Finnegans Wake

James Joyce

“I’ve been reading Finnegan’s Wake for almost 15 years. It’s on my bedside table and I try almost every night to read a little before I go to sleep … It inspires one’s dreams. It colors one’s dreams very nicely. If one dreams with a certain amount of language in your dreams, as I often do. Because the language in it is incredible. There’s so many layers of puns and references to mythology and history. But it’s the most realistic novel ever written. Which is exactly why it’s so unreadable. He wrote that book the way that the human mind works. An intelligent, inquiring mind. And that’s just the way consciousness is. It’s not linear. It’s just one thing piled on another. And all kinds of cross references. And he just takes that to an extreme. There’s never been a book like it and I don’t think there ever will be another book like it. And it’s absolutely a monumental human achievement. But it’s very hard to read.” -Tom Robbins

Got a copy of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake for Christmas. I’m going to try to read it Tom Robbins style, although I would prefer to read it Robert Anton Wilson style with a group of people taking turns reading it aloud while drinking copious amounts of Guinness. I don’t even know how to find a group of people who want to read James Joyce aloud, I barely know anyone who reads James Joyce. Wish me luck.

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