed over the problem: all people, NOT all languages. Joyce, while being a brilliant linguist, didn't remotely have even snippets -- or even a good percentage -- of all of the languages extant (never mind those of antiquity); and while I'm perfectly willing to accept that NO ONE could have the languages to pull off this idea properly, that does nothing to the fact that Joyce fails to successfully complete his endeavor (on this front). I don't care if Michael Johnson is (currently, at least) the world's fastest 200 meter runner: if he promises a 15-sec. performance and runs it in 19, he's failed to deliver, period! Joyce's idea here IS possible: since there are certainly a finite number of languages, it would be quite possible to represent them all within one book, even if not humanly possible. What Joyce does, though, is make a helluva LOT of languages stand in for ALL languages. Weak, very. There's a lot more wrong with "FW", too. For example, in a great many of his neojoylogisms, Joyce conveniently ignores the possible readings of his recombinations -- and subsequently asks the reader to do so. Joyce, the control freak, is not in complete control, his words come back to haunt him. (I don't say this is all the time, but . . .) And I haven't even gotten to my tag line: the ultimate one-trick pony. (Okay: a couple of tricks.) "FW" is nothing more than a collection of erstwhile fables and puns, served up with the aforementioned linguistic salad (vide supra for the implicative failures of the latter). There's nothing to probe beneath this rococo surface, only the unscrambling and decoding. Recirculation of history? That can be probed in a paragrpah or two, perhaps a pair of pages. What else? Does Joyce score points of originality? Of course! Ambition? O my! But how long before different manifestations of HCE gets old? Just because Joyce's allegories are bigger must we pretend he came up with the idea? Ad rem ad nauseum. If you love Joyce's writing (and I never much do) here, fine. Perhaps you'll find his puns amusing, his tales compelling. Certainly his workmanship is impressive -- I don't care how short it ultimately measures up. To me, "FW" is a crucible of Joyce's elementary particles, his three flavors of quark -- patience, knowledge, and ego. But I suspect that this book is little above what could be produced by a later series of HAL if you fed it enough information and a rather simple list of specifications. No computer could approach "Lolita", "Crime and Punishment", or "Arcadia" -- or "Ulysses", for that matter; but "FW" does so few things (instead simply doing them over and over and over and over (okay, perhaps that's somewhat fitting), changing the players but never the play) that it seems little more than the work of a machine, so contained is the arc of creativity which subsumes the various recombinatives. Madelbrot sets produce something similar, although with infinite (as far as we know) variety. I give it a 6: one above average for all that hard work. O Jamesy!
Rating:
Summary: Who WERE Shem and Shaun?
Review: FIRST: Having read the previous reviews of this work to date (here at Amazon.com), and finding myself in sympathy with the sympathizers, - (I too think the Wake to be one of the best books ever written), - I shall side, as it were, with the unpopular Shem against Shaun's worldly wisdom that if Joyce had had something really worthwhile to write he would have spelled it out in garden variety prose. SECOND: Why? It is simply not realistic to me to seriously suggest that Joyce, who twice won an all-Ireland English composition prize as a young lad in school, and went on to produce the Portrait and Ulysses, would spend 17 of his most creative years on a "prank"... Joyce had a flair for foreign languages. Joyce regarded Catholicism as "a beautiful lie". Joyce had at his disposal the collected wisdom of the Orient and Occident due to the scholarship of the late 19th century, and was extremely well read. Joyce clearly delighted in wordplay and puzzles. Joyce was exceptionally gifted in music. And, Joyce was notoriously autobiographical in his literary efforts. All these elements find expression in Finnegans Wake. My personal suspicion is that those who have little patience for Joyce's presentation are unwilling to reassess what a book should convey, (see my review of Ulysses), lack the necessarily broad intellectual interests to make the book appealing, or just don't have a strong enough desire to play detective with the book on its own terms. Permit me to illustrate... The late Maestro Leonard Bernstein gave a series of lectures at Harvard in the early 70's entitled "The Unanswered Question" in which he touched upon the similarities and differences between music and speech, and even pondered the existence of a universal musical grammar. For example, it is not gramatically possible in English to start a sentence with the last word of the prior sentence (he points out). Yet this is exactly what music does do, and this is exactly what the modulated "English" of Finnegans Wake enables Joyce to do, too. And more, much more. In fact, the Wake's fluctuating prose seems to foreshadow this idea of Bernstein's. THIRD: What is the book about? This is the demand of those who think it rubbish. Here it is: the book is about humanity, - our archetypal experiences, written on the level of dream consciousness. That's it. For example, brother against brother conflict; the inevitable haunting guilt which seems to attach itself to all of us - "this municipal sin business"; the love of a woman which enables life to go on, and on, riverlike, and the recurrence of life's themes throughout the day, week, and age; the problems of incestuous love which always brew within "the fury and the mire of human veins"; the letter which would explain all, dug up from a manure pile by a hen named Belinda, but which has holes or tea stains in all those places where we could learn for certain "who did it"; the problem of inevitable death; the chrysalis-like psychological state of dependence on temporal and ecclesiastical authority...These are the problems and events of day-to-day living, and this is what the Wake deals with. (To those of you who understand the Wake better than myself, my apologies for having been so bold as to try and elaborate it so crudely!) It is written in as impossibly eclectic a style as may be possible, and intentionally riddled with puzzles, the detractors claim. Fine, granted. But here as perhaps elsewhere, Joyce seems to realize the limitations of a work of art, and strives to transcend them; there is a subtle and inescapable logic to life, and as far as possible, the business of the artist is to seize this quality. Joyce's effort gives the book a zest and freshness not to be found elsewhere. My very humble opinion is that the Wake is without peer in the English language. (Besides, who needed another cowboy or detective novel, for Heaven's sake?) Each of us is the poor harried protagonist, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Each of us carries around a burden of guilt, Richard the Third-like. Each of us is subjected to the ridicule of the Four Customers and the Twelve Jurymen, whether in going into the neighborhood grocer to buy a loaf of bread, in chatting with our neighbor, in the nearby laughter of aloof strangers, or in having to live with the endless moralistic preachings of our "superego", built on the bygone days of our childhood's sometimes-confused faith, and the collective experiences of humanity's infancy in ages long gone, and yet to be re-repeated. This wild yet sustained totality of expression, and characteristically Joycean juxtaposition of seemingly incongruous and inharmonious elements, make the book the funniest, and most truly delightful, I have ever read. FOURTH: In defence of those who dislike it, knowledge of at least one foreign language probably helps, as does a general knowledge of comparative religion and mythology. Vico's idea of historical cycles, Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence, alchemy, Biblical tales, childrens' games: these are all part of the Wake. There are several exegetical works which aid in digestion of the Wake, but beware of trying to decipher individual lines, or even pages, of the Wake, in isolation! People who attempt this exercise are frequently disappointed. (Try isolating a four note theme from a piece of music and explaining logically what these four notes, by themselves in isolation from the rest of the piece, mean - the Wake is just as organic as a piece of music.) The Wake often reminds me of Wagner's Ring Cycle: the Demiurge tried his best to create a perfect world, but was unable to do so. It is the business of the hero, through his rise, struggle, and inevitable fall to bring about the perfection of creation. The Wake retells this story on the level of dream consciousness, "where everyone is someone else". Perhaps the greatest obstacle to approaching the Wake is that many readers come in bad faith, unwilling to believe that an order is there, hidden in the labyrinth of metamorphosing words. Try peeking at the James Joyce Quarterly if you need encouragement that the order IS there. And, since we are all celebrating Adam's, and Finnegan's, (and each other's), Fall in writing and reading this column, ("O foenix culprit!"), I wish you all a good time at Finnegan's Wake!
Rating:
Summary: Less than impressed. Weak compared to his other works.
Review: While Joyce's Ulysses demonstrates his monstrous success with literary experimentation styles, FW does not. I find it poor by his standards. In academics (and among pseudo-intellectuals) the book is quite fashionable, and understably so - the style is unique. Its almost comical to listen to my fellow Joyce fans rave about it. But whenever I corner them, and beg them to dissect the work for me, the responses are as incoherent as the book itself. Perhaps it inspires creative thinking/translation from its readers, but nothing of the sort on my part, despite my repeated efforts to sincerely read it. I've read far worse, that's for sure, but someone thinking of dabbling with Joyce for the first time should seriously consider selecting one of his more substantial earlier works, or the frustration with FW may alienate them forever from an otherwise brilliant and often very powerful author.
Rating:
Summary: Cylindrically resplendent
Review: Marshmallow-muffin pies and moonbeam soups curtail and confound--meaning, no more spherically related adages--but avail themselves not of paradoxical efficiencies any more, certainly no less, than subcutaneous matter does to the seven veils of Baghdad, which is to say, if indeed such badinage needs voice at all, that exploding beyond the rail-thin walls of logical impairment will neatly bring one closer to the inherent truths of so flatulently brilliant a work as this...
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Summary: Finnegan's Psychedelics
Review: One of the defining moments in my life has to be the time that I read a few pages of Finnegan's Wake while tripping on psychedelic mushrooms. I have yet to read a series of words like the ones I read that night. My soul wa literally tranfigured by the sheer brilliance of Joyce. While I wouldn't recommend drugs anymore, I would say that one has to have a certain amount of expanded consciousness to fully appreciate and be moved by this fractally complex work. "Two thumbs up!"
Rating:
Summary: James Joyce goes nuts with his skills
Review: The last work of his that Joyce ever saw published--the work he labored on for 17 years--is Finnegans Wake and easily one of the oddest books ever. Some people do get hostile towards the book, because it IS odd, but you have to appreciate Joyce's OTHER works the way I do to even want to read it. I can honestly say I don't get all of it--no one ever will. I don't think it's a book intended to be read just once. The one problem is that Joyce maybe got a tad out of hand. Okay, it was the book he probably wanted to be remembered for (although "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and maybe "Ulysses" are more accessible and therefore get more readers today), but I think maybe he was showing off a bit. Not that he didn't have the right to. The first time I read a work by Joyce I figured I was going to hate him. When I hate an author, I really hate one. But somehow Joyce grew on me. That was pretty strange. And although I haven't read most of Joyce's stuff, I like to get in over my head--hence, reading Finnegans Wake. This is not a beginner's book, that's for sure. If you've heard of Joyce and want to explore his works, start with "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", because that is a classic all its own and also much easier to follow. Actually, I'd build even more than that before Finnegans Wake, but that's up to you. In all, I strongly suggest Finnegans Wake for people who like interesting literature.
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